Our Great allies the despotic Saudis kill a Washington Post Journalist.

Again, because this one materially impacted the security of the ruling family, and the other ones didn't. Literally any other faction gaining power - religious, progressive, liberal, pan-arab, shiite, etc - would result in less for Americans and more for citizens of Saudi Arabia. So whatever the reason for this act getting more publicity than previous similar/identical acts, it would make sense to care more about this one than others.

The US government - and pretty much every government in the world - has no qualms with being hypocritical within the context of a non-essential policy goal (integrity). It is not hypocritical at all if the policy goal is to exert power and extract wealth, like any other country with global ambitions. Given you seem to read a lot of news, I doubt you truly believe that it would be a sticking point. Killing their own citizens while berating other countries for doing the same, putting on a show for military men/women while treating veterans like trash, etc. This is not a real discussion point.

 

So what you're saying is that the US has even less of a reason to care about the Saudi's killing this specific citizen than of those in the past....that the killing of this citizen is a good thing for the Saudis and a good thing for the US in that the US has a vested interest in the stability of their government.

Going after them for this incident would be a negative for the US if it strained relations between the two countries and there's no reason to harm those relations based on what happened especially since it's something the US has done in recent history.

 

No I didn't even hint that, much less say it. It's beneficial to the US extracting power and wealth if these things happen quietly, but it's not beneficial if it happens in a way where the PR weakens the ruling family's ability to exert force domestically and forces them to make costly concessions to repair their image while creating large swaths of disgruntled citizens at home.

Going after them would be counter productive to the US government and the contractors that benefit from the relationship, it would have no material impact on the majority of US citizens. The shareholders of those contractors would pocket 99% of those profits in offshore accounts. The Sauds would still buy this set of weapons, which would in turn result in the slightly beneficial necessity for some ~10,000 temporary jobs, most of them in America. The Sauds would not give $110bn to the other weapons producers, because they are barely keeping afloat in Yemen with superior US weapons and US logistical support and parallel bombing campaigns. The alternative weapons producers are not interested in the Sauds achieving their goals in that conflict and would do to the Saudis what the US does to all weapons customer: give their preferred opponent a technical edge by giving them higher clearance for better weapons.

I would say that going after them will put them in a position where they have to do one of these things:

1) Concede and shrink in power in the relationship with the US government, and still buy the weapons.
2) Risk buying weapons from Russia and/or China, effectively placing their sovereignty in the hands of Iranian allies (these conflicts are allegedly combating Iranian influence in the world). If you watched Saudi-controlled news agencies, you would understand how hilariously unlikely this is.
3) Not buy the weapons, get booted from Yemen and risk being eaten alive by internal/external forces.

You also have to keep in mind, we are talking about a country that is rapidly reaching the bottom of its reserves at a staggeringly faster rate than its non-oil economy is growing. It would be stupid to view this as a long term relationship rather than a 10-year relationship.

 

This was my point, which is why it makes no sense to go after them for something the US also does.

 

That was not your point, your point was that it would be counter productive to the United States, which it is not. You quoted out of context, and left out everything that dispels your 3rd new question in this discussion.

 

How would it not be counter productive to hypocritically go after the Saudis? Is it that you think they wouldn't retaliate? They control nearly 13% of the global oil supply, you go after them, they slow production causing a spike in the oil price which hits everyone and only makes them more money. If they get the other OPEC countries to go along, which is likely, that's 40 percent of the global supply of oil.

There's simply no reason to go down that path without a legitimate reason to do so and Saudi Arabia executing one of their own citizens isn't legitimate reason.

 

Saudi Arabia doesnt have control of the oil market even though they have the second largest amount of reserves.

Venezuela has the most reserves we arent friendly with them.

US has energy independence and a reason for striving for independence is to not have to have to compromise values and one of our values is freedom of press and thats why its way up high in the constitution.

On Saudia Arabia and Iran Trump is living in the past.

 

They don't have complete control of it, no, but just what they supply the world with alone is enough to alter the price of oil worldwide if they scale back production, and that's assuming the other OPEC nations wouldn't go along with them.

To be clear, I was never suggesting that the US couldn't go after the Saudis, I was merely saying that there's no valid reason to do so right now. Saudi Arabia has NEVER had a free press, and that's never mattered before, why would it matter now? China doesn't have a free press either, should we go after them too?

 

He doesn't have to go after them but he should not be dismissive of the intelligent reports that MBS was involved in the killing in the name of business relationships.

 

There's a reason to do so though. Not because it's likely the reports were wrong, but you do so in order to preserve the relationship between the two nations. Honestly the best scenario would have been Trump not talking about it at all....unfortunately I'm not sure he's capable of that.

We should have had no opinion about the subject one way or the other.

 

The relationship isn't worth ignoring your values. They don't bring that much to the table

 

What they did doesn't go against "our values" in that the US did effectively the same thing to a group of our own citizens a few years back. Would you feel differently about what the Saudis did if they used a drone strike instead?

 

Killing a critical journalist is against our values

 

Sure, in theory, but have we ever cared about Saudi Arabia killing critical journalists in the past?

Also, if Anwar al-Awlaki called himself a "journalist" do you think it would have stopped the US from murdering him with a drone strike? I mean they didn't with him either, they also murdered his son and daughter too. I'm just not sure the "against our values" argument holds any water.

 

First of al-Awlaki was a member and high ranking official in the terrorist group that had declared war on America and attacked America. The two aren't comparable at all. Especially given after the claims of this journalist being a part of the Muslim Brotherhood end up having no real proof behind them.

 

He didn't personally attack America any more than the Saudi citizen attacked Saudi Arabia, and both instances were extrajudicial murders of people that were declared enemies of the state. There's honestly not much difference. One was associated with one terrorist organization one was associated with others. Both were religious extremists who plotted against their country and were murdered while in a different country.....at least Saudi Arabia didn't go after their citizen's family....yet.

 

One was an act of war against a high ranking leader in a group that had declared war and attacked the United States. The other was a murder against someone who wrote for a respected news outlet because the Saudi government didn't like his opinions.

It is absolutely hilarious and totally laughable that you are making a distinction between the leaders of Al-Qaeda and the Al-Qaeda members who personally carried out the attacks of 9/11. LOL. That's is one of the most asinine things ever posted on these boards. It is even more asinine coming from you and your attempt to take certain beliefs of certain democratic socialists and label even those that profess not to believe in those beliefs.

 

They were both murders since they were both executions of citizens without due process. Both were deemed enemies of the state and in both instances they decided that was enough to execute them in a foreign country instead of returning them to stand trial. Both were religious extremists.

Honestly the extremist posing as a journalist was a greater threat to Saudi Arabia than the US citizen was meaning that there was more reason to break the law in order to murder him if we really want to get down to it.

 

People are killed in warfare all the time and it isn't classified as extra-judicial murders. One of the victims falls into that category. The other does not.

 

There wasn't a declared war, so it wasn't warfare. The US just decided to conduct a drone strike in a separate sovereign nation without their permission in order to murder a US citizen....and later his young children.

With Khashoggi, you have a "journalist" who was a supporter of terrorism and at a minimum a former member of terrorist organizations. The spin is that he left those organizations, but he remained sympathetic to their cause his entire life. In fact, his biggest beef with Saudi Arabia is that they weren't extremist enough. You can be sure if it was the US that had wanted him dead and he was a US citizen instead of a Saudi one, you guys wouldn't be spinning it quite the same way.