Joseph Stalin supposedly said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
I’m wondering if the death of Jamal Khashoggi proves Stalin right. Like other big nation-states, Saudi Arabia has done a lot of arguably bad stuff over the years. A few examples of things that might upset Americans:
- “Saudi Arabia government ‘funded dry run’ for 9/11, legal documents claim” (Independent, 2017)
- “Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists” (nytimes, 2009)
- “Saudi Arabia criticised for 48 beheadings in four months of 2018” (Guardian)
There was minimal media coverage about the Saudis being involved in wars or terrorist acts that killed thousands. Why the blanket coverage and demands for action in response to the death of Jamal Khashoggi?
[Separately, is the U.S. in a position to complain about the Saudis eliminating someone they didn’t like? Don’t we blow up guys in Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. with drones? That’s not exactly due process.]
Isn’t the simplest, most Occam’s-razor-compliant explanation that American journalists are especially motivated to write/talk about one of their own being killed?
The story is kept on page one by Turkey’s Mr. Erdogan, who has imprisoned and killed way more journalists that any other ruler in the world, and the media gobble it up because they hope to persuade that it reflects badly on Trump trying to ally with the Saudis (at the expense of Erdogan, who has turned a sort of modern democracy into a one man dictatorship aimed at resurrecting Ottoman sovereignty in the middle east).
Test comment from boozedog