A Grave Indictment: What Khashoggi's Death Says About Us

Another journalist has been murdered.  The murder of journalists is nothing new, of course.  Journalists sometimes live very dangerous lives, dodging bullets on battlefields and all.  Sometimes, their deaths are collateral damage.  Sometimes they are killed for exposing, or trying to expose, corruption.  And the more unsavory the truth, the more dangerous it is to report it.

Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi did not die on a battlefield.  He was not blown up in a car, as was Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles.  He was not shot six times at a stoplight, as was Sunday Independent reporter Veronica Guerin.  No, Jamal Khashoggi died in the ultimate bureaucratic setting - his native country's consulate.  He was trying to get a marriage license.  As his fiance waited outside in the car, it seems that he was hacked into pieces.

So what was this Indiana State University-educated journalist doing that would incur the ultimate punishment?  Surely he must have been writing incendiary pieces aimed at overthrowing his native country's white-robed government?  Nooooo.  His written voice was gentle.  By exposing human rights violations in his native country, though, he could not help but offend the violators - all of whom happened to be wealthy and powerful.  But sometimes, he simply wrote about normal government corruption - things like sewer covers without sewers underneath.  Bridge-to-nowhere-type stuff.  You know, the kind of stuff that big-city reporters used to report here decades ago.

But, no matter how gently expressed, unpleasant truths sometimes cannot be made more palatable.  And, now, no rose-colored glasses can hide or disguise the appalling nature of this journalist's murder and the even more appalling implications of its aftermath.

Khashoggi was killed in a Saudi consulate.  It was a Saudi government hit job. Period. Yet, the current W.H. occupant says that the Crown Prince may or may not have been responsible - as though the Crown Prince's personal role matters or would need to be proved.  That's just spin, though.  Smoke and mirrors.  Look here, no look there. And to show how hard he's working for the American people, this same W.H. occupant adds that he won't screw up a 110-billion dollar arms deal with the Saudis because of something so insignificant as a non-American journalist's murder in their consulate. Sharing Al Capone's entrepreneurial philosophy, he says we might as well sell them the goods since they're going to get them from somebody.

Regardless of current reporting that the Saudi "deal" is no deal at all, W.H. defenders point out that we are simply doing what we've always done, that we trade with many horribly corrupt and murderous dictatorships, and that the man who currently carries the title of "President of the United States" is simply "telling it like it is."   This time they are right.

So, this holiday season, whether scurrying through the underwear-strewn aisles of a Walmart or wandering leisurely by the elegant displays in a Nordstrom, take a moment to think about those who may have given their lives, in one way or another, for better conditions in those countries that produced that shirt, that coat, those slippers, that television set, and those earphones.  And think about why those items are so inexpensive.

And when you pump gas, remember Jamal Khashoggi.