Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen said dictatorships are sometimes necessary so long as the despots support the United States.
The Post used to employ columnist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi until he was murdered and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in 2018. According to U.S. intelligence agencies, he was killed on orders from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Saudi Arabia is facing renewed scrutiny with the recent merger of the PGA and the Saudi-backed LIV Golf. On Tuesday, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations heard from golf officials, as well as testimony from the families of 9/11 victims. The families oppose the deal because evidence suggests some Saudi government officials were involved with plotters of the attacks.
Appearing on Tuesday’s edition of The Story, Thiessen defended the U.S. government’s longtime relationship with Saudi Arabia despite the fact it murdered one of his colleagues at the Washington Post.
“Well, first of all, I was in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001,” he said, alluding to his time in the George W. Bush administration. “I felt the building shake. I smelled the smoke. I spent three years traveling with Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld to every battlefront in the war on terror. So, I watched this unfold with my very own eyes and my ears and my senses.”
He went on to say that the U.S. is well served by being allied with various authoritarian regimes:
The hardest thing that we have to do in the U.S. foreign policy – broadly – is not about golf, but generally, is balance U.S. interests and our concern with human rights with the fact that we need – sometimes – pro-American dictatorships around the world or pro-American regimes that do not have human rights records that we like or condone.
This is Saudi Arabia. It is the only country in the Middle East that is a bulwark, is a vital bulwark against Iran, which is the real threat to American interests around the world and to our ally, Israel. We can’t break our relationship with Saudi Arabia. We need a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia despite the fact that we have major disagreements on human rights.
Thiessen then touted the Abraham Accords signed by former President Donald Trump, which normalized relations between the Gulf states and Israel. He went on to say that it’s ill-advised to let “emotion” get in the way of allying with dictators.
“President Biden comes in and announces that he’s gonna make Saudi Arabia a pariah,” he added. “And the result of that was, we have the first Saudi-Iranian diplomatic accord, which was brokered by China. That’s not good for us. So, you know, I understand the emotion and I feel the emotion. But we need Saudi Arabia.”
He then asked why the Senate isn’t conducting hearings on the NBA’s business relationship with China.
“The NBA has become a foreign agent for the Chinese Communist Party,” Thiessen said.
Watch above via Fox News.
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