Getbig.com: American Bodybuilding, Fitness and Figure
Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Soul Crusher on October 12, 2011, 10:03:24 AM
-
Apologies Not Accepted
WWW.INVESTORS.COM
Posted 10/11/2011 06:29 PM ET
In November 2009, Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to bow to Japan's emperor. View Enlarged Image
Leadership: Leaked cables show Japan nixed a presidential apology to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for using nukes to end the overseas contingency operation known as World War II. Will the next president apologize for the current one?
The obsessive need of this president to apologize for American exceptionalism and our defense of freedom continued recently when Barack Obama's State Department (run by Hillary Clinton) contacted the family of al-Qaida propagandist and recruiter Samir Khan to "express its condolences" to his family.
Khan, a right-hand man to Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed along with Awlaki in an airstrike in Yemen on Sept. 30. We apologized for killing a terrorist before he could help kill any more of us.
It's yet another part of the world apology tour that began with Obama taking the oath of office to protect and defend the United States and its Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, something he immediately felt sorry for.
One stop on his tour was Prague in August 2009. There he spoke of "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," ignoring that before 1945 we lived in such a world and it was neither peaceful nor secure.
Another stop on the tour was in Japan, where Obama in November 2009 bowed to the emperor, something no American president had ever done. It could have been worse if plans to visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima to apologize for winning the war with the atom bombs had come to pass.
A heretofore secret cable dated Sept. 3, 2009, was recently released by WikiLeaks. Sent to Secretary of State Clinton, it reported Japan's Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka telling U.S. Ambassador John Roos that "the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a 'nonstarter.'"
The Japanese feared the apology would be exploited by anti-nuclear groups and those opposed to the defensive alliance between Japan and the U.S.
Subscribe to the IBD Editorials Podcast Whatever Tokyo's motive, Obama's motive was to once again apologize for defending freedom, this time for winning with devastating finality the war Japan started.
While Obama envisions a world without nuclear weapons, and moves steadily toward unilateral disarmament of our nuclear arsenal, we envision a world without tyrants and thugs willing to use them against us. We do not fear nuclear weapons in the hands of Britain or France, countries that share our love of freedom and democracy.
It was not all that clear in August 1945 that Japan was ready to surrender. Okinawa, where 101,000 Japanese and 24,000 Americans died, was a clear indication of the fanatical resistance to come in an invasion of the Japanese home islands. That resistance ended only when Tokyo became convinced there would soon be nothing to defend.
Nuclear weapons in the right hands ended the violence of World War II. In the right hands, they kept Western Europe free and helped win the Cold War. And the fact that they'd been used made it less likely they would ever be used again.
The world that Imperial Japan envisioned was quite different than the one we now enjoy. That regime's dream was of an imperial rising sun blistering the globe. Good thing they saw a rising sun of a quite different sort, the fulfillment of Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamato's prophecy after Dec. 7, 1941: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
President Obama fails to realize that being the leader of the Free World, the last best hope for mankind, means never having to say you're sorry.
WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ROT IN FUCKING HELL OBAMA YOU DISGUSTING VERMIN!
-
You love Obama. He's your sunshine, your only sunshine.........
A BIG "so what" on this article. BFD as if his antics with Japan have any dam thing to do with the problems he has helped perpetuate in this country.
-
You love Obama. He's your sunshine, your only sunshine.........
A BIG "so what" on this article. BFD as if his antics with Japan have any dam thing to do with the problems he has helped perpetuate in this country.
Oh please! ! ! !
No fucking POTUS EVER tried to do this.
How can you possibly defend this?
-
Who's defending it?
I am not.
re read my post.
-
You love Obama. He's your sunshine, your only sunshine.........
A BIG "so what" on this article. BFD as if his antics with Japan have any dam thing to do with the problems he has helped perpetuate in this country.
See - this is where you are dead wrong. obama projects hatred for this country every waking moment of his miserable life and he projects it both home and abroad. Its why our economy keeps getting worse, its why Europe mocks us, its why everyone laughs at us.
Obama is every bit the national disgrace and commie sleeper cell terrorist potus I said he was.
He pisses on this country, he pisses on the vets, he pisses on our heritage.
Why? BECAUSE HE IS NOT ONE OF US!
He is a Kenyan Illegal Alien Muslim sleeper cell potus, and the sooner you wake the the fuck up the better.
-
See - this is where you are dead wrong. obama projects hatred for this country every waking moment of his miserable life and he projects it both home and abroad. Its why our economy keeps getting worse, its why Europe mocks us, its why everyone laughs at us.
Obama is every bit the national disgrace and commie sleeper cell terrorist potus I said he was.
He pisses on this country, he pisses on the vets, he pisses on our heritage.
Why? BECAUSE HE IS NOT ONE OF US!
He is a Kenyan Illegal Alien Muslim sleeper cell potus, and the sooner you wake the the fuck up the better.
::)
Sorry Dude, that just screams for the need of counseling.
-
Really? You think he loves this country? Seriously?
-
Really? You think he loves this country? Seriously?
No, i am talking about your post.
Focus 3333 Focus. Stop misinterpreting my posts.
-
No, i am talking about your post.
Focus 3333 Focus. Stop misinterpreting my posts.
Even Carter and Clinton never tried this shit!
-
;)
-
Even Carter and Clinton never tried this shit!
So what?
Who cares?
What the fuck diff does it make to the fact our country has been hijacked?
-
So what?
Who cares?
What the fuck diff does it make to the fact our country has been hijacked?
Guess what - I guaran fucking tee you that most people are revolted by this shit.
and if you are too blinded by your high minded bs to see the connection of obama's corrution and shit like this - well - go back to taking "the high road" and dont give a damn about anything at all.
-
Guess what - I guaran fucking tee you that most people are revolted by this shit.
and if you are too blinded by your high minded bs to see the connection of obama's corrution and shit like this - well - go back to taking "the high road" and dont give a damn about anything at all.
No.
Serously, lay off the coffee!
Its just a stupid article talking about shit that doesn't even fucking matter.
what matters is what going here in the USA.
-
Yes it does matter! See - this is where your "holier than thou" nonsense becomes a laugh line.
Its all connected - tearing down our economy, tearing down our history, tearing down the middle class, tearing down everything that was once strong about this country. Weakness at home and abroad. Weakness in policy, weakness in the face of muslim onslaught, etc etc.
You dont see the pattern here? WTF is wrong you lately?
