Trump nominates General for ambassador to Saudi Arabia

Washington Examiner:
President Trump is moving to shore up the fragile U.S.-Saudi alliance by nominating an Arabic-speaking former four-star Army general who ran the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to be U.S. ambassador to the kingdom.

Retired Army Gen. John Abizaid is being tasked with representing the United States in Riyadh after nearly two years without an ambassador in the capital of one of the two major American allies in the Middle East.

The relationship descended into crisis last month when a Saudi kill team brutally executed and dismembered an expatriate dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at a diplomatic facility in Turkey. Khashoggi's murder outraged American allies and lawmakers, some of whom proposed severing military ties with Saudi Arabia.

But Abizaid’s nomination indicates the Trump administration wants to restore Saudi-U.S. relations to an even keel.

Abizaid served for four years as the top general in the Middle East, leading U.S. Central Command from 2003 to 2007. He retired when then-President George W. Bush opted to surge U.S. troops into Iraq, a strategy he opposed and was orchestrated by Gen. David Petraeus. He remained highly respected on both sides of the aisle.

"It has been a great mistake to leave the post vacant for two years, and that mistake was increasingly clear during the Khashoggi crisis,” Elliot Abrams, who served in the State Department during the Bush administration, told the Washington Examiner in a statement.

“The Saudis usually ask for someone who’s personally close to the president, but no such person was available, so the next best thing was a prominent general. Abizaid has experience in the region and speaks Arabic. I hope he gets confirmed and out there very fast, and not months down the road."
...
Abizaid is not a bad guy, although he was clearly wrong in opposing the surge in Iraq.  It is fortunate that the Republicans won the Senate because Democrats might be tempted to blow up the Saudi relationship because of the Khashoggi murder.  The US has strategic interests in the region that go beyond that incident.

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