Sabra S. Jawhar

By : Sabra S. Jawhar

While running for United States’ president or prime minister of England, candidates have the freedom to criticize other countries for all sorts of human rights abuses.

They promise voters to put an end to relations with countries that condone terrorism and even promise to punish those nations with sanctions. Then they get elected.

Reality sets in when military advisers knock some sense into him or her and give the new president or prime minister a lecture on the facts of life. No one outside of the Oval Office or 10 Downing Street knows exactly what those facts are. It’s all hush-hush and top-secret, but there have been enough post-presidential interviews to give us an idea that what we see on television and read in the newspapers is not the reality of geopolitics.

Yet politicians running for office and even incumbents safely ensconced in positions of power seem perfectly content to allow their hypocrisy to run amok by trashing other countries’ human rights records. They allege some shameful act committed by a developing nation will not be tolerated in civilized society and consequences will follow. Those consequences usually come in the form of multi-million-dollar military contracts.

Saudi Arabia has long been targeted by elected officials in the United States, the United Kingdom and other European nations for their vested interests. Critics — whether its Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstroem or the UK’s opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn — huff and puff and threaten to blow our house down.

Surely such rhetoric plays well with the masses and ensure votes from constituents with minimal critical thinking skills, but it does little to foster a coalition between nations to fight common enemies like Daesh or even to build trust and tolerance for different cultures and justice systems.

Few British leaders, for example, paused amid their critical comments about Saudi Arabia’s judicial system to understand how justice in the case of the 74-year-old grandfather facing 350 lashes is delivered on his alcohol conviction case. Many Saudi opinion makers pointed out that it was likely, indeed almost certain, that the man would receive no lashes, but that the sentence was more of a formality and a deterrent rather than an actual physical punishment.

Yet, despite all the handwringing over such terrible torture on “an innocent old man,” the United Kingdom is all too happy to do business with us. The British accepts Saudis’ $138 billion in private UK investments. They accept the 50,000 jobs created by the UK’s and Saudi Arabia’s commercial partnerships. They accepted in 2014 Saudi Arabia’s

$6.3 billion for UK exports. In 2013, the UK gladly accepted $2.4 billion from Saudi Arabia for military equipment.

By far the most egregious disconnect between what comes out of the mouths of the western politicians and the real world was the recent termination of a $9 million contract between the UK Ministry of Justice and Saudi Arabia to advise Saudis on its judicial system.

The agreement had called for training programs in Saudi prisons. Seriously, Saudi Arabia was willing to pay the United Kingdom millions of dollars for their expertise on western judicial and penal policies.

If nations in a position to help their neighbors and partners become better at delivering justice, but refuse to do so for political considerations, then perhaps their leaders should keep their mouths shut.

Related articles across the web

• British PM David Cameron to visit Jamaica next week
• VW emissions scandal: Government prepares investigation
• Al Gore puzzled by UK cuts to renewable energy support
• Al Gore blasts UK government for renewables roll back - speech in full
• FreedomPop launches free mobile phone service in United Kingdom
• Amazon announces TV pilot lineup for fall season
• Study: Liberals Swear More And Are More Selfish Than Conservatives
• Watch soldiers come a cropper after smoke bomb gaffe on marine training exercise
• EU attempting to break away from U.S. control?
• Words spread to South Korea