NO OTHER PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY WOULD TRY SUCH BULLSHIT.
-
does anyone here really think the japanese would have accepted an identical offer from pres mccain?
lmao.
-
Yes it does matter! See - this is where your "holier than thou" nonsense becomes a laugh line.
Its all connected - tearing down our economy, tearing down our history, tearing down the middle class, tearing down everything that was once strong about this country. Weakness at home and abroad. Weakness in policy, weakness in the face of muslim onslaught, etc etc.
You dont see the pattern here? WTF is wrong you lately?
NO OTHER PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY WOULD TRY SUCH BULLSHIT.
::) ::) ::) ::)
Get help.
-
does anyone here really think the japanese would have accepted an identical offer from pres mccain?
lmao.
McCain would never have done this you fool, neither would Kerry, Gore, Dukakis, mondale, Reagan, GHWB, GWB, Carter, Nixon, Ford, JFK, LBJ, Ike, etc.
Again - if you or whoever plans on voting for this vile marxist wretch again - kill yourselves.
-
NO OTHER PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY WOULD TRY SUCH BULLSHIT.
O RLY?
maybe you should look at at least 100 examples of US leaders of both parties apologizing for shit to other countries.
http://reserve.mg2.org/apologies.htm
And the coup de grace...
Reagan:
Official Apology and Compensation Voted by Congress in 1988
http://homepage3.nifty.com/ubiquitous/Japanese-Americans_E/Page13.htm
But hey, obama sucks, we get you.
-
O RLY?
maybe you should look at at least 100 examples of US leaders of both parties apologizing for shit to other countries.
http://reserve.mg2.org/apologies.htm
And the coup de grace...
Reagan:
Official Apology and Compensation Voted by Congress in 1988
http://homepage3.nifty.com/ubiquitous/Japanese-Americans_E/Page13.htm
But hey, obama sucks, we get you.
Are you kidding? You don't see the difference?
And answer me this you obama tampon - why did the Japs reject this offer from the black jesus (The term his WH staffers use for him according to "Confidence Men")?
-
Are you kidding? You don't see the difference?
And answer me this you obama tampon - why did the Japs reject this offer from the black jesus (The term his WH staffers use for him according to "Confidence Men")?
i think it might be due to the nukes we dorpped on their grandparents?
-
i think it might be due to the nukes we dorpped on their grandparents?
::) ::) ::) ::)
-
It's pretty bad when your entire existence revolve around a hatred for one person.
Get help 3333333.
-
It's pretty bad when your entire existence revolve around a hatred for one person.
Get help 3333333.
So again - please tell me why the Japs rejected obama's bitch move on this?
-
So again - please tell me why the Japs rejected obama's bitch move on this?
you want us to guess the motivation of the japanese govt?
really? is that where we are? it's not about evidence or actions.
You just care about whether or not getbiggers can prove what they THINK some ppl in the japanse govt THINK about some shit that happened 70 years ago.
-
you want us to guess the motivation of the japanese govt?
really? is that where we are? it's not about evidence or actions.
You just care about whether or not getbiggers can prove what they THINK some ppl in the japanse govt THINK about some shit that happened 70 years ago.
The Japs were probably laughing their asses off at him.
-
The Japs were probably laughing their asses off at him.
yep. if there's one thing that's important to a nation facing UE problems and other issues - it's whether or not some 4 foot 9, weird lookign fckers in stupid suits on the other side of the world are laughing at us.
Lord knows that shit matters.
-
So again - please tell me why the Japs rejected obama's bitch move on this?
I don't care.
But keep you eyes on your hatred and this stupid shit and the next POTUS will f-you over you again.
GuaranFUCKINGteed
-
yep. if there's one thing that's important to a nation facing UE problems and other issues - it's whether or not some 4 foot 9, weird lookign fckers in stupid suits on the other side of the world are laughing at us.
Lord knows that shit matters.
::) ::)
Right - thats why you spent 24/7 on palin for the first 2 years of this horrendous admn.
-
I don't care.
But keep you eyes on your hatred and this stupid shit and the next POTUS will f-you over you again.
GuaranFUCKINGteed
Yeah - its of complete irrelevence that Obama sought to become the first POTUS in history on the USA since end of WW@ to pull something like this. Right, its meaningless to the Vets, their families, etc. ::) ::)
-
Yeah - its of complete irrelevence that Obama sought to become the first POTUS in history on the USA since end of WW@ to pull something like this. Right, its meaningless to the Vets, their families, etc. ::) ::)
Not meaningless but, Yeah, because its over shadowed by the perpetrated larceny by him and his administration on the people of this country.
Speaking of taking the high road, look in the fucking mirror. Go start a protest if you are that spun up about it.
and while you are at WHAT DID MICHELLE SAY?
JFC, you are a spaz psyco sometimes.
-
Not meaningless but, Yeah, because its over shadowed by the perpetrated larceny by him and his administration on the people of this country.
Speaking of taking the high road, look in the fucking mirror. Go start a protest if you are that spun up about it.
and while you are at WHAT DID MICHELLE SAY?
JFC, you are a spaz psyco sometimes.
hhhmmm- wonder where obama got this idea to apologize to the Japanese? Oh that's right - those of us who warned about Wright were told to STFU and that it was no big deal.
Don't you see how bad you were conned and duped into buying into the false narrative the media and obama and his cult followers sold to you?
-
Actually, there is a lot of historical documentation to explain why Japan nixed the idea. While the Japanese aren't thrilled to have been the only nation ever attacked with atomic weapons during a war, the end result of that attack provided them with things they never dreamed of before - things like freedom, prosperity and democracy.
But, the backstory gets even better. Truman took the step of ending the War in Japan by dropping the atomic bombs for one reason and one reason only - he didn't want to tangle with Russia over dividing the spoils of Japan. At the time that we dropped those bombs, Russia (aka the USSR) was still shifting operations to their coast in preparation for the invasion of Japan. Truman pre-empted their invasion and, as a result, the US owned Japan, much to the relief of the Japanese!
So, by being as ignorant as he is, zero nearly made one of his biggest blunders before an international audience. By its refusal to accept the apology, Japan graciously kept more egg off zero's face and more embarrassment away from America for the moron currently occupying the WH!!
Thank you, Japan!
Via FR
Obama once again proving he is the most ill-informed, incompetent, ignorant, inept, idiotic piece of marxist trash to ever be elected.
