-By Warner Todd Huston
As Obama bows in supplication before a Saudi King then tries to spin his way out of his own actions, America is being humiliated by whelps at sea. He was just leaning, we’re told, not bowing. It was because the Saudi King is short or so goes the White House spin. But the Queen of England is even shorter than the Saudi King and there was no royal navel gazing from Obama in England! Obama failed that test, indeed.
To be sure, Barack Obama is being tested just like Joe Biden said he would. But those testing him are not the sort of big state actors that Biden imagined would task the new president. They are low-tech, low-rent, unorganized pirates, not heads of state of great and dangerous nations. And this fact, that it is mere pirates testing him, is an even bigger slap in the face than it would be if it were a powerful nation or two testing President Obama.
And worse, these skinny, underfed, unorganized and ill-equipped pirates are making a fool of what is ostensibly the most powerful man in the world. And it is about to get worse if Obama allows the U.S. Navy to stand idly by as more pirates come to the scene of the standoff to float in solidarity with the four fellows holding captain Philips in that disabled power boat.
Bowing to Kings, Bowed By Pirates, Obama Shows His Weakness”