President Biden is planning to provide offensive weapons to a Middle Eastern regime that has been massacring innocent civilians, according to news reports. Yet no protest tents have been set up on college campuses, no members of the congressional “Squad” are making angry speeches, and no hecklers are calling him “Genocide Joe.”
How can this be? Aren’t the protesters who have captured our nation’s attention motivated by humanitarian principles, which apply no matter who the offender is? Aren’t they concerned about all human suffering? Don’t they want America to hold back weapons from every regime that might kill civilians?
Apparently not.
According to news media reports, the Biden administration plans to resume providing offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, after a four year-ban that the president imposed because the Saudis had used American munitions in airstrikes that killed some Yemeni civilians.
While campaigning for the presidency in 2018, Joe Biden vowed he would treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” because of its many human rights violations, including dismembering one of the regime’s prominent critics.
And last year, the Saudis gave the United Stated additional reason to hold back weapons: human rights groups revealed that Saudi Arabian border guards had slaughtered “hundreds, perhaps thousands” of unarmed African civilians.
The African migrants had approached the Saudi border in the hope of finding work or receiving asylum from persecution. The Saudis responded with gunfire, mutilations, and sexual atrocities.
Yet the Biden administration has been looking for ways to improve its relations with Riyadh. As early as the autumn of 2022, “American diplomats received grim news that border guards in Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. partner in the Middle East, were using lethal force against African migrants,” the Times revealed—yet throughout the entire year to follow, the Biden administration never criticized the Saudi massacres.
The most any U.S. official said, according to the Times, was “an oblique reference” to the issue: the deputy American representative to the United Nations said during a UN briefing in January 2023 that the Biden administration was “concerned” by “alleged abuses against migrants on the border with Saudi Arabia.” He called on “all parties” to permit an outside investigation. That was it.
It gets worse. During the past year, the Saudis have openly strengthened their relations with two of America’s worst enemies—yet the Biden administration has remained silent.
In March 2023, Saudi Arabia renewed diplomatic relations with Iran, after a seven year rift. Ambassadors were exchanged, embassies were re-opened, and then-Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi visited Riyadh.
Iran is not the only anti-American regime that Saudi Arabia is embracing. Last week, the Saudis sent an ambassador to Syria after a twelve year-break in relations with Damascus, and the Syrian embassy had reopened in Riyadh.
Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is a vehement enemy of the United States and Syria is a state sponsor of terrorism, against which the U.S. maintains sanctions. There are 900 American troops in Syria, fighting terrorists and supporting the autonomous Kurds, whom Assad opposes. The Saudis have chosen to side with Assad.
Yet neither Saudi massacres of black Africans nor Saudi friendliness toward Iran and Syria has moved the Biden administration to even verbally challenge Riyadh.
The only time President Biden has publicly criticized Saudi Arabia was in 2022—for cutting oil production. The president was worried that—as the New York Times put it—such cuts might “lead to a rise in global oil prices before the midterm elections.” The president even threatened there would be “consequences” for oil cuts. Apparently there are no consequences for mass murder, or for embracing anti-American regimes.
And none of this seems to bother those on campus and in Congress who have been so vocal about Gaza. They say they care about the deaths of civilians—but only when Israel can be blamed. They say they want America to refrain from sending weapons to countries that are engaged in Mideast wars—but only when the country is Israel and the war is against Hamas terrorists. And, of course, they say “black lives matter”—but not when blacks are being slaughtered by the Saudis.
(May 2024)