What Michelle Obama Didn't Wear in Saudi Arabia

Susan Rice, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who is today President Barack Obama's national security adviser, tweeted Tuesday: “With King Salman and Crown Prince Muqrin as partners, clear that US-#Saudi relations will continue to prosper as they did under late King.”

To gauge from the replies, it was a harsh <140-character toke for many to swallow. Liberal journalists have strongly criticized the American government for its gushing response to the death on Friday of King Abdullah; Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept deemed it “nauseating.” At the conservative National Review, Council on Foreign Relations fellow Elliott Abrams pointed to the women members of the considerable American delegation sent to pay respects to the late king, women of prestige and national stature including Lisa Monaco, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser; Frances Fragos Townsend, a former counterterrorism adviser to President George W. Bush; Nancy Pelosi, minority leader of the House of Representatives; and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. If these women were Saudi, Abrams wrote, they “would be jailed for the crime of driving a car.” Adam Coogle of Human Rights Watch, noting Abdullah's reputation as a reformer, nodded to the momentum the King drummed up for women’s rights, but wrote that the agenda was hardly fulfilled: