Monday, June 8, 2009

Whence the deference from Obama to Abdullah? How much DIRECTION flows the other way?

The issue of the deep obeisance made by Obama to Abdullah is widely known. On the front page of IBD for Thursday, June 4 there is a picture of Obama and Abdullah with the caption, "I THOUGHT IT WAS very important to come to the place where Islam began and to seek his majesty's counsel," said President Obama, who met Wednesday with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Obama stopped in Riyadh on the eve of his high-stakes speech in Egypt meant to ease long-held Muslim grievances against the U.S.
It is hard to understand either the obeisance or the deference to the wisdom of a hereditary monarch, whose family threw out the actual descendants of Muhammad ( the Hashemites )who ruled Mecca and Medina, and whose position is anything but meritocratic. It can't even make much of an impression on the nationalistic Egyptians, the Hashemite King of Jordan or the Shiite 15% of the Muslim world, especially Iran. Does it derive from a trained-in deference from Obama's childhood? His Muslim nature certainly seems to have blossomed since he was safely elected.

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