Cheney: Obama's Bow 'Sign of Weakness' To Our Enemies

BEIJING – Greeting the Japanese emperor at Tokyo’s Imperial Palace last weekend, President Barack Obama bowed so low that he was looking straight at the stone floor. The next day, Obama shook hands with the prime minister of repressive Myanmar during a group meeting. The day after that, the president held a “town hall” with Chinese university students who had been selected by the regime.

The images from the president's journey through Asia carried a potent symbolism that has riled critics back home. One conservative website called the episodes “Obamateurism.” Dick Cheney told POLITICO that Obama was advertising “weakness.”

But White House aides say the approach is deliberate – part of Obama’s determination to deliver on his campaign promise of directly engaging friends and enemies alike, giving America a less belligerent posture abroad.

“I think it's very important for the United States not to assume that what is good for us is automatically good for somebody else,” Obama told the students at the town hall, in Shanghai. “And we have to have some modesty about our attitudes towards other countries.”