THE UNITED STATES OF APOLOGY
By Christine M. Flowers
Philadelphia Inquirer
410_Christine_M__Flowers__The_United_States_of_Apo logy.html
April 10 2009
PRESIDENT Obama, can you please stop apologizing for me?
The mea culpas – actually "nostra" culpas – are getting a bit stale. I
know that some revel in this national self-abasement, but many of
us are getting tired of being dragged into this vast diplomatic
therapy session.
You’re now officially Apologizer in Chief, making sure the rest of
the world has yet a few more reasons to feel smugly superior to the
country you’ve been elected to lead.
It started from day one, when you signed an order authorizing the
closure of Guantanamo, with the clear implication we’d done something
horribly wrong there.
The truth is, most of our Gitmo guests hate the U.S., and would be
all too happy to do serious damage to this country.
That was nowhere more clear than when a National Geographic crew
filmed the inmates. Did you see that documentary? The guards were
restrained and professional while the scruffy guys in the orange suits,
the ones your administration seems to feel so sorry for, were spitting,
cursing and acting out.
The thought of our beating our breasts for "mistreating" these
upstanding gents rankles. Truth is, we bent over backward to operate
within the law, but when 3,000 of your countrymen are murdered in
cold blood, Emily Post doesn’t always apply. (Just look at the two
guys you like to compare yourself to. Lincoln knew it. And so did FDR.)
And if that wasn’t enough, then you had us apologizing to the whole
Muslim world, most recently on your trip to Turkey, where you said,
"I know that the trust that binds us has been strained, and I know
that strain is shared in many places where the Muslim faith is
practiced. Let me say this as clearly as I can: The United States is
not at war with Islam."
Uh, really? They mistrust us? Funny, but I don’t recall any Americans
flying planes into buildings in Istanbul, while I do remember when we
actually mobilized our military to protect the interests of Muslims,
including protecting the Bosnians against the Serbs when those morally
superior folks in Europe wouldn’t lift a finger.
Then there’s our foreign aid to predominantly Muslim countries in
Africa. And we were also the big kahuna when the tsunami nearly wiped
a majority Muslim nation off the map. Yet we have to apologize because
"the trust that binds us" has been strained?
Well, perhaps the stress fracture occurred when Americans saw rabid
Palestinians marching in the streets and cheering as they watched
film of the burning Trade Center. (Did they ever apologize for that?)
Why, all of a sudden, this special concern for Muslim
sensibilities? Sure, there’s a big difference between fundamental
Islamists and the more westernized fellows that greeted you in
Ankara last week. They, at least, don’t believe that beating a woman
into unconsciousness is a reasonable response to chatting with a
man-not-your-husband.
But there’s actually a growing, and dangerous, fundamentalist shift
in Turkey’s direction, led by its government, characterized by the
return of head scarves for women, a blurring of the lines between the
religious and the secular, and a prime minister who is only slightly
less anti-Western than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
This is also a country that has never admitted (let alone apologizing
for) exterminating a generation of Christian Armenians. So the fact
that you’ve actually lobbied for Turkey’s inclusion in the EU when
even our so-called European allies are opposed to it, is troubling.
And speaking of those "allies," I almost lost my breakfast when I heard
you tell the crowds in Strasbourg, France, that "there have been times
where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."
That so? Just how arrogant were we when we sent our boys to storm the
beaches of Normandy, at the cost of thousands of American lives? How
dismissive were our diplomats when they brilliantly executed the
Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe with Americans’ money? How
derisive were our citizens as they entered the Peace Corps, sent
money to foreign charities, adopted foreign children?
Mr. President, it’s OK if you have a guilt complex.
Just leave me out of it. *
Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer. See her on Channel 6’s "Inside Story"
Sunday at 11:30 a.m. E-mail [email protected].