Why did the President of the United States bow to anyone, let alone a Saudi royal? I can't for the life of me understand the impulse and find it extremely disturbing.
The only explanations I can come up with are:
1) Our President is an idiot in the classical Greek sense of the term; he really doesn't understand the political significance of his office and has a little girl's fascination with royalty. That makes the handshake with the Queen a little difficult to understand, but perhaps the protocol peeps warned him on that one and didn't think to prep him for the party later.
2) He really is a Muslim after all? So hard to believe, but who else would instinctively bow to a Saudi royal and not the Queen? (As American Digest puts it, "someone remind me again how many Saudis were on the planes that killed 3,000 Americans on September 11?")
Will anyone in the press ask him why he did it?
Abe Greenwald points out the reason hardly matters, since the results are the same.
Among Muslim democrats and human rights advocates, utter dejection that the “leader of the Free World” has offered himself as a “subject” of the Saudi monarch; among Islamists, bliss over America’s seeming prostration before Salafist Islam; among international bad actors, assurance that America poses no threat; and among our allies, depression about the new systemic instability of the most dependable superpower in history.This weakness has already had real-life consequences. The North Koreans have kidnapped two American journalists, and will use them as pawns in its little games it plays with us. They would never have dared had we elected a strong Chief Executive.
Peace through strength. Weak president = weak protections for American citizens around the world and at home.
