While managing a military campaign against the Islamic State and its penchant for decapitating hostages that has frightened so many, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is sponsoring a writing contest to honor another notorious beheader, the late king of Saudi Arabia.
The Pentagon announced Monday that it is holding an essay competition honoring King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz, who passed away last week. The competition was established by Gen. Martin Dempsey, and will be hosted by the National Defense University – a Pentagon funded institution of higher learning.
“This is an important opportunity to honor the memory of the king, while also fostering scholarly research on the Arab-Muslim world,” said Gen. Dempsey in a statement.
“In my job to train and advise his military forces, and in our relationship since, I found the king to be a man of remarkable character and courage,” he added.
The General’s gushing adoration for the king is belied by the Saudi monarch’s brutal human rights record.
According to the State Department’s own 2013 report, Saudi Arabia is home to “pervasive restrictions on universal rights such as freedom of expression, including on the internet, and freedom of assembly, association, movement, and religion; and a lack of equal rights for women, children, and noncitizen workers.”
The report added that King Abdullah’s Saudi Arabia played host to a range of human rights violations including, “torture and other abuses; overcrowding in prisons and detention centers; holding political prisoners and detainees; denial of due process; arbitrary arrest and detention; and arbitrary interference with privacy, home, and correspondence. Violence against women, trafficking in persons, and discrimination based on gender, religion, sect, race, and ethnicity were common.”
Between January and October of last year, Saudi Arabia publicly beheaded 59 people. In both 2013 and 2012, the kingdom beheaded 79 individuals.
Other common practices include public floggings and beatings—with some brutal punishments targeting bloggers–and persistent sexism that had until recently prevented women from driving, voting in national elections, and walking around in public without a male companion.
But, despite its gross record of human abuses, King Abdullah positioned his country as a key ally of President George W. Bush’s, and later President Obama’s, war on terrorism. Abdullah even agreed to host a CIA drone base, which could partially explain the effusive praise coming from the West for a fundamentalist monarch with a penchant for lopping off heads.
Last week, before Dempsey announced his contest, President Obama also whitewashed the king’s record.
“At home, King Abdullah’s vision was dedicated to the education of his people and to greater engagement with the world,” he said.
Secretary of State John Kerry echoed the sentiment.
“This is a sad day,” he said. “The United States has lost a friend, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Middle East, and world have lost a revered leader.”
Beyond the litany of repressive policies embraced by Saudi Arabia, there are also lingering questions over the kingdom’s connection to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Of the 19 hijackers who carried out the attacks that day, 15 were Saudi, and a portion of Congress’ official investigation into those events that deals with possible Saudi involvement remains classified to this day.
Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who co-chaired that inquiry and wrote those withheld 28 pages said as much in a press conference last year.
“There are a lot of rocks out there that have been purposefully tamped down, that if were they turned over, would give us a more expansive view of the Saudi role,” he said.
Reps. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) have long called for the release of that section of the report after reading it in late 2013. They renewed their push for transparency earlier this month.
Sen. Graham added that he believes Saudi Arabia is responsible for current terror threats as well.
“ISIS…is a product of Saudi ideals, Saudi money and Saudi organizational support, although now they are making a pretense of being very anti-ISIS,” he remarked.
Last October, Vice President Joe Biden publicly criticized Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies for pouring “hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons” into the fight in Syria, which eventually went to the Islamic State.
Biden later apologized for the remarks. He is expected to visit Saudi Arabia along with President Obama in the coming days to pay their respects to Abdullah.
The Pentagon’s essay competition for the late Saudi King will officially commence during the next academic school year.
