While everyone knew that the Republican primary candidates would all be displaying plenty of "Obama Derangement Syndrome" during the campaign, this week the rhetoric took a bizarre tangent which might be called "Apology Derangement Syndrome." The concept is not only laughable, it is easy to prove what rampant and stinking hypocrisy those espousing it are truly guilty of displaying.
First, the facts of this tempest in a teacup (at the Mad Hatter Tea Party which the GOP primary process has devolved into). In Afghanistan, a Quran was burned in a trash-burning pit. Details are sketchy, but at least one Quran (possibly others, possibly other Islamic religious books as well) was at least partially burned. Details have not been forthcoming from the military, but apparently someone in charge of the library for Afghani prisoners decided to take these books away from the prisoners, possibly because the prisoners were breaking the rules by either communicating (by writing in them) or spreading jihadi slogans. Whatever the reason, the person responsible ordered that the books be disposed of. Trash is commonly burned on the base, and nobody apparently thought twice about tossing the books on the "burn pile." When the people doing the actual trash-burning threw them on the fire, Afghan workers noticed and put a stop to it. Those are the facts, such as they are. The U.S. military is investigating the incident, so perhaps more solid details will emerge in the future.
President Barack Obama then did what any United States president would do in such a situation: he apologized to Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan.
The Republican candidates (who are not named "Ron Paul") saw this as a political hot button, and immediately denounced Obama's apology. Newt Gingrich was pithiest, calling Obama an "appeaser" and stating "It is Hamid Karzai who owes the American people an apology, not the other way around."
Obama Derangement Syndrome is, of course, the knee-jerk opposing reaction to anything the president says or does -- no matter what. It can be summed up as the attitude that "Everything is Obama's fault. Everything." But the "Apology Derangement Syndrome" strain that's going around is quite easy to defeat. All you have to do is go back to George W. Bush's presidency to see that -- gasp! -- presidents apologize all the time when America does something wrong, or stupid, or both.
A quick check on Lexis Nexis reveals 210 articles written during Bush's time in office which use the phrase "Bush apologizes." Now, many (if not most) of these articles are written about demands from outside groups (foreign and domestic) who were calling on Bush to apologize for one thing or another, so just looking at the numbers isn't sufficient.
What also must be ignored are stories where President Bush was offering up personal apologies for his own behavior -- such as "Bush apologizes for not taking Laura to India's Taj Mahal," from March of 2006; or "Bush apologizes after telling blind reporter 'I'm interested in the shade, look, seriously' " when the president, in June of the same year, teased a member of the press for wearing sunglasses when it wasn't all that bright out.
This leaves us with the list of Bush apologies to foreign nations (or heads of state) for international incidents caused by the United States (mostly, the American military). The first of these occurred almost immediately after Bush took office, in February of 2001, when George W. Bush apologized to the Japanese prime minister for a joyriding captain of a U.S. submarine who was impressing his guests by surfacing the sub quickly -- which, tragically, destroyed and sunk a Japanese fishing vessel which happened to be occupying the same piece of ocean. Fishermen's lives were lost. Bush apologized, as everyone expected him to.
The second big apology was forced out of Bush -- that's right, forced out of a United States president -- by China. This was due to an incident involving a U.S. spyplane and a Chinese fighter pilot, that killed the Chinese pilot. The spyplane was forced to land in China, who promptly demanded an apology from Bush. Bush resisted, and really didn't want to apologize, but realized after many days that it was the only way we were going to get the spyplane's crew repatriated to America. He wrote a letter which used the words "very sorry" twice, and the crew was released. Bush, in this case, really didn't have any other option than apologizing.
In 2002, Bush apologized to foreign leaders twice, once to Canada for a friendly fire incident which killed Canadian soldiers, and once to South Korea when an American armored vehicle ran over and killed four Korean schoolgirls. In neither case was the apology contentious politically in America, because it was seen as the right and proper thing for Bush to do.
The biggest and most sustained apology the Bush administration was forced into was over the notorious Abu Graib photos, which surfaced in May of 2004. Bush again resisted the calls for apology for a few days, but then apologized personally during a visit by King Abdullah of Jordan. Other Bush administration officials would wind up apologizing for the Abu Graib photos for months to come.
In 2006, Bush issued one non-controversial apology, to Tony Blair for shipping bombs through air bases in the U.K. (which was very contentious in Scotland at the time). This didn't receive much press in America, though.
In the last year of Bush's term, he personally apologized to the same man that Barack Obama just did -- Hamid Karzai, leader of Afghanistan. At the time, Bush was apologizing for civilian deaths. I don't remember Republicans badmouthing this apology, at the time.
Two Bush apologies really stand out, though. The first was a personal apology. From the Washington Post of September 1, 2007 comes an article titled "Bush Apologizes to Wiccan Soldier's Widow for Meeting Slip-Up":
President Bush has apologized to the widow of a Wiccan soldier after she was excluded from a Nevada meeting this week that the president held with the families of soldiers killed in combat.
