...adopted, King Fahd has dismissed democracy and free elections as Western concepts, asserting that: "Our peoples' makeup and unique qualities are different from those of the rest of the world." US officials have used this stated cultural difference to explain their unwillingness to press the...

...unsuited to freedom, and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia was probably quite sincere when he declared that "the democratic system that is predominant in the...not a suitable system for the peoples of our region . . . The system of free elections is not suitable to our country." Now, however, this fatalistic nonsense...