The White House is saying no, but the video and still images coming out are pretty damning. It’s pretty quick, like he wasn’t thinking about it. However, his left leg comes back a bit. I don’t buy the “he’s just bent over” bit. He looks like he’s bowing to me.
He better not have. Disgraceful if he did. He’s bent over awfully low. The President of the United States should not bow to foreign heads of state.
Whoops, double post somehow.
Oh that crazy Obama.
We’re uncovered guys. Obama really is a secret Muslim and Gates is just a puppet secdef for William Ayers.
Why do I care?
In this thread, it does look a lot more like a bow.
Protocol is the culture of diplomacy. It is the framework by which people who have no reason to trust each other in anything can know whether they are in a favorable position or unfavorable position with one another. Of course, protocol can be used to deceive but if you breach protocol, everybody knows either not to trust you or know how to take advantage of you.
Obama bowing to the Saudi King shows a weakness in Obama. Obama is very intelligent, rational, a problem solver. But he has very little guile and I think other people know it; I think even Obama knows it, in fact I think he has a distaste for it. That’s why I think Hillary Clinton is the Secretary of State. That woman is full of guile; Obama made up for a weakness with a great choice for Secretary of State.
Obama probably did what his mother and grandparents taught him: to show respect to heads of state, to people who have authority. I definitely respect that teaching. The thing is that he is now a head of state, the head of our State, our Union, our Country. A sitting President of the United States of America should never bow. He/She represents us while they are in office and Americans bow to no one, not even our own President.