-
hhhmmm- wonder where obama got this idea to apologize to the Japanese? Oh that's right - those of us who warned about Wright were told to STFU and that it was no big deal.
Don't you see how bad you were conned and duped into buying into the false narrative the media and obama and his cult followers sold to you?
Again, WHO THE FUCK CARES?
I don't. If our economy was going good i might pay some mind. But other than that...........
-
President Obama, Humiliating the United States One Apology at a Time
Townhall.com ^ | October 12, 2011 | Erika Johnson
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Defending freedom, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, is a tough job, but a righteous one. It's a sacred duty to which the President of the United States should presumably be steadfastly committed. American exceptionalism, however, just doesn't sit well with some people, including the wanton apologizer currently occupying the White House.
Barack Obama's State Department (run by Hillary Clinton) contacted the family of al-Qaida propagandist and recruiter Samir Khan to "express its condolences" to his family.
Khan, a right-hand man to Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed along with Awlaki in an airstrike in Yemen on Sept. 30.
Khan was a Saudi-born American-raised traitor, a full-fledged member of al Qaeda, a proud jihadist, and published a magazine in which he penned articles praising Osama bin Laden and instructing Western youth on different ways to kill infidels. In other words, we annihilated an acknowledged terrorist leader and jihadi propagandist to stop him from killing Americans. And you know what? I'm not even sorry that I'm not sorry. Because I have a will to live, and refuse to allow freedom and prosperity to be terrorized by psychopathic murderers. It's shameful and disturbing that certain higher-up Democrats don't feel the same way.
And while this next almost-apology is older, there is the added revelation that, not only is Japan not looking for an apology for the finalities of WWII, but that such 'diplomacy' is damaging to the worldwide reputation of freedom and democracy.
Another stop on the tour was in Japan, where Obama in November 2009 bowed to the emperor, something no American president had ever done. It could have been worse if plans to visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima to apologize for winning the war with the atom bombs had come to pass.
A heretofore secret cable dated Sept. 3, 2009, was recently released by WikiLeaks. Sent to Secretary of State Clinton, it reported Japan's Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka telling U.S. Ambassador John Roos that "the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a 'nonstarter.'"
The Japanese feared the apology would be exploited by anti-nuclear groups and those opposed to the defensive alliance between Japan and the U.S.
Nobody was gleeful about the prospect of dropping A-bombs on Japan, but we ended the war. And in this day and age, we have a great relationship with Japan. We also have no problems with our freedom-loving friends like Britain and France having nuclear weapons as deterrents to more nefarious parties. The fact that President Obama feels the continual need to condone for ending wars, saving lives, and making the world safe for democracy, is downright mortifying, to say the least.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Cicero--the traitor moves amongst and He rots the soul of a nation
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.
An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.
But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear."
Cicero Marcus Tullius
106-43 BC
________________________
Fits Obama and his cult to a tee
-
Ozmo...as much as this thread got derailed by you two nuts, it does matter and 3 is right. This just paints a picure..a mosaic of his failures and how he views this country. Also at that time there was some speculation that he would apologize. I'm sure we discussed it here. The White House shit all over it as if it were preposterous. This guy is a friggen disaster.
-
Ozmo...as much as this thread got derailed by you two nuts, it does matter and 3 is right. This just paints a picure..a mosaic of his failures and how he views this country. Also at that time there was some speculation that he would apologize. I'm sure we discussed it here. The White House shit all over it as if it were preposterous. This guy is a friggen disaster.
Again, who other than obama pulls this type of crap?
-
Ozmo...as much as this thread got derailed by you two nuts, it does matter and 3 is right. This just paints a picure..a mosaic of his failures and how he views this country. Also at that time there was some speculation that he would apologize. I'm sure we discussed it here. The White House shit all over it as if it were preposterous. This guy is a friggen disaster.
I am not saying it isn't, what i am saying is that an article like this is pointless considering what we are dealing with here in the USA.
I get it, most Americans get it: Obama is a failure. So should we go around and beat a drum over him apologizing to Japan or should we be beating a drum that our government has been hijacked and OB continues to give them the keys to the safe?
You tell me, which one of those is 10 times more important?
-
And I guess I should have added that this is not the most important thing....but jesus, aplogizing to the Japs? I'm speechless.
-
And I guess I should have added that this is not the most important thing....but jesus, aplogizing to the Japs? I'm speechless.
Yeah, unbelievable. A sneak attack, years of brtutal oppression in China, the far east countries and the P.I. The kamakasi attacks and we are supposed to say sorry?
Fuck him and fuck them.
-
And I guess I should have added that this is not the most important thing....but jesus, aplogizing to the Japs? I'm speechless.
why? Is this anything unexpected from this neo-terrorist piece of trash?
I said so from even before this scumbag was elected that he was a treasonous snake. This is par for the course for him.
-
>:( Does not surprise me. What a terd.
-
I get it, most Americans get it: Obama is a failure. So should we go around and beat a drum over him apologizing to Japan or should we be beating a drum that our government has been hijacked and OB continues to give them the keys to the safe?
We should do both.
-
Investors.com?
WTF kind of site is this?
Can you support this story with a link or something more legit?
-
Really? You think he loves this country? Seriously?
Well you dont thats for sure
You only like americans who looks at the world with the same simplified perspective as yourself
You are a nazi in this regard
-
Investors.com?
WTF kind of site is this?
Can you support this story with a link or something more legit?
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/587698/201110111829/Apologies-Not-Accepted.htm
-
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/587698/201110111829/Apologies-Not-Accepted.htm
240 - can you image reagan doing this?
-
CNN’s John King called out Mitt Romney for making false claims about President Obama apologizing while making speeches abroad, something he has repeatedly claimed before. “While (Obama) has said some things that make Republicans mad and are fair game for criticism, President Obama has not apologized for America in the way Governor Romney and many other Republicans assert.”
Romney made the erroneous claim at the Citadel earlier today. “Let me make this very clear,” Romney said. “As president of the United States, I will devote myself to an American century and I will never, ever apologize for America.”
King explained that the Republican meme began with a Karl Rove editorial in April 2009, in which, Rove labeled Obama’s speeches abroad as an “apology tour.” “He has apologized on three continents for what he views as the sins of America and his predecessors,” Rove wrote.
“I can tell you firsthand the President bristles at the apology tour label and the idea he doesn’t view America as an exceptional nation,” King corrected. “He has, though, on several occasions…used very deferential language, conceding America’s mistakes, flaws and even arrogance. He insists being more humble was necessary in those early days because of the hits America’s image took and the Iraq War and what they call George W. Bush’s broader cowboy diplomacy image.”
