system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why is Obama visiting Saudi Arabia to give condolences when it is widely known Saudi Arabia is barbaric in its practices of torture, arbitrary judicial murders, street beheadings and flogging?
gpt
Because Saudi Arabia is an important ally, has a lot of oil and has a lot of influence in the region. Those are all very important reasons for the US to keep the political relationship with SA good and visiting at times like this keeps that political relationship good.  

Secondly, if you want to chance all of those things, the way to go about it is not to fly in there and force freedom on those people, it's to have politics there change from the inside. The previous king Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was about as much of a progressive as you can get in a very conservative land like SA. No, women still can't drive. But they can vote now in municipal elections and be a part of the Shura. Is that enough? Of course not, but it is already a huge progressive step forward. The current king, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, is hoped to continue that sort of progress. He was hand-picked by his brother to be his successor, so that is a good indication. By supporting any steps towards becoming a more progressive nation with closer political ties etc, those changes are more likely to occur.