Roberta Stewart, whose husband, Sgt. Patrick Stewart, was killed in Afghanistan in 2005, was left off the invitation list for the private meeting Tuesday even though other members of her husband's family were invited.
When she heard about the exclusion from her mother-in-law, Stewart said, she concluded that it was done because of her public fight to force the federal government to engrave the symbol for the Wiccan faith on her husband's marker on a memorial.
"I was devastated," Stewart said. "I was crying and upset. I couldn't believe that my country would continue this discrimination."
Now for just one tiny nanosecond, let's all imagine what Republicans would be saying now if President Obama had (as they would surely put it): "apologized to a witch!" Just picture in your mind the fury which Republican candidates would unleash upon Obama if that had been him instead of Bush.
But the most relevant Bush apology to the current debate happened in May, 2008, when President Bush (are you sitting down, Mitt and Rick and Newt?) apologized for an American soldier mistreating a Quran. Here's the full story:
The U.S. military said Sunday that it had disciplined the sniper and removed him from Iraq after he was found to have used Islam's holy book for target practice May 9 in a predominantly Sunni area west of Baghdad. The book was found two days later by Iraqis on a firing range in Radwaniyah with 14 bullet holes in it and graffiti written on its pages, tribal leaders said.
Similar perceived insults against Islam in Europe and elsewhere have sparked violent protests, and American officials appeared eager to contain the outrage.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite, told Bush of the "disappointment and anger of the people and government of Iraq over the soldier's disgraceful action," according to a statement from his office.
Al-Maliki's office said Bush told the prime minister that the sniper would face trial, but Perino did not say whether Bush made such a promise. Military officials have not spoken of any further action against the soldier, who has not been identified.
Where were the Republican howls of outrage over Bush doing exactly what Obama just did in the exact same circumstances, one wonders. What did Mitt, Rick, and Newt have to say about it? Nothing. Where was their outrage? Silent. When a member of their own political party apologized to the leader of a country for Koran desecration by Americans in uniform, Republicans had no problem with it.
One wonders what happened to Republicans venerating the advice of the "generals on the ground," as well. Generals on the ground, in the GOP way of thinking, always have to be listened to. Where is one single American general agreeing with the Republicans that Obama shouldn't have apologized? When Bush apologized for the Koran shooting, an American officer "kissed a copy" of the Koran before he presented it to local Iraqis, as a way of apologizing. Again, what would Republicans now be saying if this had just happened in Afghanistan? Because Bush was in the White House, Republicans had nothing to say on the matter.
When Barack Obama does the same thing Bush did four years ago, however, all sorts of nasty things are said about him by prominent Republicans. Apology Derangement Syndrome seems to be erasing Republicans' memory. They've made such a honking big deal out of Obama's apology that the news media has jumped on the story and continues to push it.
Of course, all of these "journalists" have the same access to the Lexis Nexis site which I have. Searching for these stories isn't all that hard to do. I'm sure that every other president in modern history has made similar apologies at some point while they were in office, I merely used George W. Bush as the handiest of examples to show what hypocrisy and selective outrage Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich are currently displaying.
To put it another way: this story wasn't all that hard to research and write. One wonders why the overpaid folks in the mainstream media haven't done the same research. Especially on that Quran-shooting story.
Chris Weigant blogs at: 
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Jeffrey Laurenti: Quran Flap Confirms Need for Afghan Withdrawal Timetable
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| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
my family do not apologise...
somewhere along the way we were conditioned that there is some negative hold over those who apologise...
instead we atone for our sins or misgivings or actions
and either avoid making them again...or avoid having the offended party have any knowledge of them...or make amends...
ACTION....
If you present yourself negatively...one day...when you realise that you were MADE to commit the offensive action or statement...by a power beyond your control..you will realise that you have been jipped in this game called life...
I am sure.
One other thing, all of Afghanistan isn't up in arms over this Koran burning. It's just a fraction of the population, those hard core anti-American Afghans who hate this country for ideological reasons and want us to leave. Do we see millions of Afghans protesting the burning? No. Just a relative few making noise with violence and rage. Apologies are wasted on such people-as it was on Karzai who demanded that the US soldiers who disposed of the Korans be put on trial to make the apology acceptable.
Moreover, as the soldiers who dumped the Korans were following established protocol what are the chances that this was unknown to the Moslem clerics that visited the prison? How can we be sure that the method used in disposing the degraded, useless, unserviceable Korans wasn't first approved by the prison clerics-who were certainly aware that Korans and other religious texts were confiscated from inmates? Do you think that the inmates kept this from the clerics, or weren't told about it by the prison guards? Did the clerics raise a stink over this? Did they protest these actions? Did they cause riots over them? NO! Since the confiscated Korans were defiled and lost their status and santity as holy books taking them from the inmates was permissible under Islamic law.
OK, just an aside, that first line was pretty funny, I have to admit.
