President Barack Obama saluted a pair of United States Marines on Tuesday while holding a styrofoam cup in his saluting hand, a breach of military regulations that won’t win him fans among veterans and servicemen. The video was released on the White House Instagram page by the Obama Administration – clueless again.
Obama’s quasi-saluting gesture is an embarrassment and not just because his environmentally taboo drink-ware clashed with the green-policy speech he was on his way to deliver at a UN Climate Summit.
Saluting military personnel is something presidents are expected to do since they’re at the top of the Pentagon’s chain of command. It’s customary for a commander-in-chief to salute uniformed servicemen and women who salute him first as a sign of respect.
The ‘Customs and Courtesies’ manual of the U.S. Marine Corps advises that there are circumstances in which it’s not appropriate to render a salute. One of them is when military personnel are ‘carrying articles with both hands or being otherwise so occupied as to make saluting impractical.’
The U.S. Army Field Manual describes the correct procedure for rendering a salute. It instructs that when ‘uncovered’ – that is, not wearing a cap – one should ‘touch the tip of the right forefinger to the forehead near and slightly to the right of the right eyebrow.’
During Tuesday’s salute, Obama’s cup was the only thing that made contact with his head.
No wire photographers captured pictures of the exact moment when the president executed the unconventional maneuver, but online fury built after the White House itself posted a short video clip of it on its Instagram page.
‘What’s worse?’ one Twitter user asked: ‘that Obama didn’t put down his coffee cup before saluting, or that the WH thought it was smart to post it?’
Of traditional media it appears that The Daily Mail and The Washington Times are leading coverage at this time with traffic being driven in large part by The Drudge Report.
The point the ideological Left (Obama and cronies) fail to understand is that most Americans respect their nation and expect it to be respected – not lied about, apologized for, and/or destroyed by an ideology of ignorance that separates the infected from personal responsibility and historical fact.