What Joe Biden Should Know About Jamal Khashoggi

“I know that there are many who disagree with my decision to travel to Saudi Arabia,” President Joe Biden wrote last week in an op-ed in The Washington Post. Among those disagreeing is the publisher of The Washington Post, who denounced Biden for “going … on bended knee” (surely he meant “meeting on bended knee,” unless Biden is flying to Jeddah from Tel Aviv on a magic carpet) to “shake the bloody hand” of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. According to U.S. intelligence, MBS probably ordered the murder and dismemberment of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi—a crime for which Khashoggi’s former colleagues understandably decline to forgive him.

What would Khashoggi himself think about MBS? “He would forgive” him, Khashoggi’s widow, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, told me last month. I asked her to say that again. Forgive his own murderer—thecould forgive MBS, and in any case no Saudi official has asked her to do so. But she said her husband was merciful, and would not want his legacy to be permanent isolation for his country. “If he wanted revenge against the crown prince, that would cause problems for the entire Saudi Kingdom. And he wouldn’t want this.”