This is probably an unpopular opinion: I do think the US should do more about a US person being killed versus a person with no legal/jurisdictional ties to the US.

This isn’t to say that the US should care less about a non-US person, but that the issues with violation of state sovereignty (aka Westphalian sovereignty) are too grave to advocate action.

>This isn’t to say that the US should care less about a non-US person, but that the issues with violation of state sovereignty (aka Westphalian sovereignty) are too grave to advocate action.

If this is the issue, the US should not start/participate/assist in wars that violate international law, should not run a drone strike program that allows an arbitrary death sentence without any trial, should stop their policy of regime change and interference in foreign governments, and the countless other ways we usurp sovereignty.

In theory I completely agree with you, but this bridge has long since been crossed, and I doubt that it is the reason the media only cares if there is a tie to the US.

> this entire investigation seems like a show crafted to sway public opinion, making me doubtful anything will change

What would the purpose of such a show be? Before the whole thing, US relations with Arabia were much more positive than US public opinion toward Arabia. If the US wanted to distance itself from Arabia, it wouldn't need to swing public opinion by staging a show trial; public opinion was already there.

The investigation was a show. The media is drawn to the story as it involves a colleague, and this let's the incident get swept under the rug.

The murder of a journalist should always be big news. They're directly fighting oppression and abuses of power.

Also the investigation was not a show. It highlighted extreme abuse of power.

The Saudis repeated changing of the story was the real show.

>The murder of a journalist should always be big news. They're directly fighting oppression and abuses of power.

It's almost never big news. This is far from the first journalist Saudi Arabia has killed for opposing the Royal Family, plus who knows how many Yemeni journalists have been killed over the past few years.

>Also the investigation was not a show. It highlighted extreme abuse of power.

The event itself highlights this, the investigation was barely necessary. The Saudis changing their story was a naked delay tactic that was likely coordinated with the "investigators."

I'd love to be proven wrong, but years of watching the media only care when there's some strong US connection has left me too cynical.

Well I guess I stand corrected.

Just like the supreme court can't cover every case that exists, the media can't cover every story that exists.

I guess they both have to pick the most powerful stories/case to cover that sets precedent and can be applied to other similar stories/cases going forward.

Which is what happened with Kashoggi.

What precedent had this set? That our allies have free reign to kill journalists unless they are American residents? And if they do kill American residents, they'd better prepare for a light scolding? As currently the bill to end US support of the war in Yemen was blocked, and it has been a whole three days since "coalition forces," or American assisted planes, bombed a bus in Yemen killing seven civilians.

I agree, but the US isn't in a great position to decry civilians being killed by bombings in a proxy war.

Yes we are, they are American bombs that can only be dropped with help from the American armed forces. The blood is on our hands.

It could have easily turned out differently. Our president was thinking about handing over a US resident to Erdogan so he can be killed, just so he could get Erdogan to lay off of Bin Salman for killing another US resident. And let's not forget how we experienced a coordinated terrorist attack by 15 Saudis that killed thousands of Americans and we decided to go to war with Iraq and Afganistan to get them back. Our diplomatic/business relationship with SA has always been more important than American lives.

The only thing that made this different is that this time there were some people in power who decided to make it a big deal.

This is just so lazy. Yes many of the 9/11 guys were Saudi citizens, but you can’t draw straight lines between that and the Saudi government. Toppling the house of Saud is an explicit goal of Al Qaeda. It’s like suggesting Snowden is clearly acting on behalf of the US government because, duh, he’s a US citizen.

As for people in power making the Khashoggi case a big deal, that would be the Turkish government. They have many reasons for disliking the Saudi leadership, so many I won’t even try.

I dont need to draw any lines, there is more than enough of that work already done for me.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_terrorism#Sa...

‘Donors in Saudi Arabia’ isn’t the same thing as the Saudi government. They are very sloppy with their money though, hence the reference to secondary funding (not a direct line) of groups including Al Qaeda, but that’s more like Al Qaeda supporters embezzling Saudi aid money that intentional support by the house of Saud for a group that hates them and that attacked a city the Saudi royal family has invested billions of dollars in.

The problem with the Saudis is they are very sloppy with their money, pretty incompetent and see certain forms if jihadism as legitimate. The incompetence means they often act counterproductively. Those are all problems and the western world needs to try to manage and limit the damage they cause. However hallucinating conspiracy crap on top of that just obscures the picture and makes tackling the real problems a lot more difficult.

And the taliban didn't finance or plan the attack on the US, they merely wouldn't give up those who did. Even if the Saudi government isn't directly financing salafist or wahhabist terrorism (and it's not clear that they aren't [1]), they certainly aren't doing anything meaningful to stop the massive amount of it that is coming out of their borders or out of the madrasas they've been funding all over the world. Afghanistan never had a strong diplomatic/business relationship with the US, so they get the hammer at the slightest malfeasance. As I said before, the diplomatic/business relationship with SA is more important than American lives.

[1] https://nypost.com/2017/09/09/saudi-government-allegedly-fun...

These terrorists are upset about the same thing you are, the ties that essentially make Saudi Arabia a vassal state. Cracking down on them only strengthens those ties, fostering more anger.

The Turks(Ottomans) destroyed the ruling government in Saudi twice, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Saudis have long memories about this.