Very often in presidential campaigns, candidates blurt out bold, take-charge responses to controversial issues, only to walk them back once they take office and realize life isn't quite so simple. As a candidate, Barack Obama made it sound easy to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for foreign terrorism suspects. But the fact that Gitmo remains open even today attests to Obama's failure to live up to his word. As vice president at the time, Joe Biden should have learned from Obama's embarrassing reversal. Instead, he's on the verge of repeating it, this time walking back his tough talk about punishing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Washington Post opinion writer Jamal Khashoggi.

It turns out the consequences of punishing Saudi Arabia outweigh the value of standing up for justice and human rights. Biden probably will stop short of lavishing the crown prince with praise and attention the way President Donald Trump did, but the sad reality is that look-the-other-way hypocrisy ultimately will remain unchanged as official U.S. policy.

Biden was unequivocal when asked during a candidates' debate in November 2019 whether he would punish Saudi Arabia: "Yes, and I said it at the time. Khashoggi was, in fact, murdered and dismembered, and I believe on the order of the crown prince. And I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them, we were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are."

An unusually blunt assessment from the director of national intelligence, released on Feb. 26, stated: "We assess that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi." The Trump administration had previously refused to declassify and release the intelligence assessment, which stated that the operatives would not have proceeded with Khashoggi's killing and disappearance without the crown prince's approval.

Biden's administration now is making clear that pariah status is not in Saudi Arabia's future after all. The crown prince won't even be labeled persona non grata, meaning he could enter and leave this country as an official guest. Even Trump felt compelled to comment on Fox News that Biden's assessment of the risks versus rewards wound up "maybe in a similar fashion" to his own.

Sadly, Saudi cooperation is too important in counterbalancing Iran's regional influence, and global economic stability depends on uninterrupted Saudi oil. It turns out that justice for one dead, dismembered journalist must take a back seat to diplomacy and national security.

Or, as Washington Post Publisher Fred Ryan recently put it, "It appears as though under the Biden administration, despots who offer momentarily strategic value to the United States might be given a 'one free murder' pass."

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