In September, Politifact called Romney’s oft-used attack on President Obama “Pants On Fire”. “We found not a single, full-throated apology in the bunch. And on the new angle Romney has added — that the trips were intended to offer the president a forum to apologize to other countries — we think it’s a ridiculous charge. There’s a clear difference between changing policies and apologizing, and Obama didn’t do the latter. So we rate Romney’s statement Pants on Fire.”
200 million a day ring a bell :D :D :D
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2011/02/obamas_apology_tour.html&sa=U&ei=T9CWTvPABeHj0QGr__2-BA&ved=0CCcQFjAHOBQ&usg=AFQjCNFibZd8T8PTMT2FyAYKQB8cqofOyg
-
This was in wikileaks and reported in npr yesterday blackass.
-
This was in wikileaks and reported in npr yesterday blackass.
so do you beleive everything wikileaks now,half pint
-
so do you beleive everything wikileaks now,half pint
As opposed to obama admn? Lol.
-
This was in wikileaks and reported in npr yesterday blackass.
So he gave an apology to a country who was nuked 60+years ago causing a lot of civilians casualties
Whats the problem?
-
So he gave an apology to a country who was nuked 60+years ago causing a lot of civilians casualties
Whats the problem?
Lol. Take a guess.
-
Lol. Take a guess.
I dont have to im sure you will enlighten me on why you care that OB gave an excuse to Japan for some dead japanese people some 60+ years ago
-
Commie.
-
Commie.
What a weak response ::)
-
Do you have any fucking clue about the mass atrocities the Japs committed in China? Do you realize how many soldiers we lost in the pacific and would have lost in a full scale invasion not to mention Japanese dead?
Get a fucking clue you far leftist commie freak.
-
Do you have any fucking clue about the mass atrocities the Japs committed in China? Do you realize how many soldiers we lost in the pacific and would have lost in a full scale invasion not to mention Japanese dead?
Get a fucking clue you far leftist commie freak.
So now you suddenly feel for the Chinese LOL you crack me up
-
So now you suddenly feel for the Chinese LOL you crack me up
Again - read a history book and turn off MSNBC blacken
-
You didnt answer my question but i have come to exspect this from you. You just post shit but cant back up
Now tell me, how a man who believes people who loose their job is leaches who deservers every kind of misery, suddenly has a profound love for Chinese people killed 60+ years ago
You cant because you dont
Another failure from your side, an argument you cant back up
Oh by the way you already called me commie in this thread, so please show me you have a little more intellect than a retarded monkey and answer the question to the issue, you yourself has brought up.
-
You didnt answer my question but i have come to exspect this from you. You just post shit but cant back up
Now tell me, how a man who believes people who loose their job is leaches who deservers every kind of misery, suddenly has a profound love for Chinese people killed 60+ years ago
You cant because you dont
Another failure from your side, an argument you cant back up
Oh by the way you already called me commie in this thread, so please show me you have a little more intellect than a retarded monkey and answer the question to the issue, you yourself has brought up.
LMFAO - again - read a book
-
Obama’s perilous ‘Hiroshima’ gambit
Last Updated: 3:15 AM, October 13, 2011
A stunning revelation from a Wikileaks document dump shows President Obama badly bungling relations with our oldest democratic ally in Asia.
In a September 2009 cable prior to Obama’s official visit to Tokyo, our ambassador informs Washington that Tokyo had denied Obama’s bid to go to Hiroshima to publicly apologize for America’s dropping the atom bomb there -- in short, to turn the defeat of Japan into a matter of national humiliation for America.
The Japanese government told the ambassador this would be a “non-starter,” because the gesture would encourage domestic anti-nuclear groups and leftist groups opposed to Japan’s military cooperation with the United States.
With the rise of an increasingly militaristic China and an increasingly unstable North Korea, that cooperation is more vital than ever for both nations. Since 1960, Japan has looked to the US nuclear umbrella to protect its territory; since the 1970s, the United States has encouraged Japanese Self-Defense Forces to develop a bigger conventional capability, especially a strong navy, in order to take some of the burden off our own forces.
Despite some bumps in the road over our base in Okinawa, and Japanese disappointment we aren’t taking a tougher stand on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, the relationship works for the future stability of East Asia.
But it’s also a prickly one, and re-opening old wounds of the kind Obama contemplated could enflame Japanese opinion against its reliance on its American big brother and force Tokyo to try to chart a more independent course.
That would be bad news for US interests in Asia, of course (goodbye to our bases in Japan, for example). But it would also leave Japan facing North Korea, China (with whom a clash over oil drilling rights in the East China Sea seems inevitable) and a rising India on its own -- and with Japan’s sea lanes, the country’s life line, looking vulnerable.
Future Japanese governments would have little choice except to join the region’s burgeoning arms race -- and at least one former Japanese defense official has said the end of the US alliance would probably force Japan to build its own nuclear arsenal.
How ironic, if Obama’s attempt to commemorate the Japanese victims of a nuclear bomb had ultimately led that same country to get nuclear weapons themselves.
Left unsaid was that the gesture would also muddy the issue of who really has something to apologize for in World War II -- America or a Japan that tried to enslave an entire continent and massacred millions of Chinese and hundreds of thousands of Koreans, Burmese and other “subject nations” in the process.
It’s worth considering the full implications of all this.
First, we have a Japanese government with a stronger sense of America’s interests, and our honor and self respect, than our own president -- a president who sought to apologize for using a weapon that ended the most violent and brutal war in history.
A president who is either ignorant or blind to the fact that if we hadn’t used the bomb and had been forced to invade Japan instead, at least 2 million Japanese would have died in a full-scale invasion of Japan, instead of the 300,000 killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- not to mention the 1 million US casualties that the War Department and Joint Chiefs of Staff calculated would come in that assault.
And a president who thinks that such groveling is the way to build good relations with an Asian ally -- when a far better way passed him right by.
That came last March, after the worst disaster to hit Japan since the Second World War. The biggest earthquake in the country’s history and follow-up tsunami left 28,000 Japanese killed or missing, triggered a near-disastrous nuclear accident and shattered its economy. Japan was left feeling stunned and helpless and alone, as it contemplated the worst destruction since Hiroshima.