But more seriously, you're making Obama's point for him -- he's not apologizing to the relative few "making noise" because as you point out, that is a futile exercise. He's apologizing to Karzai -- and, by extension, the vast majority of the Afghan people who aren't out in the streets with violence or rage. In other words, the ones who can be reasoned with.
Now, imagine yourself one of those Afghans. Some of your neighbors are inviting you out into the streets to rage and commit violence. You think to yourself: "This is desecration, I suppose I should join the crowd," or perhaps "The American president himself apologized to the leader of our country for a mistake, therefore this wasn't intentional and I take him at his word. Allah knows, mistakes happen."
It's the persuadable ones who are precisely the point. THEY are who the apology is really directed towards.
-CW
Because only nerds do research? Because spending time to check facts is time you're not reporting the shocking things some is saying? Because reporting something counter to what a rich person says is a good way to get fired? Because the average reader usually only gets through the first paragraph or two before giving up?
Take your pick.
This apologizing for removing a device used for illegal communications between prisoners (in this case the Kuran) is ridiculous. The Sargent should tell the prisoners that this will happen on a regular basis if they keep doing it.
I don't wonder about that at all. Profit is the motive. Lies and conflict sell and fact-checking doesn't.
If all the facts aren't in as you say then why did Obama apologize? Why did he rush ahead to issue an apology without first knowing if our soldiers desecrated Korans and wronged Islam? Aren't they innocent until proven guilty? He should have simply said that we're investigating the matter and asked for calm until the inquiry was completed. What kind of Commander in Chief impulsively apologizes for soldiers who most likely did nothing wrong but were routinely following established protocol in disposing of prisoner desecrated Korans-such Korans are BURNED in Islam? That apology was wrong. It was a miscalculation unworthy of a US President.
But if you'd like to further test the theory that President Obama behaved unreasonably, why don't we do an experiment? Let's have some Muslims burn a Bible and we'll see how Mitt and Newt and Rick react.
You know... in the name of factual investigation.
Moreover, what US laws did these American soldiers infringe that they are to stand trial? Are they to be handed over to an Islamic court and tried for blasphemy and face death? Karzai claimed that Obama and NATO agreed that they'd be brought to justice. Under whose justice? US? NATO? Islamic? US soldiers following established protocol in disposing of ruined Korans are to be punished but not the Moslem inmates who broke Islamic law by writing in them? And if Obama agreed to put the soldiers on trial as part of his apology would you still say that he acted reasonably?
The facts aren't in to the public. I would wager that the facts are largely on Obama's desk, though. We've been in Muslim countries at war for over a decade now. After Bush apologized for an American soldier desecrating the Quran, the Pentagon responded by saying they would be implementing training for EVERY soldier heading to the war zones, so they were ALL properly trained in such sensitive issues. Either their training has gotten lax, or somebody somewhere made a mistake.
Do you have any proof that Qurans are burned as "established protocol" by the US military? I bet not. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I haven't heard that claim by anyone, so I'll need a little proof to believe it. If you're right, I'd bet the farm that this protocol has now been changed.
The president is the head of state of the United States of America. He apologized because America disrespected a country's religion that we have been occupying for over a decade.
Republicans are usually very deferential to the commanders on the ground, so here's my question for you: Where is a single quote from any commander on the ground in Afghanistan where some general states that Obama shouldn't have apologized? One quote? They know full well what the "battle for hearts and minds" is all about, and they (from what I've heard) have backed up the president 100% on his apology.
-CW
Obama's apology was unprecedented and unwarranted. Instead of following Bush's example of issuing a simple apology and promising to review the sensitivity techniques used in training US troops in Afghanistan Obama began an investigation as if a crime had been committed-when the only law that may have been broken was Sharia law: a totalitarian, anti-democratic legal, religious, political system of intolerance, injustice, bigotry and hate. Karzai, and a local council of clerics, demanded that the soldiers who threw the illicit (US owned) Korans in the burn pit must be punished-which Obama, bowing to Islamic law, cravenly acceded to. Obama took an oath to defend the US Constitution, not Islamic law. What he did was deplorable.
He probably has to figure out which one will help him more in the primaries.
To wit, I don't think the Republicans are the ones I ever want to hear speaking on this issue, as a Party. They don't have a leg to stand on.
It doesn't stop me from criticizing Obama for basically apologizing to the Afghans that some Afghans killed some of our men over a mistake, but then I've never been a Bush supporter and I don't believe that just because Obama does a thing that it's correct and right and kosher.
to Karzai (who didn't accept it) was a foolish admission of guilt that an offense was committed against Islam when in reality our soldiers were following normal routine protocol and were absolutely guiltless of any wrong doing. His apology has only served to reinforce the Moslem mob's belief that these infidel soldiers had desecrated Korans and justice must be done the Islamic way by killing US citizens, soldiers or Westerners. Far from calming the situation Obama's foolishness has worsened it-it has fueled the flames of anti-American rage (as weakness always does) with more death and destruction and calls for US blood..