Katha Pollitt FTW
by digby
I wrote a post a while back about the General Dempsey, the Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, holding an essay contest for the best tribute to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. Katha Pollitt entered the contest, calling her essay “Why I Heart King Abdullah.”
She gives four reasons for her adulation. Here are the first two:
1. King Abdullah was old school, and old school is good. We haven’t had a monarch like him in the West in hundreds of years, and look what a mess we’re in. Some people compare him to Louis XIV, absolute monarch extraordinaire, but I plan to argue that he was more like Henry VIII, because they both enjoyed beheading people and getting married a lot. Actually, most kings back then did the kinds of things Abdullah was famous for: throwing their enemies into dungeons, banning all religions but their own, public executions, torture, tossing ridiculous amounts of money about. The queens were much the same—look at Isabella I, who banished the Jews and Muslims from Spain and let the Inquisition set up shop in her country. In some ways, Abdullah was a lot like her. Not entirely—there was that business with expelling the Muslims (expelling the Jews, good!), plus Isabella had an egalitarian marriage with King Ferdinand, and she thought the world was round, as Columbus said—I wouldn’t want to suggest that Abdullah shared her progressive views on that! But they both ruled medieval, cleric-ridden kingdoms and did their best to keep them that way in a changing world. Do you think it would be an insult to compare Abdullah to a woman?
2. He made America feel good about itself again. In the years before 9/11, he turned a blind eye to Al Qaeda, which became our Enemy No. 1. It’s no accident that fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers, to say nothing of Osama bin Laden himself, were Saudi. Without the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to concentrate their patriotic feelings, Americans might have spent the last twelve years getting really upset about inequality or global warming. War lets people feel virtuous and stout-hearted—especially now that only a small handful of volunteers actually fight in them. So, patriotic Americans, next time you thank a service member for his or her service, give King Abdullah a mental tip of the hat for making those warm feelings possible.
I’ll say it because she’s too polite: America, Fuck Yeah!!!
She also gives him high praise for being good for secularists and feminists, points which have been made, but not so convincingly, by American politicians of all political stripes these last couple of weeks. (Who knew?) I urge you to read it.
This was just a first draft — she wants General Dempsey to take a look and tell her if she’s on the right track. But I’m convinced. King Abdullah was our bestest friend ever and I just hope we have more friends like him to join in our fight for Western Enlightenment values.
And Katha Pollitt gets this week’s Gold Star!
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