Dempsey’s Attempt to Honor Dead Saudi King Backfires

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, is sponsoring an essay contest at the National Defense University (NDU) meant to honor late Saudi King Abdullah, a man who, he said, possessed “remarkable character and courage.” It’s having the opposite effect, however, with critics using the competition to pounce on the king’s shoddy human rights record.

The contest was announced Monday, Jan. 26. Within hours, a number of critical essays highlighting a string of alleged abuses by King Abdullah appeared online.

“[T]here is no denying that the Saudis under Abdullah had an extremism problem about which they were apparently in abject denial until terrorists started targeting them in 2003,” wrote Steven A. Cook, an Arab expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “More recently, Abdullah oversaw the beheading of eighty-seven individuals in 2014, mostly poor guest workers that no one cares about. So far this year, which is only twenty-six days old, Saudi executioners have separated ten more people from their heads.”

The most recent beheading occurred Monday, a few days after King Salman, King Abdullah’s successor, took power. Moussa al-Zahrani was executed in Jeddah for sexually assaulting underage girls.

“Human Rights Watch, April 20, 2008: Male guardianship laws forbid women from obtaining passports, marrying, studying, or traveling without the permission of a male guardian,” Mother Jones’s Jenna McLaughlin added in a farcical entry to the competition. She also took King Abdullah to task for deporting migrant workers, disrupting peaceful protests, and allegedly torturing.

In an email to Foreign Policy, Dempsey’s spokesman, Col. Edward W. Thomas Jr., said the chairman had a “personal relationship with the king.”

“His intent for the writing award is to encourage meaningful thought and research within the military, and our partner nations who attend NDU, on issues associated with the Middle East,” Thomas added.

President Barack Obama is in Saudi Arabia Tuesday to pay his respects. He’s also set to meet with King Salman. In a statement last week that made no mention of human rights, Obama said King Abdullah was “dedicated to the education of his people and to greater engagement with the world.”

The Defense Department’s press release notes that King Abdullah “was a lifetime supporter of his country’s alliance with the United States.” Dempsey said in a statement that the contest marks an “important opportunity to honor the memory of the king, while also fostering scholarly research on the Arab-Muslim world.”

On social media, reactions to the essay contest were largely negative. “I wonder if Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger who has been sentenced to 10 years in jail and 1000 lashes for postings critical of Islam and the House of Saud is eligible to enter?” one commenter posted on Dempsey’s Facebook page. “That’s an essay that might be worth reading.”

On Twitter, journalist Glenn Greenwald called the contest “Way, way beyond satire.” Andrew Stroehlein, European media director for Human Rights Watch, added, “US military sponsors essay contest to honor #Saudi king. Just don’t write freely or you’ll be flogged” in a tweet of his own.

Photo credit: T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images