Eli Lake, Columnist

Don’t Punish America for Saudi Arabia’s Crimes

Ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen is the wrong way to express outrage at Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.

November 30, 2018 at 7:00 AM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Focus on this relationship, senators.
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If you want to understand why the Senate voted this week to move forward with a resolution ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, read the speech that Bob Corker delivered from the Senate floor on Wednesday.

The outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has long been an ally of Saudi Arabia in Washington. And yet Corker voted to move the Yemen resolution out of his committee. Mind you, he didn’t say he would be supporting it when it comes to the floor for a vote. Rather, he was sending a message to the Trump administration to come down harder on Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman for his role in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.