Watching an innocent and beautiful American woman being shot in the face three times at point blank range in broad daylight by an agent of her own federal government while sitting in the cocoon of her car, in a confrontation that could easily have been avoided if the federal agents had simply waved her on through... this is more than "a domestic crime", as you put it.

You may forget that the US drone strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats are still an open question and an ongoing story. The video evidence is scant, the scandal is real, but we still don't know the details. Who were those fishermen, who will tell their stories? How we learn more about what was real?

The kidnapping of the Maduro couple is another act that is related and still developing. In both of these cases, the events are distant and nebulous, uncertain as to where they land on a spectrum of good and evil.

But this murder of an American citizen in a senseless act of violence by its government is felt deeply because it is immediate and well-documented, highly visible and tragic, with hardly any of the uncertainties that distance from those other events bring.