For Trump, Instinct After Florida Killings Is Simple: Protect Saudis

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For Trump, Instinct After Florida Killings Is Simple: Protect Saudis

The New York Times•December 8, 2019

 

 

 

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — When a Saudi Air Force officer opened fire on his classmates at a naval base in Pensacola, Florida, on Friday, he killed three, wounded eight and exposed anew the strange dynamic between President Donald Trump and the Saudi leadership: The president’s first instinct was to tamp down on any suggestion that the Saudi government needed to be held to account.

Hours later, Trump announced on Twitter that he had received a condolence call from King Salman of Saudi Arabia, who clearly sought to ensure that the episode did not further fracture their relationship. On Saturday, leaving the White House for a trip here for a Republican fundraiser and a speech on Israeli-American relations, Trump told reporters that “they are devastated in Saudi Arabia,” noting that “the king will be involved in taking care of families and loved ones.” He never used the word “terrorism.”

What was missing was any assurance that the Saudis would aid in the investigation, help identify the suspect’s motives, or answer the many questions about the vetting process for a coveted slot at one of the country’s premier schools for training allied officers. Or, more broadly, why the United States continues to train members of the Saudi military even as that same military faces credible accusations of repeated human rights abuses in Yemen, including the dropping of munitions that maximize civilian casualties.

“The attack is a disaster for an already deeply strained relationship,” Bruce Riedel, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and a former CIA officer who has dealt with generations of Saudi leaders, said Saturday. It “focuses attention on Americans training Saudi Air Force officers who are engaged in numerous bombings of innocents in Yemen, which is the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world,” he said, noting that the Trump administration had long been fighting Congress as it seeks to end U.S. support for that war.

But even stranger, said Riedel, was “the president’s parroting of the Saudi line” before learning the results of an investigation into whether the gunman acted alone, or had allegiances to al-Qaida or terrorist groups.

For the White House, the calculus is simple: Saudi Arabia is not only critical to world oil supplies — though no longer critical to the United States’ — it is the only regional power able to counter Iran. The result, former members of the Trump administration say, has been a dismissal of any critiques that could weaken that bond.

Trump was so quick and so eager to assure the Saudis that the relationship would continue before anyone knew how to categorize the shooting that it raised questions about how the administration would have responded if the suspect had been an Iranian, or an immigrant from Mexico. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump often cited the killing of a young woman in California by an undocumented immigrant as a reason to crack down on immigration and build a wall along the southern border.

“Had an attack been carried out by any country on his Muslim ban, his reaction would have been very different,” said Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East negotiator and now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“But when it comes to Saudi, the default position is to defend,” he said, “Driven by oil, money, weapons sales, a good deal of Saudi feting and flattery, Trump has created a virtually impenetrable zone of immunity for Saudi Arabia.”

It was hardly the first time Trump had shown such tendencies. After the brutal killing in Istanbul of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident and a legal American resident, Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo played down U.S. intelligence findings that closely tied Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to the matter. The findings suggested he had connections to the members of the hit team sent to Turkey — and almost certainly played a role in ordering them to bring Khashoggi back to the country by force.

Trump’s and Pompeo’s initial promises to follow the evidence wherever it led dissipated. Over the past year, Pompeo has expressed deep annoyance whenever the topic is raised. The United States was awaiting the results of a Saudi investigation, he often said, as if he expected that to offer a full accounting. And he told members of Congress that no matter the truth of what unfolded, the relationship between the kingdom and Washington was too important to be held hostage to one vicious, ill-thought-out act.

No U.S. assessment of what the Saudi leadership knew has ever been made public.

Before the shooting Friday, the White House was already fighting efforts in Congress to cut military aid to the Saudis, a reflection of anger over the Khashoggi murder and continuing war in Yemen. But the Pensacola attack underlined the continuing instinct to protect the relationship.

“If Trump wants to convey condolences from Saudi King Salman, fine,” Miller wrote on Twitter after the shooting. “But you don’t do it on day — Americans are killed — untethered from a message of ironclad assurances from King to provide” whatever cooperation is necessary to understand the gunman and his motives. “Otherwise Trump sounds like what he has become — a Saudi apologist.”

After Pompeo announced that he had spoken with the Saudi foreign minister, Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, about the shooting, Martin Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel and longtime Middle East negotiator, tweeted: “Isn’t it interesting how quick Trump and Pompeo are to broadcast Saudi government condolences for the murder of three Americans and how slow they were to criticize the Saudi government’s murder” of Khashoggi.

