This bothers me

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No so much that the President of the United States salutes a foreign powers military officer (that is another story) but that the President salutes at all.

Sure when you become President you also become Commander in Chief of all the countries military and get to look at the code to punch the red button.

Never been in the military. The closest I got was the boy scouts (that is sort of like a junior military cadet corps with their own uniforms and metals but didn’t carry guns).

I watched enough parades and was propagandized about the countries military accomplishments. There were monuments and flags and ceremonies and holidays to (mostly) men walking in unison wearing fancy uniforms with brass buttons and turning left and right then standing still on orders of someone with more jewelry. No one can match the pomp and circumstance that the military has.

One of the requirements of the military is to salute. Raise your right hand to your forehead when passing a superior officer (see paragraph #1).   

A salute is a gesture or other action used to display respect. Salutes are primarily associated with armed forces and law enforcement, but other organizations and civilians also use salutes.

In military traditions of various times and places, there have been numerous methods of performing salutes, using hand gestures, cannon or rifle shots, hoisting of flags, removal of headgear, or other means of showing respect or deference.

In the Commonwealth of Nations, only commissioned officers are saluted, and the salute is to the commission they carry from their respective commanders-in-chief representing the Monarch, not the officers themselves.

According to some modern military manuals, the modern Western salute originated in France when knights greeted each other to show friendly intentions by raising their visors to show their faces, using a salute.

Others also note that the raising of one's visor was a way to identify oneself saying “This is who I am, and I am not afraid.” Medieval visors were, to this end, equipped with a protruding spike that allowed the visor to be raised using a saluting motion.

The US Army Quartermaster School provides another explanation of the origin of the hand salute: that it was a long-established military courtesy for subordinates to remove their headgear in the presence of superiors.

British Army soldiers saluted by removing their hats during the American Revolution.

With the advent of increasingly cumbersome headgear in the 18th and 19th centuries, however, the act of removing one’s hat was gradually converted into the simpler gesture of grasping or touching the visor and issuing a courteous salutation.

As early as 1745, a British order book stated that: “The men are ordered not to pull off their hats when they pass an officer, or to speak to them, but only to clap up their hands to their hats and bow as they pass.” Over time, it became conventionalized into something resembling the modern hand salute.

In the Austrian Army the practice of making a hand salute replaced that of removing the headdress in 1790, although officers wearing cocked hats continued to remove them when greeting superiors until 1868.

The naval salute, with the palm downwards is said to have evolved because the palms of naval ratings, particularly deckhands, were often dirty through working with lines and was deemed insulting to present a dirty palm to an officer; thus the palm was turned downwards. During the Napoleonic Wars, British crews saluted officers by touching a clenched fist to the brow as though grasping a hat-brim between fingers and thumb.

Back to the subject of the President of the United States saluting is I thought a person in uniform saluted while a person in civilian wear placed their hands over their hearts.

 

I know there are lots of pictures of Presidents descending the ramps of plane or helicopter while a sharply dressed military personnel stands at attention in a salute.

Don’t expect the leader of the Free World to give a high five but a simple acknowledgement to a person who has been standing in the heat or cold for hours waiting for a President to leave one vehicle and walk to another vehicle seems more than satisfactory.

Maybe if the Commander in Chief had a special uniform? That would look as regal as the dictators of Africa and worthy of a salute. It would also stand out on a stage full of dull politicians in dark blue business suits. Add some extra bling so the other generals and admirals would be jealous.

Through the ages many traditions to acknowledge another have been used. There was the handshake (in several variations) and the hip bump and the improper pat on the butt, but probably the best was the oriental head bow.

Still the military have ‘present arms’ to pick up their weapons before their face. Those who carry swords pull out their scabbards and press the blade against the nose.

I have no problem with the military and all their regimental ceremony of grandeur for when they are through, they get back in their grubby gear and we pay them to go out and shoot at people.