Journalist from SA mysteriously disappeared under suspicious circumstances in Istanbul

[Tureuki]

I wonder if they will eventually reveal the pieces of poor man after admitting that he's killed. Yeah, he died in a fight, where is the body?

[Ukiah]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_Khashoggi

He was fired in May 2003 by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Information because he had allowed a columnist to criticize the Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), who is considered the founding father of Wahhabism. This incident led to Khashoggi's reputation in the West as a liberal progressive.

Khashoggi relocated to the United States in June 2017 and began writing for The Washington Postin September 2017. In the Post, he criticized the Saudi Arabian-led blockade against Qatar, Saudi Arabia's dispute with Lebanon, Saudi Arabia's diplomatic dispute with Canada, and the Kingdom's crackdown on dissent and media. Khashoggi supported some of Crown Prince's reforms, like allowing women to drive, but he condemned Saudi Arabia's arrest of Loujain al-Hathloul, who was ranked third in the list of "Top 100 Most Powerful Arab Women 2015", Eman al-Nafjan, Aziza al-Yousef, and several other women's rights advocates involved in the women to drive movement and the anti male-guardianship campaign.

[Heathen Hammer]

In the current political system, yes it is. Whoever disagrees with it, he should concentrate his attention on fixing the cause of the problem and 200-centures old weaknesses of the American Republic, instead of blindly following the first charlatan promising of magically curing the symptoms, thanks to his willpower and machismo. The fact that the far-right mindlessly swallowed the flimsiest piece of propaganda imaginable is neither surprising, given the size of its political immaturity, nor should it distract ourselves from reality, by blaming "bad politicians" and expecting to be saved by orange Messiahs.
The Twin Towers attack was not a Saudi operation. Sure, the dynasty is indirectly responsible for the spread of radicalism and thus for terrorism, but that has hardly affected our personal lives. Terrorism, despite the self-destructive media obsession with it, is not our biggest concern and that's a sentiment endorsed by the vast majority of Americans. Indoctrinating their population and financing intolerant clerics abroad is reprehensible, but it's hardly a priority for the electorate, when it's ready to cast its vote and reasonably so. Your white-washing of Washington's foreign policy is frankly ridiculous. Your arguments only confirm the strength of my initial argument, that the interests of the US and the Saudi kingdom happen to coincide in many fronts. Ranting that the interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria are a result of Saudi manipulation and bribery is an unsupported by facts and sources childish accusation. It reminds me of the classic refusal from chauvinists to accept responsibility by blaming outside factors, Jews for the Nazism, colonialism for Pan-Africanism, Israel for Jeremy Corbyn and liberals for Donald's fandom. Aggression against Damascus, Baghdad, Kabul or Tripoli, despite many shortcomings, has greatly benefited America, by forcing its antagonists to waste resources, throwing them away from lucrative markets and contributing to the establishment of American investment.

It is safe to say that average citizens of US would rather benefit from his tax cash not being thrown to Saudis or to fund wars that benefit Saudis and are committed by Western politicians in Saudi pocket. Aside from a small number of billionaire and corporate lobby, US didn't gain anything from its alliance with Saudis, same can be applied to a country like Israel as well, in both cases we see not as much of an alliance, but relationship between parasite, and a host.
Problem is that US interests don't really allying with those of Saudis, since I doubt that establishment of some kind of Salafist totalitarian theocracy across Middle East is in America's best interest. Without a doubt, US foreign policy in Middle East didn't really contribute anything to lives of average citizen, but did reflect on them negatively with above-mentioned factors. Having said that, normalization of relations with countries like Iran at the expense of Saudis and Israelis is a necessary step for America to make to normalize its foreign policy.
What would benefit American greatly is recycling of its current elite and its replacement with a more cohesive system of authority, which would preserve individual freedoms, without unnecessary luggage of foreign lobbies that do not provide any coherent benefits fro the population. Needless to say that Saudi support for world terrorism, has negatively affected lives of both Americans and other Westerners.