Still, the bond between the countries is weakening, as the erosion of support in Congress shows. A negotiation over providing nuclear technology to the Saudis, a huge push early in the administration, has stalled. The chances that the military support will remain at current levels appear slim.

“The U.S.-Saudi relationship is on life support,” Riedel said, noting that it would be in jeopardy if a Democrat were to win the 2020 election. “Even Joe Biden is calling the Kingdom a ‘pariah’ that needs to be punished,” he said, referring to the former vice president, who had for decades supported a strong relationship with the Saudis.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-instinct-florida-killings-simple-165954121.html

 

GO RV, then BV

 

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Shocking!

 

B/A

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EXCLUSIVE-Over 300 Saudi military aviation students grounded in U.S. after base shooting

 

Idrees Ali  Reuters

Phil Stewart  Reuters

PUBLISHED

DEC 10, 2019 4:20PM EST

 

CREDIT: REUTERS/FBI

More than 300 Saudi Arabian military aviation students have been grounded as part of a "safety stand-down" after a Saudi Air Force lieutenant shot and killed three people last week at a U.S. Navy base in Florida, U.S. officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON, Dec 10 (Reuters) - More than 300 Saudi Arabian military aviation students have been grounded as part of a "safety stand-down" after a Saudi Air Force lieutenant shot and killed three people last week at a U.S. Navy base in Florida, U.S. officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

The FBI has said U.S. investigators believe Saudi Air Force Second Lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, 21, acted alone when he attacked a U.S. Navy base in Pensacola, Florida, on Friday, before he was fatally shot by a deputy sheriff.

The shootings have again raised questions about the U.S. military relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has come under heightened scrutiny in Congress over the war in Yemen and Saudi Arabia's killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi last year.

Still, U.S. military leaders have sought to portray this as a localized issue which would not affect the overall U.S.-Saudi relationship.

 

"A safety stand-down and operational pause commenced Monday for Saudi Arabian aviation students," said Lieutenant Andriana Genualdi, a Navy spokeswoman.

Another Navy official said the grounding was to help Saudi students prepare to eventually restart their training and similar procedures would have been taken if such an incident took place in a U.S. military squadron.

An Air Force spokeswoman told Reuters an undisclosed number of additional Saudi students have also stopped flying.

"Given the traumatic events, we feel it is best to keep the Royal Saudi Air Force students off the flying schedule for a short time," the spokeswoman said.

 

"We are ensuring our Saudi students have access to available resources to help them deal with these circumstances. The safety and well-being of all our aircrew is a top priority."

The Navy's Genualdi said the grounding included three different military facilities: Naval Air Station Pensacola, Naval Air Station Whiting Field and Naval Air Station Mayport, all in Florida. The Air Force action applied to additional U.S. bases.

Genualdi added that while it was unclear when the Saudi students would be allowed to fly again, their classroom training was expected to resume soon. She added that aviation training had resumed for students from other countries.

There are currently about 850 Saudi students in the United States for military training.

 

Alshamrani was on the base as part of a U.S. Navy training program designed to foster links with foreign allies. He had started training in the United States in 2017 and had been in the Pensacola area for the past 18 months, authorities said.

A group that tracks online extremism has said Alshamrani appeared to have posted criticism of U.S. wars in predominantly Muslim countries and quoted slain al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on Twitter hours before the shooting spree.

U.S.-SAUDI RELATIONS

The attack comes as President Donald Trump's administration has maintained warm ties with Riyadh amid high tensions with Middle East rival Iran.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper has dismissed suggestions that the shootings might make him more reluctant about new U.S. deployments to Saudi Arabia, which were announced in October and first reported by Reuters.

 

"Saudi Arabia is a longstanding partner of ours in the region. We share mutual security interests," Esper said over the weekend.

Esper said he had instructed the armed forces to review both security at military bases and screening for foreign soldiers who come to the United States for training after the shooting.

In the wake of the shootings, the U.S. Northern Command immediately ordered all military installations to review force protection measures and to increase "random security measures."

A Northern Command spokesman said local commanders in the United States also had the authority to "add further countermeasures as needed," without elaborating as to which, if any, bases did so.

 

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart Editing by Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis)