Is Saudi Arabia running the US?

At the commemoration meeting held in the American Congress on the 100th day of the massacre of Cemal Kaşıkçı at the Saudi Arabia (SA) Consulate General in Istanbul, both Democratic and Republican members of Congress took part together, setting an example of consensus and shared sensitivity rarely seen in American political history.

Especially in these days, when the political climate is strained by Trump's government shutdown ultimatum against what he regards as the "obstinacy" the Democrats are showing toward the wall being built on the Mexican border, the display of such a consensus constitutes a very exceptional event. Kaşıkçı, interestingly, is playing a role that softens a tense atmosphere in AB politics, saving a kind of national culture of consensus from dying by reminding all Americans of their shared values.

We had reported that Congressman Tom Malinowski, in his speech at the commemoration meeting, said words to the effect of "The Kaşıkçı killers must be held responsible and accountable, otherwise the picture that emerges will have shown that Saudi Arabia is running ABD." If you really think about it, these words have a side that warns us to re-examine some of our rote assumptions about ABD-SA relations.

If you recall, in a speech to his voters at a meeting of his party, a very short time before the Kaşıkçı murder, Trump said he had told the SA king, "Look King, without our support you couldn't stay standing even for a week."

For those accustomed to the existing rote assumptions about SA-ABD relations, these words were telling the known, but at the same time words that, coming from the mouth of a head of state, would be considered extremely impolite and a diplomatic scandal. Even if everyone knew it so, it would not be said so openly. People are neither ready nor willing to hear the truths in all their nakedness. After all, the discourses that hold up the order of international relations are nothing but ceremonial praises and huge lies repeated back and forth.

So were Trump's words really entirely true? If they were true, I think the mere fact that these words were said would be enough, and more, to bring SA down. Yet after MBS brushed these words aside with mockery, he even said that ABD was not their only alternative.

There were even those who interpreted the Kaşıkçı murder, which took place a week after that, as ABD's answer to this impertinence of MBS. That is, according to this, the Kaşıkçı murder was in fact a plot set up against SA in response to this challenge by MBS. The SA media seized on this story right away and of course kept itself occupied with it for a while. But how could ABD possibly have staged such an incident, in which the intent to kill and the planning belonged entirely to all the actors themselves, and pinned it on MBS? It was a scenario that, however hard you pushed, you could not convince anyone of.

Now let us ask more clearly this question that Malinowski has brought to our minds: Is it perhaps in fact the opposite, that SA is not being run by ABD but SA is running ABD?

It was not ABD but SA that launched and financed the counter-revolutions that would reverse the Arab Spring process, and that prepared tons of money to prepare ABD public opinion for this job.

It is again SA itself that has taken all the measures preventing the development of democracy in the Middle East and mobilized all its means to strangle any democratic development wherever there is one.

Truth be told, we would all prefer to see ABD as responsible for all these things, because ABD, owing to its well-known record, is always the usual suspect for all these crimes. But SA's role was also very great in the civil war that emerged in Algeria in the early nineties with the cancellation of the elections and cost two hundred thousand people their lives. The aim was just that democracy should not develop, and above all that Muslim peoples should not take the will into their own hands through a meeting between Islam and democracy.

It was SA that had the coup carried out in Egypt and then tried to establish its legitimacy on all international platforms.

Although in ABD today official authorities and members of Congress do not accept the İhvan as a terrorist organization, it is also SA that is trying to convince them in that direction. It finances a series of think tanks and lobbying activities for its reports and conferences that would convince them of this

Interestingly, SA, which assumed a counter-revolutionary stance in all the Arab Spring countries, took a stance in Syria in favor of the overthrow of Assad and from the outset tried to influence and mobilize American decision-making bodies in this direction.

These efforts also played an important role in the operations in Syria, which began at first as a movement to punish Assad, turning into an order of constant stalemate and chaos, never leading to a full revolution.

Truly, when the Arab counter-revolutions and this operation in Syria are evaluated together, it is clearly seen that by these means the greatest blow has been struck against Turkey and the democratization and development processes that Turkey represents.

No one sees SA as the perpetrator and patron of this whole order of coups; they see ABD. Yet it is SA that forces ABD to play this role through its lobbying activities in ABD, its diplomacy and its financing.

Today, however, an SA counter-initiative is on the agenda, which began while the initiative being opened under Turkey's leadership on Syria, based on a solution in which Syria's territorial integrity and all segments live in peace, was in progress, and which aims against that solution. According to a report on the website www.middleeasteye.net, at a meeting held with the participation of Egypt, SA, BAE and Israel, the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Syria so as to ensure Syria's return to the Arab League and the support of the PYD/YPG forces in northern Syria against Turkey's intervention were discussed. All plans that are also quite parallel to ABD policies. Really, who is running whom?

ABD policies have the feature of being heavily influenced by lobbying activities, and SA these days is steering policies in Yemen, Libya, Syria and Egypt that get ABD into trouble, that gain ABD nothing in the long run, and on the contrary make it lose a great deal.

In this situation one has to say "get well soon" to Malinowski; ABD is anyway not run by Americans, but either by SA or Israel or those who get up early and take to the road.