[conon394]

It is safe to say that average citizens of US would rather benefit from his tax cash not being thrown to Saudis or to fund wars that benefit Saudis and are committed by Western politicians in Saudi pocket. Aside from a small number of billionaire and corporate lobby, US didn't gain anything from its alliance with Saudis, same can be applied to a country like Israel as well, in both cases we see not as much of an alliance, but relationship between parasite, and a host.
Problem is that US interests don't really allying with those of Saudis, since I doubt that establishment of some kind of Salafist totalitarian theocracy across Middle East is in America's best interest. Without a doubt, US foreign policy in Middle East didn't really contribute anything to lives of average citizen, but did reflect on them negatively with above-mentioned factors. Having said that, normalization of relations with countries like Iran at the expense of Saudis and Israelis is a necessary step for America to make to normalize its foreign policy.
What would benefit American greatly is recycling of its current elite and its replacement with a more cohesive system of authority, which would preserve individual freedoms, without unnecessary luggage of foreign lobbies that do not provide any coherent benefits fro the population. Needless to say that Saudi support for world terrorism, has negatively affected lives of both Americans and other Westerners.

Well that is the problem. Re Cold War - As old style US oil production collapsed and through a lens of seeing only Stalin and some kind of Moscow run communist world effort - the House of Saud made sense. The problem is after the Cold War that made less sense and (the stab in the back of the oil embargoes should have made that clear). With the e rise in Fracking we should really cut them loose. The wasted on their defense could be spent subsidizing US production capacity.

[Heathen Hammer]

Well that is the problem. Re Cold War - As old style US oil production collapsed and through a lens of seeing only Stalin and some kind of Moscow run communist world effort - the House of Saud made sense. The problem is after the Cold War that made less sense and (the stab in the back of the oil embargoes should have made that clear). With the e rise in Fracking we should really cut them loose. The wasted on their defense could be spent subsidizing US production capacity.

Yeah, American alliance with Saudis made sense during Cold War, but after it became a liability. Sure, Saudis invest into Western countries, but they bring more problems then such investments could compensate. At this point US should just cut the losses, dump Saudis and normalize relations with Iran.

[NorseThing]

Saudi alliances are practical. This is still practical. Murder in foreign countries of political opponents is not practical. I hope the Russians are reading this thread. Of course, the USA has done this with more discretion by not bumping off people in our embassy compounds. Might not be much of a practical difference though. So perhaps this is really all a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

So the lesson might be to not enter any embassy to avoid entering the country to do business.

[conon394]

Saudi alliances are practical

It was practical

This is still practical

No not anymore. For example follow the money guess who funds all the radical madrasa schools in the tribal regions of Pakistan that churn out Taliban types? Our buddies the house of Saud. Dragging us it a pointless war in Yemen is not the kind of of thing you should have to get from your client state. Oil embargoes are not practical when they are from your supposed ally.

You right lots of people commit political murder but the House of Saud is now demonstrably completely politically inept so as good an and excuse as any to drop them. It would be funny to watch them with a rivalry with Iran w/o the the US hand holding.

[NorseThing]

So is there any reason for the USA to take sides on this issue of who is hacking who to bits on foreign soil? If Trump was President of Turkey, I can understand Trump having an interest. This is simply a country behaving badly. I would think it best if Trump keep his tweeting habits to other uses.

Let the media have a field day. There is no value in being quick to dump an alliance over the side. It will make other allies to think twice about the value of any alliance with the USA while Trump is President. If I were a suspicious person, I would think that was the media focus from the beginning. Nope. It could not be that partisan politics is trying to undermine the USA foreign policies for a temporary gain in an election cycle.

How about hands off? Period. The Saudi government has to sort this out on their own.

[conon394]

Again you seem to think we get something out of this friendship with the House of Sad - give me bullet points.

[NorseThing]

I made no such thoughts. I simply do not think it wise for any government to drop allies at a drop of a bad incident. Bad precedents for all other existing and potential alliances. Let this take it's natural course and wait a bit to see how it resolves itself.

[Squiggle]

What precedent does it send though? Dont threaten our other allies [Canada], while killing journalists and u.s residents [kashogi], all the while funding world wide terrorist networks that have launched attacks in a dozen of our neighbour alliance states, all while trying to starve an entire peoples to death, all the while stirring up regional tensions against iran?

no..i dont see how its a bad precedent to drop allies like the saudis. With allies like this, who needs enemies?

[conon394]

I made no such thoughts. I simply do not think it wise for any government to drop allies at a drop of a bad incident. Bad precedents for all other existing and potential alliances. Let this take it's natural course and wait a bit to see how it resolves itself.

