President Donald Trump has just destroyed all sense of morality, ethics, and principle, by rejecting human rights as a principle of American foreign policy, even theoretically.
Certainly, other Presidents have often ignored human rights as a principle, including Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan above all, but none as openly as Donald Trump, who has just decided to ignore intelligence information that concludes that Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, ordered the assassination and torture of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi national living in the United States and working as a journalist for the Washington Post.
Instead, Trump is giving bin Salman a pass, refusing the concept of some kind of punishment to be meted out on Saudi Arabia for this horrendous murder and dismemberment.
No one is saying that the US should break off relations with the Saudi government, but a nation can use other strategies and tactics to indicate outrage at such a violation of human rights.
But instead, Trump, along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and National Security Adviser John Bolton, are choosing to show a lack of concern or principle about the basic decency of promoting basic human rights.
It is just another sign that Trump is cozying up to authoritarian dictators, all for his own economic betterment. It has led to bitter denunciation by many public figures in government, including many Republicans, as well as Democrats.
This author believes that the United States will one day realize the danger of what has been done, that Mohammed bin Salman will turn out as King of Saudi Arabia in the future, as the most dangerous foreign leader long term, probably more than Kim Jong of North Korea, who like bin Salman, is in his early 30s, and both will be a nightmare long term in the world, way beyond the leaders of Russia and China, who are twice their age.