This was the moment when our president should have ordered up Air Force One and flown out to Tokyo, in order to tour the damage with the US media and to reassure the Japanese people that America stood shoulder to shoulder with our 50-year Asian ally. Then he could have offered immediate help in getting US companies involved in the reconstruction of Japan, which will be going on for years -- a not-to-be-missed opportunity to help our economy, as well as Japan’s.
But Obama largely ignored the disaster, and went to a conference in Rio de Janeiro, instead -- maybe because he couldn’t see anything America could apologize for. That was a shame -- and a sorry excuse for a foreign policy.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_perilous_hiroshima_gambit_Qw0ioyAVubxdA9zSLpsF2H#ixzz1afYuxKVk
________________________ _________________
obama = commie traitor sleeper cell terrorist pofs
-
LMFAO - again - read a book
LMFAO - again - still cant answer questions to issues he himself brought up
You are so brainwashed and hate filled your personality and word as man have gone out the window
You are just a sad soul who looks desp for a cause because his life is hollow
-
LMFAO - again - still cant answer questions to issues he himself brought up
You are so brainwashed and hate filled your personality and word as man have gone out the window
You are just a sad soul who looks desp for a cause because his life is hollow
Fuck you dirtbag - refute the article and go tampon obama.
-
Nothing to refuse the man gave an apology
You are the one making a big deal of it
But then again you are paid by the neocons to post shit here 24/7 right?
Thats why you cant debate an issue you just copy paste and have no idea WTF its about :)
-
Nothing to refuse the man gave an apology
You are the one making a big deal of it
But then again you are paid by the neocons to post shit here 24/7 right?
Thats why you cant debate an issue you just copy paste and have no idea WTF its about :)
WHY IS HE APOLOGIZING?
Again - you communist rabble and flea bags dont even know history!
-
WHY IS HE APOLOGIZING?
Again - you communist rabble and flea bags dont even know history!
Some people died and he wants to apoligoze
Who gives a fuck ???
For a guy who accuse everyone and his mother for being well fare leaches you sure have a lot of free time on your hand :D
-
Some people died and he wants to apoligoze
Who gives a fuck ???
For a guy who accuse everyone and his mother for being well fare leaches you sure have a lot of free time on your hand :D
Who the fuck is he to apologize for us?
We lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the Pacific War, not to mention pearl harbor, and everything else.
Again - take your communist bs and go to NK.
-
Who the fuck is he to apologize for us?
We lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the Pacific War, not to mention pearl harbor, and everything else.
Again - take your communist bs and go to NK.
So Obama kills several terrorists the Bush admin couldnt touch and all you say is "Look at the economy bla bla" but when Obama gives and excuse with no value what-so-ever for some poor japanse civilians killed in only nuclear attack in history you freak out ???
-
Unbelievable.
The only thing Obama should apologize for is his job performance.
Can't believe that there are some morons on this board that don't see anything wrong with that apology.
What don't people understand about war? The USA has nothing to be sorry for, except for electing the current idiot to the presidency.
-
Obama makes the communists, traitors, far left socialists, enemies of America, and those who hate this country with a passion feel perfectly comfortable with going public about it where heretofore it was not that way.
-
Obama makes the communists, traitors, far left socialists, enemies of America, and those who hate this country with a passion feel perfectly comfortable with going public about it where heretofore it was not that way.
A word of advice if you see everyone as enemies who are against you maybe you should take a look inside and see if maybe you are not the one with the issues
Its not our fault you couldnt make it in the capitalist society you love so much
-
Unbelievable.
The only thing Obama should apologize for is his job performance.
Can't believe that there are some morons on this board that don't see anything wrong with that apology.
What don't people understand about war? The USA has nothing to be sorry for, except for electing the current idiot to the presidency.
Nuclear bombing cities causing civilian lives is not your typical war
But who cares its eons ago none of us where even born them(if there is any seniors here sorry my apology :))
-
Nuclear bombing cities causing civilian lives is not your typical war
But who cares its eons ago none of us where even born them(if there is any seniors here sorry my apology :))
you should apologize to everyone for voting for this communist muslim sleeper cell neo-terrorist POTUS
-
you should apologize to everyone for voting for this communist muslim sleeper cell neo-terrorist POTUS
Again try arguing INTELLIGENTLY instead of just throwing out lies
I didnt even vote for the guy but great way to take focus of your failed communication skills ::)
-
I already did. Only a communist sleeper cell neo-terrorist like Obama would do something like this given how awful WW2 was and a land invasion would have been for both sides.
But keep tamponing obama - its ok bro.
-
So Obama kills several terrorists the Bush admin couldnt touch and all you say is "Look at the economy bla bla" but when Obama gives and excuse with no value what-so-ever for some poor japanse civilians killed in only nuclear attack in history you freak out ???
Your argument falls apart in the bolded part.
The apology implies that the USA did something wrong during one of the biggest events in modern history - which gives it tremendous value. You seem to think words don't count because of your interpretation of them. That's not reality.
But, just for the heck of it, if you believe it has "no value", why should he even bother?
-
Your argument falls apart in the bolded part.
The apology implies that the USA did something wrong during one of the biggest events in modern history - which gives it tremendous value. You seem to think words don't count because of your interpretation of them. That's not reality.
But, just for the heck of it, if you believe it has "no value", why should he even bother?
Because obama is the "Black Jesus" to these pieces of garbage who voted for him regardless of whether:
1. He pisses away tax dollars
2. He pisses on our history
3. He pisses on our economy
4. He pisses on our vets
5. He pisses on the USC
6. He pisses on our culture
7. He pisses on nation
8. He pisses on our allies
and on and on and on.
-
Apologies Not Accepted
WWW.INVESTORS.COM
Posted 10/11/2011 06:29 PM ET
In November 2009, Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to bow to Japan's emperor. View Enlarged Image
Leadership: Leaked cables show Japan nixed a presidential apology to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for using nukes to end the overseas contingency operation known as World War II. Will the next president apologize for the current one?
The obsessive need of this president to apologize for American exceptionalism and our defense of freedom continued recently when Barack Obama's State Department (run by Hillary Clinton) contacted the family of al-Qaida propagandist and recruiter Samir Khan to "express its condolences" to his family.
Khan, a right-hand man to Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed along with Awlaki in an airstrike in Yemen on Sept. 30. We apologized for killing a terrorist before he could help kill any more of us.
It's yet another part of the world apology tour that began with Obama taking the oath of office to protect and defend the United States and its Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, something he immediately felt sorry for.
