NO APOLOGY? MITT ROMNEY IS WRONG
Stephen Kinzer
guardian.co.uk
Thursday 18 March 2010 21.00 GMT
Mitt Romney’s new book title suggests the US owes ‘No Apology’,
but every nation, like every human being, has sinned
Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney greets supporters
in West Virginia. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty
I haven’t read Mitt Romney’s new book, but I already hate it. The
title is what sets me off: No Apology. That phrase encapsulates a
tragic impulse that weakens nations just as it devastates the human
spirit. Americans are hardly its only victims. Because of the power
the United States wields in the world, though, their collective
egotism and self-deception is especially destabilising.
In his tub-thumping speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention,
Romney sounded like the hedge-fund tycoon he is. He railed against
"big-government liberals" and called the US "the greatest nation
in the history of the earth". His effort to present himself as the
presidential candidate of the far right may be paying off. Groups of
voters who consider President Obama a dangerous Marxist have pushed
their way into the political arena, and some are focusing on Romney as
their favorite for 2012. Although his Mormon beliefs may give pause
to some, his ultra-nationalism, combined with his private fortune,
blow-dried good looks and big-business resume, make him a plausible
candidate.
Romney is a classic case of re-invention. As governor of Massachusetts,
he supported government-sponsored healthcare, was sympathetic to gay
rights and opposed harsh restrictions on abortion.
After measuring the difference between the Massachusetts electorate
and the national one to which he must now appeal, he has reversed those
positions. Early polls show him among the Republican frontrunners.
Now, for the first time, Romney finds himself in need of a global
vision. Presumably he lays it out in his book. I may get around to
reading it, but for now I can’t get past the title. It urges the
United States to take the kind of defiant, kill-’em-all approach to
the world that will antagonise its friends, strengthen its enemies,
and undermine its own security.
Every nation, like every individual, would like to believe it owes
"no apology" to anyone. Adults realise, however, that few among us
are purely innocent or utterly blameless. The title Romney has given
his book suggests that there are many bad countries in the world,
and that they have done many bad things – but the US is not among
them. It is a paragon of virtue, has brought the world nothing but
good, and thus owes "no apology".
By this logic, Iran should apologise to the US for taking American
diplomats hostage in 1979, but the US needs make "no apology" to Iran
for overthrowing its elected government in 1953 and setting it off
toward half a century of dictatorship. Afghans should apologise for
giving al-Qaida a base to plan attacks against the US, but Americans
owe "no apology" to Afghanistan for empowering Afghan warlords and
training thousands of Islamic militants in the 1980s. Leftist leaders
in Latin America should apologise for their anti-US positions, but
the US owes "no apology" for its historic role in propping up cruel
dictators from Cuba to Chile.
Germany has profusely apologised to Jews for Nazi crimes. Canada,
Australia and New Zealand have apologised for their treatment of native
peoples. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France recently conceded that
his country had made "profound errors" and shown "a kind of blindness"
by supporting the genocidal force that slaughtered nearly a million
Rwandans in 1994. These apologies are steps toward conciliation and
stability, and should be encouraged. Who knows what might ensue if
Turkey could bring itself to apologise to the Armenians, or Belgium
to the Congolese, or Japan to the Koreans, or China to the Tibetans
– or if Israelis and Palestinians could apologise to each other for
years of violent outrages.
Rather than embrace Mitt Romney’s aggressively ignorant view of the
world, Americans should try to accommodate themselves to history. That
means accepting the reality that every nation, like every human being,
has sinned. Nations have the moral authority to point fingers at others
only if they also reflect on how their own policies have contributed
to the suffering, rage and violence that is shaking the world. "We
abominate in others those faults which are most manifestly our own,"
Montaigne wrote five centuries ago. Then he quoted one of his favorite
Latin proverbs: Stercus cuique suum bene olet. Everyone’s shit smells
good to himself.