President Obama was excoriated for last month’s apology to Afghan President Karzai after several copies of the Koran were inadvertently burned. This type of criticism is nothing knew. Obama has been disparaged for years for apologizing for America. His speech in Berlin during the 2008 presidential campaign earned him one of the earliest censures. It was followed by the much-maligned 2009 apology tour of several continents during which Obama found plenty of fault with America’s past.
The president’s rebukes have been uttered in Ankara, London, Prague, Cairo, Strasbourg, Trinidad and Washington D.C., among other places. In these appearances, Obama criticized America for committing a whole host of misdeeds. Among them are slavery, mistreatment of Native Americans, the global financial crisis, nuclear weapons, global warming, practicing self-interest, being dismissive and derisive of our allies and arrogance.
While Obama’s denouncements were well received by the international community, many in this country resented them. So, critics viewed Obama’s letter to Karzai after last month’s Koran burning as just another apology by a president too eager to utter them.
But, that critical assessment is wrong. Obama has never actually apologized for America at all, not even to Karzai for the Koran burning incident. His earlier remarks amounted to admissions and condemnations, but they were never apologetic. Read in context, Obama’s statements are simply Obama being Obama. In most cases, he is ponderously critical, not just of America, but of the nations of his audience as well. His disparaging assessments come with utopian instructions on how countries must change in order to live in Obama’s future.
As far as the apology to Karzai is concerned, it was about as sincere as Rush Limbaugh’s mea culpa to Sandra Fluke. Obama’s intent was damage control. He wanted to save American lives and to minimize other predictable adverse consequences. For all the good it did. Afghanis killed six Americans and claimed another thirty lives in violent riots that continued for several days after the burning was reported. Regardless, apologies given to limit negative outcomes are not apologies at all.
When the riots in Afghanistan were in full force, the Defense Department announced that the remains of an undisclosed number of 9/11 victims were desecrated. The bodies of 9/11 victims were processed at the military mortuary at Dover Air Force Base. Until 2008, unidentifiable remains from the Pentagon attack and the plane crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania were reduced to ashes and dumped in a landfill.
Article comments
1 - Glenn Contrarian
Wow! I had no idea that Obama was just SO terrible! If what he did above was worthy of the castigation he just received at the hands of Sidney and Riley, can we just imagine what Sidney and Riley would have done if Obama had:
- invaded a foreign nation on knowingly false pretenses;
- refused to allow treason investigations to continue against his vice president;
- took America from having its largest-ever surplus to having its largest ever deficit;
- allowed and even encouraged TORTURE, regardless of the fact that George Washington himself forswore such even when the very existence of our nation was still in doubt;
- fired several federal judges for not conducting public investigations of politicians even after those judges pointed out there was no probable cause for conducting those investigations;
- had a family that had close relations with the House of Saud;
- had a grandfather who supported doing business with Nazi Germany; and
- specifically allowed the bin Laden family to depart the U.S. in the days after 9/11.
Can we imagine what Sidney and Riley (and the rest of the Right) would be saying if the above applied to Obama? Do the words "open armed rebellion" ring a bell?
But I guess that just means that Obama - since he's not conservative, doesn't have a "regular American name", and isn't lily-white as Archie Bunker, well, THAT all means that he deserves every bit of the spite and bile hurled against him from the Right.
2 - zingzing
this article is kind of ridiculous... if you really can't figure out the difference between the two incidences, and why they demand different reactions, you're either warped or playing dumb.
3 - Jordan Richardson
Kind of ridiculous?
4 - Dr Joseph S Maresca
I believe that President Obama's apology for the Koran burning incident was in order.