One stop on his tour was Prague in August 2009. There he spoke of "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," ignoring that before 1945 we lived in such a world and it was neither peaceful nor secure.
Another stop on the tour was in Japan, where Obama in November 2009 bowed to the emperor, something no American president had ever done. It could have been worse if plans to visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima to apologize for winning the war with the atom bombs had come to pass.
A heretofore secret cable dated Sept. 3, 2009, was recently released by WikiLeaks. Sent to Secretary of State Clinton, it reported Japan's Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka telling U.S. Ambassador John Roos that "the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a 'nonstarter.'"
The Japanese feared the apology would be exploited by anti-nuclear groups and those opposed to the defensive alliance between Japan and the U.S.
Subscribe to the IBD Editorials Podcast Whatever Tokyo's motive, Obama's motive was to once again apologize for defending freedom, this time for winning with devastating finality the war Japan started.
While Obama envisions a world without nuclear weapons, and moves steadily toward unilateral disarmament of our nuclear arsenal, we envision a world without tyrants and thugs willing to use them against us. We do not fear nuclear weapons in the hands of Britain or France, countries that share our love of freedom and democracy.
It was not all that clear in August 1945 that Japan was ready to surrender. Okinawa, where 101,000 Japanese and 24,000 Americans died, was a clear indication of the fanatical resistance to come in an invasion of the Japanese home islands. That resistance ended only when Tokyo became convinced there would soon be nothing to defend.
Nuclear weapons in the right hands ended the violence of World War II. In the right hands, they kept Western Europe free and helped win the Cold War. And the fact that they'd been used made it less likely they would ever be used again.
The world that Imperial Japan envisioned was quite different than the one we now enjoy. That regime's dream was of an imperial rising sun blistering the globe. Good thing they saw a rising sun of a quite different sort, the fulfillment of Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamato's prophecy after Dec. 7, 1941: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
President Obama fails to realize that being the leader of the Free World, the last best hope for mankind, means never having to say you're sorry.
WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ROT IN FUCKING HELL OBAMA YOU DISGUSTING VERMIN!
you are desperate if you are reaching back 2 and half years for anti-Obama material.....he bowed...so what...get over it
-
This just came out yesterday and confirms what we have said.
-
1. Did reagan ever apologize for america?
2. neotwats deny it.
3. smartass kneepadders find link showing Reagan did.
4. neotwunts insult kneepadders.
-
Obama Hiroshima trip discouraged in '09: Wikileaks cable
Kyodo
A senior official of Japan's Foreign Ministry told the U.S. ambassador in Tokyo it would be premature for U.S. President Barack Obama to visit the atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima during his November 2009 trip to Japan, according to a secret U.S. cable recently released by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.
The cable indicates the Japanese government was then effectively discouraging Obama from visiting Hiroshima despite growing expectations over it following his call for a world free from nuclear weapons in a speech in Prague in April 2009.
The cable, dated Sept. 3, 2009, and sent to U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton, reported Japan's then Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka telling Ambassador John Roos on Aug. 28 that antinuclear groups would speculate over whether the president would visit Hiroshima in light of his Prague speech on nuclear nonproliferation.
"He underscored, however, that both governments must temper the public's expectations on such issues, as the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a 'non-starter'," said the cable.
It also quoted Yabunaka as saying, "While a simple visit to Hiroshima without fanfare is sufficiently symbolic to convey the right message, it is premature to include such program in the November visit."
"Yabunaka recommended that the visit in November center mostly in Tokyo," it said.
Yabunaka, now adviser to the Foreign Ministry, said Monday he would not comment on or confirm any document that was released in an unfair manner.
At a news conference during his visit to Japan in November 2009, Obama said he would be honored and it would be significant for him to visit Hiroshima and the other atomic-bombed city of Nagasaki in the future.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110928f4.html
-
Also I think he bowed out of respect for the elderly..I do this a lot myself....bowing is not a sign or weakness as some would think..it was a respectful gesture and thats all....conservatives have nothing better to do
-
Also I think he bowed out of respect for the elderly..I do this a lot myself....bowing is not a sign or weakness as some would think..it was a respectful gesture and thats all....conservatives have nothing better to do
That old man is like "Damn you are stupid"
-
That old man is like "Damn you are stupid"
me thinks you have heard this statement many times in your life
-
me thinks you have heard this statement many times in your life
-
you always post a weird Obama pic when you are caught in a "gotcha " moment :)
-
Did the government of Japan ever apologize for Pearl Harbor?
-
Gimme a break..u idiot Obama apologists. He's bowing, christ he looks like he wants to suck his cock. Obama is ashamed of this country. Obama ought to look at what the Japs did to the Chinese before apologizing. He's a piece of shit.
-
Gimme a break..u idiot Obama apologists. He's bowing, christ he looks like he wants to suck his cock. Obama is ashamed of this country. Obama ought to look at what the Japs did to the Chinese before apologizing. He's a piece of shit.
This type of idiocy I would expect from 3333.....saying that Obama hates this country....wow..what planet are you on>???...Countries apologize to each other about shit all the time..big fucking deal...why does it bother you so much???..we have apologized to France, Canada, and other countries for shot we did in the past...who cares?..we recent;y apologized to Guatemala for the STD experiments we did on their citizenry....you are so hysterical when it comes to Obama that if he takes a shit you find something wrong with it
-
This type of idiocy I would expect from 3333.....saying that Obama hates this country....wow..what planet are you on>???...Countries apologize to each other about shit all the time..big fucking deal...why does it bother you so much???..we have apologized to France, Canada, and other countries for shot we did in the past...who cares?..we recent;y apologized to Guatemala for the STD experiments we did on their citizenry....you are so hysterical when it comes to Obama that if he takes a shit you find something wrong with it
This is not some minor thing. This is one of the biggest things, if not the biggest to happen in the 20th century.
-
Did the government of Japan ever apologize for Pearl Harbor?
They tried.
Emperor Hirohito himself. Was turned away by order of Gen. MacArthur.
-
This is not some minor thing. This is one of the biggest things, if not the biggest to happen in the 20th century.
what are you talking about???..what was the biggest thing?
-
They tried.
Emperor Hirohito himself. Was turned away by order of Gen. MacArthur.
I didn't know that......Gen. MacArthur was one badass mofo though
-
I didn't know that......Gen. MacArthur was one badass mofo though
official war apologies happen all the time. It's for history.
you have ignorant pompous bag-o-dicks who say "no apologies, bitches", but they're the same type of poor judgment turds who think palin would be a fine canddiate.
