Obama Bows to the Saudi King
By
Mark Whittington
President Barack Obama has stirred yet another controversy when he appeared to
bow to the King of Saudi Arabia during the recent G20 Economic Summit. The appropriateness of an elected President bowing before an absolute monarch has been questioned.
The
writer Mark Steyn suggested, rather caustically, "So let me see if I understand American protocol in the age of Obama: The First Lady hugs Queen Elizabeth as if she's some granny at a seniors' center photo-op, but the President of this republic prostrates himself before King Abdullah as if he's a subject of the Saudi pseudo-Crown."
While the behavior of Michelle Obama toward the Queen of England was considered by some to be overly familiar, Barack Obama bowing before the King of Saudi Arabia seems to be obsequious in the extreme. Under no circumstances is it expected or even permitted for an American citizen to bow before any foreign monarch. This is especially true of the elected President of the United States.
It seems strange that the allegedly naïve and boorish President George W. Bush knew this, whereas the sophisticated and worldly President Barack Obama does not. Americans fought a revolution, after all, so that they would not have to bow down before any monarch. One wonders what the men who fought at Lexington-Concord, Saratoga, and Yorktown would have thought of President Obama bowing before the King of Saudi Arabia.
In the Middle East especially, the act of bowing indicates submission and acknowledgment of that the person being bowed to is the master. President Obama by bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia acknowledged him as his sovereign. Indeed, President Obama may well have acknowledged the Saudi King as our sovereign, by an interpretation of local custom.
The Saudi regime, while an American ally, has also quietly supported some of the very terrorists that we have been engaged in fighting. Saudi Arabia, due to its adherence to the Wahabbist form of extreme Islam, oppresses women on an epic scale. The United States is an ally of Saudi Arabia solely because it possesses large deposits of oil and because some of the terrorists want to overthrow the Saudi regime and establish an even more extreme Islamic state. We are not allies because of any shared values.
Barack Obama likely did not mean to give the King of Saudi Arabia obeisance by bowing to him. He likely thought he was being polite. But if President Obama didn't know any better, there should have been someone there to inform him of the difference between respect and obsequiousness.
Sources:
The American Super-Bower, Mark Stevn, National Review Onine, April 3rd, 2009
Obama bows down to Saudi King ,Clarice Feldman, American Thinker, April 2nd, 2009