For Trump, Instinct After Florida Killings Is Simple: Protect Saudis
For Trump, Instinct After Florida Killings Is Simple: Protect Saudis
Before issuing his own condolences, the president channeled the Saudi king’s, and avoided any discussion of the hard questions about why the U.S. is training Saudi officers.
President Trump’s first instinct was to tamp down any suggestion that the Saudi government needed to be held accountable for any misdeeds.Credit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times
By David E. Sanger
Dec. 7, 2019, 8:30 p.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/us/politics/trump-pensacola-saudi-arabia.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — When a Saudi Air Force officer opened fire on his classmates at a naval base in Pensacola, Fla., on Friday, he killed three, wounded eight and exposed anew the strange dynamic between President Trump and the Saudi leadership: The president’s first instinct was to tamp down any suggestion that the Saudi government needed to be held to account.
Hours later, Mr. 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 fund-raiser and a speech on Israeli-American relations, Mr. 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 C.I.A. officer who has dealt with generations of Saudi leaders, said on 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 American support for that war.
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