-
official war apologies happen all the time. It's for history.
you have ignorant pompous bag-o-dicks who say "no apologies, bitches", but they're the same type of poor judgment turds who think palin would be a fine canddiate.
exactly...apologies don't make us look bad....as you said, its basically for history's sake...and to make sure our enemies (and friends) can never use it as an issue against us because of they bring it up, we can always say..."hey we apologized for that already...lets move on"
-
exactly...apologies don't make us look bad....as you said, its basically for history's sake...and to make sure our enemies (and friends) can never use it as an issue against us because of they bring it up, we can always say..."hey we apologized for that already...lets move on"
The people who cry about this just don't have a clue on history. Type in "reagan apology" in google if you disagree.
Every president you love and hate has apologized to countries and groups for both valid and nonsense reasons. It's protocol, tradition, whatever. Doesn't affect us. If some 4 foot 11 japanese beaurucrat is laughing about it on the other side of the world - WHO CARES? they're short and ugly and have to deal with tusnamis and radiation. i dont worry about if they're laughing really.
-
The people who cry about this just don't have a clue on history. Type in "reagan apology" in google if you disagree.
Every president you love and hate has apologized to countries and groups for both valid and nonsense reasons. It's protocol, tradition, whatever. Doesn't affect us. If some 4 foot 11 japanese beaurucrat is laughing about it on the other side of the world - WHO CARES? they're short and ugly and have to deal with tusnamis and radiation. i dont worry about if they're laughing really.
How much does ofa pay you?
-
1. Did reagan ever apologize for america?
2. neotwats deny it.
3. smartass kneepadders find link showing Reagan did.
4. neotwunts insult kneepadders.
Reagan never apologized to another Country.
-
Reagan never apologized to another Country.
http://ceinquiry.us/2011-02-05-reagan-apology
The Reagan administration apologized to Japan for a sea incident, to France for the US’ hiding of a Nazi war criminal after WWII, to “Red” China for a police failure to abide by the Vienna Convention, to the Soviet-puppet regime in Poland for subsidizing anti-government radio programs, and to tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans for their internment during WWII.
-
http://ceinquiry.us/2011-02-05-reagan-apology
Nice try, but another fail on your behalf.
The Reagan administration apologized to Japan for a sea incident
This was an accident, and he did not apologize for our actions, just said it was regrettable that it happened.
to tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans for their internment during WWII.
My above statement said "to another Country"... FYI "Japanese-Americans" are Americans.
o “Red” China for a police failure to abide by the Vienna Convention
The State Department apologizing for something some College campus Police did does not qualify as having Reagan apologize.
-
Nice try, but another fail on your behalf.
This was an accident, and he did not apologize for our actions, just said it was regrettable that it happened.
My above statement said "to another Country"... FYI "Japanese-Americans" are Americans.
The State Department apologizing for something some College campus Police did does not qualify as having Reagan apologize.
EPIC SPIN
-
No apologies needed
By Boston Herald Editorial Staff
Saturday, October 15, 2011 - Updated 2 days ago
E-mail Print (18) Comments Text size Share
We shouldn’t be surprised that President Barack Obama wanted to visit the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to apologize for the atomic bombs dropped on them in World War II. Obama has been willing to “blame America first” for almost anything wrong with the world, but these visits would have marked a new low.
Fortunately, the Japanese government refused to permit such abasement. Obama had to be content on his 2009 world apology tour with lamenting (in his Cairo speech to Muslims of the Middle East) a “colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims” (Which part of the Middle East was colonized by Americans again?) and with begging Iran, in a totally ineffective televised plea, to play nice.
According to Investor’s Business Daily, a State Department cable made public by Wikileaks reported to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka told U.S. Ambassador John Roos that an apologetic visit to Hiroshima was “a non-starter” because it might arouse anti-nuclear and anti-United States sentiment in Japan.
Our country is afflicted with a president dangerously enraptured by what he thinks is the power of his words, and ignorant of history, how the world interprets what he says and the nature of his country’s adversaries.
President Truman ordered Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombed in 1945 in an effort to end a ghastly war and avoid an invasion of Japan that experts believed could have cost a million Allied casualties. The bombings must be judged by what was known or knowable at the time. They may or may not have been unwise, but they did help end a war started by Japan. Those facts make an apology ridiculous, and Japan did America a favor by preventing one.
-
Obama’s Empty Apologetics
National Review ^ | 10/19/2011 | Victor Davis Hanson
Grand ahistorical apologies for others can obscure one’s own actual sins.
At any time in the 2,500-year history of Western diplomacy, has a head of state been advised by his host not to apologize for a long-ago act? I cannot think offhand of any instance until, apparently, two years ago.
According to a controversial leak provided by WikiLeaks — and picked up in stories by news outlets from AP to NPR — Barack Obama’s administration was politely advised by the Japanese in September 2009 that there would be no need for the presidential entourage to go to Hiroshima, apparently to apologize for the dropping of the atomic bomb 64 years earlier.
If the story is true, Obama seemed intent on showing the world that his predecessors had long ago done wrong. The intended gesture was of a piece with his bowing to the Japanese emperor and his novel dispatching of a delegation to the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing the following year.
The Japanese, if we can believe the leaked cables, called the proposed apology “a nonstarter” and stated that they feared blowback, in the form of encouragement for anti-nuclear and anti-American domestic forces — especially at a time when Japan is sensitive about its geostrategic vulnerability in a neighborhood that includes China, Russia, and North Korea. (Perhaps the Japanese would have preferred from Obama instead a stronger reiteration that they still reside safely beneath the U.S. defense umbrella.)
We can assume as well that the last thing the Japanese wanted was a sort of tit-for-tat cycle of apologies — given things like Nanking, Pearl Harbor, Bataan, the 20 million Chinese dead, the Korean “comfort women” corps, and Unit 731.
A PATTERN HERE?
Unfortunately, Obama’s presidency has been characterized by a habit of apologizing for his country. Indeed, in his first year in office alone, he offered regrets to Europe for past U.S. “arrogance,” to the Muslim world for not being “perfect” in our prior relations, to Latin America for trying to “dictate our terms,” to Turkey for America’s slavery, segregation, and, apparently, genocide of the Native Americans, and, indirectly, to Iran for the Mossadegh coup (“the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government,” and thus, presto, there has been “a tumultuous history between us”).
