On the move for Saudi women to be allowed to drive, Kerry was careful not to appear to take sides.
What should be a ridiculous question is raised by Secretary of State John Kerry’s offensive obeisance to the Saudis yesterday when visiting Riyadh. Here is the AP story:
“On the move for Saudi women to be allowed to drive, Kerry was careful not to appear to take sides. Noting that while the United States embraces gender equality, ‘it is up to Saudi Arabia to make its own decisions about its own social structure and choices and the timing of whatever events.'”
Apparently, far be it from us to criticize Saudi repression of women and the ludicrous and offensive practice of preventing women from driving. How far does Secretary Kerry go with this “your own decisions about your own social structure?” Does it matter to him that “Saudis” don’t get to make that decision — because the country has no democratic institutions whatsoever?
Mr. Kerry’s abandonment of American standards when addressing the Saudi leaders was not only offensive, it was useless and unneeded.
When his predecessor Condoleezza Rice used to visit there, she refused to cover her hair as current Saudi practices demand; they got over it. Had Mr. Kerry replied,
“Well, as an American of course I think that rule about driving is ridiculous,” do we think they’d have declared war?
Kerry was speaking with Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, a graduate of Princeton University who also went to prep school in the United States.
Does the secretary believe that Saud actually thinks women should not be permitted to drive, and that saying so would have offended him?
Does the secretary think he increases respect for the United States when he refuses to defend our view of equality before the law?
The Saudi episode came a day after Kerry made an inaccurate and unfortunate statement about Egypt: that it is moving toward democracy under army rule. In an editorial, The Washington Post said it all:
“A Freedom House report released Monday concludes that ‘there has been virtually no substantive progress toward democracy … since the July 3 coup,’ despite the military regime’s supposed ‘road map.’
But that’s not how Secretary of State John F. Kerry sees it.
‘The road map is being carried out to the best of our perception,’ he pronounced during a quick trip to Cairo on Sunday. A liberal constitution and elections? ‘All of that is, in fact, moving down the road map in the direction that everybody has been hoping for.’
Source: Israel Hayom
My comment:
John Kerry seems to have chosen a US Foreign strategy based on the concept of saying absolutely nothing understandable at all, or at least nothing that can be taken as an offense by Islamic leaders.
Kerry stays within the parameters of the Sharia law, as desired by his boss, Barack Hussein Obama.
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
It is a deep spiritual tragedy, that the USA is governed by politicians who submit to “allah” and his messengers.
Written by Ivar
News that matters 