Anybody else annoyed by this "apology" nonsense?
Saying it's false and explaining why it is is one thing but I'm more than a little annoyed and slightly concerned at the attitude that suggests that issuing an "apology" and/or trying to disavow things that should not be held as being representative of who we are as a country (i.e. Jones' Koran burning and anti-Muslim film) are necessarily considered bad things in the first place. There should be nothing wrong with saying "sorry" when circumstances warrant it and there have been more than a few things in recent years that warrant an apology from our country, specifically our leaders whether it's torturing people, Abu Gharib, and/or invading and occupying Iraq in the absence of a verifiable imminent threat to us- just to mention a few things. What about all those countries whose governments we brought down and dictators we propped up over the years? How many innocent people died under the boot heels of some of the people that we supported?
Yet, since we're the USA, it seems like many (most) Republicans (and even a lot of Congressional Democrats) seem to conflate apologizing with being "weak" and that being from the USA basically means never having to say we're sorry for anything no matter how bad we mess up. We won't even allow ourselves to be held accountable for really bad behavior, which is why, I suspect we didn't go along with the International Criminal Court- because George W. Bush and his (mis-)administration full of neocon minions were already planning to do things that it knew that the international community would not approve of and would possibly even consider to be war crimes. Unfortunately, I don't believe that we will EVER get enough votes in Congress even now to ever ratify that particular treaty (among others) for the foreseeable future.
I'm not suggesting that we need to confess all of our sins and/or grovel at the feet of the world and try to repent all of our sins, however IMHO I think that we need to get rid of this concept that we are above making mistakes and that being willing to admit our mistakes- once again, when circumstances clearly warrant it- makes us strong, not weak in the eyes of the world IMHO.
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