Emrah Gurel/AP Photo
People hold posters of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, near the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, October 2, 2020, marking the two-year anniversary of his death.
Like any self-respecting reader, I try not to let the editorials of The Wall Street Journal annoy me. The paper’s editorialists are to capitalism what Trotskyite sectarians are to socialism: malignant fantasists who embrace so extreme a version of their doctrine of choice that it’s only by accident that good judgement occasionally seeps into their pronouncements. Of course, the viewpoints they express have far more traction than their Trotskyist counterparts’, but that’s because most American capitalists are more prey to extremism than most American socialists.
But my well-honed Journal defense mechanisms notwithstanding, I find that a line from one Journal editorial last month has stuck with me. It’s from an editorial chastising the Biden administration for its undue concern for human rights and even the sanctity of life when it comes to its relations with Saudi Arabia. As the paper put it (and this is not the passage that stuck with me, “Mr. Biden and his advisers say this is all about human rights. They rode into town on a high horse concerning the Riyadh-orchestrated 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.” (Note the deflection of blame from Saudi de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, whom the CIA identified as the person who ordered Khashoggi’s killing, in the words “Riyadh-orchestrated.”)
The “Saudi bungle” of Biden’s failing to curry favor with MBS, the Journal continued, “highlights the failure of Mr. Biden’s brand of righteous liberal internationalism.” Then came the sentence I just can’t shake:
President Trump too often gave short shrift to American values, but Mr. Biden has swung too far in the opposite direction.
And thus, President Biden as seen by the Journal: Not just way too “righteous liberal” but also way too, well, “American.” Sometimes, those Journal guys are too naked for their own good.
