King Fahd Dead

Saudi Arabian King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz, 84, died early Monday morning, probably of pneumonia. Or then again, he might have died last Wednesday. The Saudis say Monday but "other sources" say Wednesday. Usually, it's a safe bet that whatever the Saudis say is a lie.

Fahd was fat and hedonistic, a gambler and womanizer, an alcohol abuser in a country where ordinary subjects are whipped for such offenses. However, he had one thing going for him, and it was a Big Thing: He was the son of the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, King Abdul-Aziz, just like all the subsequent kings of Saudi Arabia have been.

Fahd was nine years old when his pop, Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al-Saud, declared himself king of the Arabian peninsula in 1932, which he renamed Saudi Arabia to point out that it was the personal property of the Saud family and all the people in it were his subjects, not citizens. They set up shop in a mud palace in Riyadh.

Fahd received an elementary school education, which is education enough to qualify to be a king of Saudi Arabia. He became the fifth king of Saudi Arabia on June 13, 1982. As king, Fahd slept all day and didn't get going on his official government meetings until around midnight. He didn't like to work much but at the same time he was a micromanager who wanted to approve every detail. The result was that paperwork piled up in front of the regal bottleneck.

Fahd is famously said to have remarked, "Next to the Jews, we hate the Palestinians the most."

Fahd made many concessions to the Wahhabi clerics in order to balance his wastrel ways. He built up the contemptible Wahhabi universities, which indoctrinate their students in worldwide jihad against the West, and in general threw money at the Wahhabi clerics to keep them happy. The result was the current worldwide campaign of Wahhabi terror.

However, he ruled against the Wahhabis when Saddam threatened Saudi Arabia, after his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, by letting US troops defend his kingdom. The Wahhabis were outraged, though the alternatives for them were hardly appealing. Such logic has little charm for Wahhabis.

Fahd was disabled by a stroke in 1995, becoming a figurehead who spent much of his time at his palace in Spain, near the Mediterranean resort of Marbella. He lived in a replica of the White House he called "Mar Mar." His entourage occupied the best rooms of the best hotels nearby, dropping hundreds of millions of dollars on whatever shiny trinkets caught their acquisitive eyes.

Crown Prince Abdullah, the king's 81-year-old half brother, ruled as regent while the fiction was maintained that Fahd was still in charge. Now that Fahd is dead, Abdullah has been made king and the Saudi defense minister, Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, 77, another son of ibn Saud, has been promoted to crown prince.

King Fahd was the oldest of the "Sudairi Seven", the seven sons of King Abdul Aziz "ibn Saud" by Hassa bint Ahmad Sudairi, including Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz (born 1927) Minister of Defense since 1962 and Second Deputy Prime Minister since 1982; the reprehensible Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, the Interior Minister who still claims Zionists committed the Sep 11 attacks; and Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, the Governor of Riyadh. They are all candidates for kings. It could take decades for this cohort to become king and croak, one by one, in a Breznev-like era of conservative geriatric rule.

That means that Saudi Arabia will likely remain a false friend and phony ally, a hostile and dishonest regime dedicated to the insane and murderous campaign to eradicate all other faiths and philosophies but Wahhabism in order to create a world-wide Islamic empire, the Second Caliphate. Until we come to grips with Saudi Arabia and destroy it, America will not be safe.