Saudi Arabia Didn't Get Mad...It Got Even with Barack Obama

When I was a child, my mother would warn me about lying by saying I would always be caught out by a lie. I still don't know why the phrase "caught out" is used, but as a child, I tried not to lie because I knew it must be an unpleasant experience. However, I always knew what pompous meant -- merely saying the word conjured up bloated self-importance. Yesterday, those two words merged as I watched Barack Obama being snubbed with finesse when he arrived in Riyadh and, later, when he walked meekly beside Saudi King Salman, the 80-year-old monarch who had learned the subtleties of power politics before Obama was born. I understood what it means to be caught out not just in lies but in pompous lies. In those televised moments that captured the Arab world's lesson to the self-important amateur, Barack Obama was revealed as the pompous liar he has been about his agenda and allies. ~~~~~ President Obama went to Saudi Arabia to paper over his eight years of indifference and hostility toward America's longterm Middle East partner. He undoubtedly thought it would be easy. But, Obama was greeted at the airport by Riyadh Governor Prince Faisal bin Bandar Al Saud and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir, in an arrival not broadcast live on Saudi TV, which is routine with visiting heads of state. It quickly caused talk of a snub, because King Salman, with other senior Saudis, was seen earlier on TV greeting leaders of Arab Gulf states on the tarmac, ahead of Thursday’s summit of the six-member, Saudi-dominated Gulf Cooperation council, which Obama addressed. Afterward, King Salman greeted Obama in the Riyadh al-Auja palace, where they posed for photos and exchanged stilted remarks before a two-hour meeting. Even after the obvious snub, the White House tried to deny that ties with Saudi Arabia are fraying, saying Obama "really cleared the air" with King Salman at their meeting. ~~~~~ What led to Obama's come-uppance? Even before he became President, Obama called the Saudis "our so-called allies" at a 2002 rally. As President, his support for the 2011 ouster of long-time Egyptian leader and US ally Hosni Mubarak was seen by the Saudis as betraying established relationships and causing chaos before Egyptians rejected the Moslem Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia took up the task of helping Egypt recover. Later, Obama refused to act on his "red line" threat of military force against Syria's al-Assad. Finally, the US announced it was secretly meeting with sunni leader Saudi Arabia's arch-rival shiite leader Iran for talks that led to the 2015 nuclear deal bitterly opposed by the Saudis. It drove the final wedge between the Kingdom and the US President it had come to see as untrustworthy and, worse, perhaps in the enemy camp. Obama’s recent comment that the Saudis and Iranians should "share the neighborhood" angered the Saudis, causing sharp public criticism of an American "pivot" toward Iran. The White House said the 9/11 attacks weren't discussed Wednesday, but Saudi Arabia has warned it might sell $750 billion in US assets if Congress passes a bill allowing the Saudi government to be held legally liable for the attacks if any official is shown to have been complicit -- a charge Saudi officials have long denied. Former CIA Middle East expert Bob Baer told CNN that US-Saudi relations may be so damaged that the US will be stuck with Iran. ~~~~~ Retired Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al Faisal talked to CNN's Christiane Amanpour Wednesday, offering an insight into Arab culture : "If you want to change course and establish new grounds for understanding, you don't have to be insulting." ~~~~~ Dear readers, that's why Barack Obama was snubbed. His Chigago-style cynical bullying may have worked with Americans for awhile, but not with Saudi Arabia, proud Arabs who expect courtesy even when bitterly disagreeing, as when Obama insists the Iran deal "cut off every single one of Iran's pathways to a nuclear weapon." The next President must restore relations because the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel hold the Middle East together.