Don’t be surprised if President Obama has an emotional attachment to that Neil Diamond/Barbra Streisand song, “You don’t bring me flowers anymore.”
A month ago, we were surprised that Cuba’s Raúl Castro did not greet President Obama at the airport. After all, they told us it was historic. It had not happened since President Coolidge visited Cuba in the late 1920s. Castro would have been the second leader in Cuban history to greet a U.S. president on Cuban soil. However, he stayed home doing something rather than showing up to make history. Maybe a pirated copy of The Mambo Kings was on Cuban TV that afternoon.
Well, it happened again. Another world leader was too busy to greet the president of the U.S. He was welcomed by Prince Faisal bin Bandar Al Saud, the governor of Riyadh.
Yes, our president is now greeted by governors. It does not get any more insulting than that. Maybe having Russian jets fly within 50 feet of U.S. warships is a very close second!
King Salman was not there to greet President Obama. However, he found time to greet other world leaders just last week:
Ahead of Mr Obama’s arrival, Saudi state television showed the king personally greeting senior officials from other Gulf nations arriving at the King Salman Air Base, the Associated Press reported.Mustafa Alani, a security analyst at the Gulf Research Centre, said the Saudi decision not to dispatch a high-level delegation to greet the president was unusual and intended to send a clear message that they had little faith in him.
It is true that Saudi Arabia is angry over the redacted pages from the 9-11 report. Frankly, it’s a tough call, and I am willing to give President Bush and President Obama the benefit of the doubt here. After all, they have more information than I do. At the same time, President Obama could make a speech about the issue rather than let his critics dominate the coverage.
Saudi Arabia is angry about something else: the Iran deal. They just don’t like the idea that Iran is going to get all of those billions of dollars, as reported by The Guardian:
Their larger fear is that Iran, flush with new revenues, will be emboldened to intensify its activities across an already violent and unstable Middle East.“Every country in the world is worried about this,” Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, said last week as sanctions were set to lift.“Iran’s record has been one of war and destruction, terrorism, destabilisation, interference in the affairs of other countries and the concern … is that Iran not use these funds in order to fund destabilisation activities, but instead use the funds to improve the well being of its people.”
Saudi Arabia is not a perfect ally. However, they are a major player in the region.
They also didn’t get the memo about the Iran deal and Obama’s legacy.
Maybe Saudi Arabia understands something about legacy than the Obama supporters don’t get. It’s legacy only if it works. It’s a bad idea if it doesn’t work. As Warren Spahn said about a pitch that Willie Mays put in the seats: “Gentlemen, for the first 60 feet, that was a hell of a pitch“!
President Obama is off to London next. He’s got some fence-mending there, too.
We’ve come a long way from that summer of 2008 visit to Germany, when thousands of fools cheered the new American messiah.
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
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