President Obama has received a storm of criticism for apologizing for the accidental Koran burning in Afghanistan, and some of it has been unfair. Mistakes were made at the Bagram Air Base, Afghans were offended, and the president wasn’t necessarily wrong at the time to acknowledge the error.
But it’s quite another thing for Obama to insist his apology worked to quell anti-American violence — and in a sense downplay the horrific way Afghan extremists have used the Koran burning incident to justify attacks on our troops — which he did last night during an interview with ABC:
While Republican presidential candidates and others have criticized Obama’s action, the president told ABC that his letter to [President] Karzai has “calmed things down.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Obama said. “But my criteria in any decision I make, getting recommendations from folks who are actually on the ground, is what is going to best protect our folks and make sure that they can accomplish their mission.”
No, the apology did not “calm things down,” as anyone can see from the news today that two more American soldiers were killed, reportedly by Afghan National Army members. That’s in addition to the six American soldiers and civilians killed last week. By claiming the apology diffused tensions, Obama is giving a pass to the extremists who’ve exploited the accidental Koran burning to incite anti-American and anti-NATO violence.
Obama needs to stop talking about his apology and start condemning the actions of extremists, for which there are no excuses.
I don't see anywhere that he had claimed to have completely diminished the tensions that arose from the burning. While I do agree with the fact that there are no excuses for the killings, I also believe that Obama's apology has, in fact, calmed things down. Maybe only a little, but a little is better than nothing. The official address has informed those unknowing, yet reasonable, that it was just an accident.
He calms things down as well as he saves or creates jobs. People see what they want to see, it's a human characteristic that has to be fought to maintain intellectual integrity, of which there is precious little on the left. n
Apologies are interpreted as servitude and acceptance of dhimitude. Apologies every time Muslim mobs work themselves into a murderous pogram for accidental (or non-existent) offenses against the Koran and Islam tell the violent prone that they are justified in killing infidels for actions (desecrating religious texts) that are the everyday intentional order of business in Muslim countries. Surely more Americans need not die or be wounded in that forsaken feudal warlord pre-industrial society for the whimsical goal of giving our President breathing space to craft a fig-leaf "peace agreement" to hand the country over to the Taliban "with honor".
I still say that showing up with a truck-mounted ..50 cal fully automatic machine gun and just spraying bullets everywhere would likely have been the best response. n nThis is a non-Western, non-Judeo/Christian culture that only respects fear and force. nFine, let's give them that. It is all they are ever going to understand….
Question is, would he apologize if it had been the Mishna, the book of Mormon or the Bible that had been torched? Question also is, if Muslim militants had torched the holy books of Jews and Christians, would their leaders apologize? Doubt it. So why worry about a few copies of the Koran when human lives were lost?