Note the difference between such existential historical apologies and more direct and targeted presidential mea culpas over particular transgressions — things like Bill Clinton saying he was sorry for not doing anything to save Rwandans, or for hitting the Chinese embassy in 1999 during the bombing in the Balkans, or for the Tuskegee syphilis experiment (or, for that matter, his serial expression of “I’m so sorry” for the Monica Lewinsky imbroglio).
Instead, we are now dealing with the existential apology for America’s past sins. In this regard, Obama’s confessionals follow Bill Clinton’s own other examples of broad-brush atonement for his less than noble ancestors — slavery in Africa, anti-Communist politics in Central America, support for the 1967 Greek coup. What, then, drives President Obama to want to apologize for his country?
MORE CONFIDENT AND “STRONGER”?
Sometimes, the president thinks apologetics are in our strategic interest, as if America alone should apologize to set a moral example. Former press secretary Robert Gibbs defended Obama’s Central American lamentations on the ground that they “changed the image of America around the world” and made the U.S. “safer and stronger.”
In the Al-Arabiya interview, his first after taking office, Obama offered a paradigm of critiquing the Bush administration (“all too often the United States starts by dictating — in the past on some of these issues — and we don’t always know all the factors that are involved”). He implied general regret (“we are ready to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest”) and emphasized his own particular identity (“I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries”). All of that would usher in a new era of relations with the Muslim world.
Of course, that did not happen. Iran responded with the continued killing of Americans from Afghanistan to Iraq, and most recently by attempting to do the same in Washington, D.C. — amid a long litany of threats to destroy the Jewish state. Most polls do not reveal a marked upsurge of pro-American feeling in the Middle East. North African protesters often blamed Obama; he is the least liked U.S. president in Israeli history; and he has enraged Pakistan.
In fact, there is no empirical evidence that apologizing — as distinct from learning from one’s mistakes and trying to avoid them in the future — makes a state “stronger.” Given the tragic nature of humankind — go back to Thucydides’ explorations of the topic — states, like people, are just as likely to interpret apology as weakness, all the more so when the atonement refers to an event before their own times, and raises the question to the proposed recipient: “Hmmm, why now and for what reason?”
THEM, NOT ME
Second, Obama, even more than Clinton, seeks to distance himself from the main currents of America’s past, by picking and choosing what he might and might not have done in retrospect. The president stakes out a higher moral ground by telling the world that he was not responsible for, and indeed, in his singular wisdom, would never have committed, such sins. Most notoriously, Obama replied to a near-hour-long anti-American tirade by Daniel Ortega not by questioning Ortega’s own anti-democratic and often bloody record, but by meekly offering, “I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.” Apparently, the concern was not that a thug had unfairly trashed his country, but that Ortega might have included among his targets the innocent toddler Obama as well.
But such distancing is tricky. It opens a Pandora’s box of flawed assumptions. Is any nation free of sin? Apologizing for both ancient American sins and George W. Bush’s more recent ones while in Turkey — perpetrator of mass killings of Armenians, Greeks, and Kurds — is surreal. The Arab world, to which Obama offered contrition, since World War II has systematically ethnically cleansed Jews and Christians from the Middle East. When an American apologizes for something in the 19th century to those who commit horrific acts in the 20th and 21st centuries, the message is not necessarily strength and confidence, but either uncertainty about one’s own history, or an insecure need to win affection from the far more culpable.
And if Obama sees the story of America as largely one of slavery, segregation, racism, and class and gender exploitation — rather than the amelioration of such universal human sins — coupled with commercial greed abroad, can he so easily separate himself from the dividends of those sins? Does his ability to enjoy Martha’s Vineyard, to jet into tony resorts, or, for that matter, before he was president to buy a Chicago mansion and find lucrative employment, have nothing to do with the singular nature of the American commercial system?
An apology for other Americans’ sins is easy and cheap, while changing one’s lifestyle to reflect a presumed penance for unfairly acquired benefits is much harder. Yet without the latter, we are reduced to carnival — something like multimillion-dollar celebrities or rich students at exclusive schools screaming about Wall Street greed and the unfair distribution of wealth, or a Noam Chomsky, from his comfortable Cambridge digs, tenured and salaried by the defense-contract-receiving MIT, blasting American military and economic transgressions.
Third, historical ignorance — a symptom in part of the college therapeutic curriculum — prompts many of the Obama apologies. Almost everything in his infamous Cairo speech was historically inaccurate, from the bogus Muslim tolerance in Córdoba during the Inquisition (there were virtually no Muslims present at that time in the city) to the idea of Islamic catalysts for the Western Renaissance and Enlightenment. His assertion that democratic governments cannot be imposed by force implies that Japan, Germany, and Italy willingly evolved into states with liberal constitutions.
Clearly, Obama knows nothing of the bad/worse historical choices in the decision to drop the bomb. Was America to lose hundreds of thousands of men in an invasion of Japan, to settle for a negotiated armistice that left the Tokyo militarists in power, to continue the far more deadly fire raids (enhanced by closer Okinawa runways and, soon, the transference of American heavy bombers from postwar Europe), rather than drop the atomic bomb?
Did Obama grasp that Turkey is the inheritor of 500 years of Ottoman colonialism — far longer and more brutal than the European brand? Is it so easy in the present to cast aspersions on the Cold War against a nuclear Soviet Union — a country that had previously destroyed 20 million of its own, and gobbled up Eastern Europe — when America was understandably sometimes less than perfect in the selection of its anti-Communist allies? Only an unschooled mind offers such ahistorical apologies — an all too common phenomenon in today’s academic world, where abstraction rules and cold realities do not intrude on tenured lifestyles.
PENANCE FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME
Apologizing for the sins of long-dead others, in psychological fashion, obviates the need for present contrition for one’s own personal shortcomings. For example, Obama blasts past racism, but to this day has never apologized for subsidizing, by attendance and tithes, the abject racist and anti-Semite Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is easier for Obama to apologize for America’s action in World War II than to apologize because as an irresponsible youth (“teenage boys are frequently confused”), he used cocaine (“maybe a little blow”) — a felonious practice that has long subsidized the murderous Latin American drug cartels. To cast stones at the dead, one must first be free of sin while alive.
In short, anytime an American president offers apologies for supposed transgressions in his nation’s long distant past, it tells us more about the apologizer than it does about the purported sin.