The UK is an ally and friend. The house of Saud is at best a cold war relationship of connivance. An ally would have said wow I cannot see any US marking on those planes delivering supplies to Israel (Nixon had them covered), no reason to embargo our protector the USA. Hey how many Saudi troops hare patrolling A-Stan? what is that zero. French, UK , Bulgarian even Ukrainian troops... but no boys from the desert. Why are we helping a client state brutalize one of the poorest nations on earth? What are we getting out of this relationship from this supposed ally. Hey back during that tanker war we were standing shoulder to shoulder with the house of Saud defending free seas - oh wait you mean they were not helping...

Look it was at best functionally and necessary and odious nose pinching relationship during the cold war. We have no use for the House of Saud now I see no repercussions at letting stew in there own juice

[Gaidin]

"Obviously if he's gone forth and murdered this journalist, he's now crossed the line, and there has to be a punishment and a price to pay for that... Do I think he did it? Yeah. I think he did it." - Bob Corker

“I think it stretches credulity to believe that the crown prince wasn’t involved in this. There’s no way 15 people were sent from Saudi Arabia to Turkey to kill a dissident without the approval of the crown prince.” - Rand Paul


“We don’t do arms sales for the purpose of the profits from arms sales ― we do arm sales because we want to be aligned with different countries around the globe that believe in our values. I think the cover stories from the Saudis are a mess. You don’t bring a bone saw to an accidental fistfight. The Saudis have said a whole bunch of crap that’s not right, accurate or true.” - Ben Sassee


“On the one hand you don’t want to break the alliance with the Saudis. On the other hand you cannot teach a 33-year-old crown prince that he can get away with things that are this outrageous and stupid or he will be out of control for the next 40 years.” - Newt Gingrich

[Mithradates]

"Obviously if he's gone forth and murdered this journalist, he's now crossed the line, and there has to be a punishment and a price to pay for that

So the medieval savages of House of Saud do savage things, wow what a surprise, thats what they do all the time, but NOW they crossed the line? With this? Really? Lucky for them that nobody knows about their genocidal war in Yemen and all the other things, oh wait...

[caratacus]

I made no such thoughts. I simply do not think it wise for any government to drop allies at a drop of a bad incident. Bad precedents for all other existing and potential alliances. Let this take it's natural course and wait a bit to see how it resolves itself.

A bad incident!? this was the most gruesome diabolical murder possible, perpetrated in a state embassy!!

[Heathen Hammer]

Saudi alliances are practical. This is still practical. Murder in foreign countries of political opponents is not practical. I hope the Russians are reading this thread. Of course, the USA has done this with more discretion by not bumping off people in our embassy compounds. Might not be much of a practical difference though. So perhaps this is really all a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

So the lesson might be to not enter any embassy to avoid entering the country to do business.

Saudi Arabia has a lot to gain, but not US. Basically Saudis are parasites, while US is a host. US-Israeli relationship is of somewhat similar nature as well.
As for the murder of journalists, it shows that Saudis are also irrational. At this point US should either just drop Saudis, or go through painful process of regime change to drag the country from 600s into modern age, needless to say US failed such tasks when facing them before, so just dumping Saudi Arabia and normalizing relations with Iran seems like the only sane solution here.

[Vanoi]

Out of all the various countries part of this dispute I have to say Turkey is really taking advantage of this for their own gain. Seems as if to me Turkey is trying to replace Saudi influence in the Middle East with it's own.

[swabian]

Out of all the various countries part of this dispute I have to say Turkey is really taking advantage of this for their own gain.

You don't say. Turkey is taking advantage of their own gain. Who would have thought.

Seems as if to me Turkey is trying to replace Saudi influence in the Middle East with it's own.

So what. Let them. Better Turkey than the Saudis.

[conon394]

As for the murder of journalists, it shows that Saudis are also irrational.

I was think stupid needs to be include. The assassination was executed so inanely it hard to imagine how it got the green light.

[Vanoi]

You don't say. Turkey is taking advantage of their own gain. Who would have thought.


So what. Let them. Better Turkey than the Saudis.

Turkish influence isn't any better honestly. I know the Saudis are big bad Islamists but Turkey supports it's own Islamists as well.