When news of de facto ruler King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia’s death was announced I must say I rejoiced; in fact, I congratulated most of my Saudi friends on being released from the rule of such a tyrant. As an Iranian, I’m no stranger to the hypocrisy that is alive and well in Western government as well as the media, I mean after all, these men and women are prodigies of the same people who had a role in the production of Al- Qaeda to only turn around and label it as a terrorist organization. However, I must say that the amount of hypocrisy they exhibited upon Abdullah’s death was a bit out of the box from what I was expected.
In the case of the responses from the leaders in the Middle East, it was expected that they would praise Abdullah for all his “accomplishments” and “good doings” throughout his years but what came as a surprise was the outpour of courteous condolences western leaders released. From John McCain who eulogized Abdullah as a “vocal advocate for peace, speaking out against violence in the Middle East, “ to John Kerry who described the late King as “ a brave partner in fighting violent extremism” and “a proponent of peace,” the comments were almost identical to those of Nazi Germany upon Hitler’s death. The United Kingdom’s Prime Minister David Cameron was also quick to jump on the bandwagon and praise Abdullah for his “commitment to peace and for strengthening understanding between faiths.”
Commitment to peace? A brave partner in fighting violent extremism? They couldn’t possibly be speaking about the same man who went head to head with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un as the worst dictator in the world. It almost seems ironic how Abdullah could have been all these things when his country scored the lowest possibly ranking in both civil liberties and political freedom. The comments of Kerry, McCain, and Joe Biden exhibit a level of ignorance and sheep like character traits that’s almost shocking partly due to the fact that they are + praising a man that condemned every bit of Western ideology that they embody.
There’s an old saying that money talks and in this case oil talks because if it didn’t, the same man who banned churches, arrested 28 Christians for congregating in their homes, launched a vicious counter- revolution to the Arab Spring, and prohibited women from driving would not be praised for anything but the brutal tyrant that he was. It seems as though so long as Saudi maintains its long and faithful alliance with America by providing a steady flow of arms and oil, we will continue to pay respect to the remembrance of 9/11 without acknowledging that 15 of the 19 hijackers were a result of the extremist reign that Abdullah managed.
In the case of the responses from the leaders in the Middle East, it was expected that they would praise Abdullah for all his “accomplishments” and “good doings” throughout his years but what came as a surprise was the outpour of courteous condolences western leaders released. From John McCain who eulogized Abdullah as a “vocal advocate for peace, speaking out against violence in the Middle East, “ to John Kerry who described the late King as “ a brave partner in fighting violent extremism” and “a proponent of peace,” the comments were almost identical to those of Nazi Germany upon Hitler’s death. The United Kingdom’s Prime Minister David Cameron was also quick to jump on the bandwagon and praise Abdullah for his “commitment to peace and for strengthening understanding between faiths.”
Commitment to peace? A brave partner in fighting violent extremism? They couldn’t possibly be speaking about the same man who went head to head with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un as the worst dictator in the world. It almost seems ironic how Abdullah could have been all these things when his country scored the lowest possibly ranking in both civil liberties and political freedom. The comments of Kerry, McCain, and Joe Biden exhibit a level of ignorance and sheep like character traits that’s almost shocking partly due to the fact that they are + praising a man that condemned every bit of Western ideology that they embody.
There’s an old saying that money talks and in this case oil talks because if it didn’t, the same man who banned churches, arrested 28 Christians for congregating in their homes, launched a vicious counter- revolution to the Arab Spring, and prohibited women from driving would not be praised for anything but the brutal tyrant that he was. It seems as though so long as Saudi maintains its long and faithful alliance with America by providing a steady flow of arms and oil, we will continue to pay respect to the remembrance of 9/11 without acknowledging that 15 of the 19 hijackers were a result of the extremist reign that Abdullah managed.