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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2221917/posts
Mark Whittington: Obama Bows to the Saudi King
Associated Content ^ | 4/3/2009 | Mark Whittington
Posted on April 3, 2009 4:47:23 PM PDT by kellynla
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at associatedcontent.com ...
I wonder what it would cost to commission a like statue of this revealing choice Obama has made, and put it right out in front of the same taco stand, so no one can complain that a president who grovels on bent knee gets preferential treatment to a genocidal dictator.