Fraters Libertas

All Apologies

Yesterday was Donald Rumsfeld’s turn to placate the baying hounds of humiliation from the press and the Left with his own apology for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. I suppose the transgressions were egregious enough, and the population of interest (Arabs) hypersensitive and ill-informed enough to justify this reaction. On the whole, I agree with Victor Davis Hanson’s summation of how this should be handled (via NRO):

We have to ... explain to an exasperated American people why other people hate us for who we are rather than what we do; and apologize sincerely and forcefully once — not gratuitously and zillions of times — for the rare transgression.

But I must say that this whole business of Presidents and Secretaries of Defense apologizing during a time of war for the actions of sixth generation subordinates to be strange. Maybe I’m a cold-hearted snake, but prior to the press framing the entire story as a drama over who will apologize and when, it never even occurred to me that the highest executives in our government would apologize. Simply stated, it’s a childish expectation.

But the national press, and locally, the Star Tribune, began setting the agenda days ago with scream headlines and indignant stories (news stories mind you, not editorials) specifically about how Bush hasn’t apologized yet. This from the opening paragraph of a May 6 Star Tribune lead article (reprint from the AP):

There was no apology, no "I'm sorry," when President Bush set out to defuse Arab anger about the abuse and death of Iraqi prisoners. Instead, he fell back on Washington's time-tested mistakes-are-made formula.

And here’s the opening sentence from the lead article on May 5:

Acknowledging mistakes but stopping short of an apology, President Bush told the Arab world on Wednesday that Americans are appalled by the abuse and deaths of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. soldiers.

The lead sentences from the lead stories about Iraq. Do you start to get the sense the press had a predetermined agenda? That a Presidential apology was THE critical part of this story and the lack of one, yet another page 1 scandal? Absolutely ridiculous.

As I said, for me in the real world, prior to seeing this press advocacy, I never even considered it for a moment. Yes, the administration needs to investigate and take stern action against those responsible, and make changes to lessen the likelihood that it happens again. But having the President and Rumsfeld mouth the feel good magic words of of a therapeutic mediation session? To quiver their chins in front of our enemies and natter on about feeling their pain? What is the point of that?

Besides reinforcing liberals’ world view that good intentions are enough to overcome the evils that lurk in the hearts of some men, there’s only one reason for the press to attempt to bully an apology out of the President and other high ranking officials. That is, to lay the foundation for retribution. Bush and Rumsfeld apologized, therefore they were negligent in their duties. They admitted incompetence, time to get rid of them, via an early resignation with Rumsfeld and an election loss for Bush in November. For under a caring Kerry administration we’re to believe prison guards in a war zone would never brutalize their enemy captives. And if they did, I have a feeling the press would contend it wasn’t Kerry’s fault, since deep down, he really cares.

The tireless effort by the press and the Democrats to get an apology from Bush is nothing more than a political ploy. The Iraqi abuse story is just the latest episode the President’s antagonists have tried to blow out of proportion in order to hurt him politically and to serve their own narrow interests. Here’s a a short list of previous offenses deemed worthy of a personal apology from George W. Bush and the where the lack of an apology was news in itself:

For the 9/11 attacks

For referencing the 9/11 attacks in campaign advertising

For the war in Iraq

For State Department criticism of Jesse Ventura’s vanity trip to Cuba

For Chinese pilots crashing their planes into US spy planes

For descriptive comments about a New York Times reporter

For the Bush family cat

For America’s role in defeating the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979

For alleged war crimes in the Philippines 100 years ago

For slavery

As you can see, turning the President into a kowtowing bootlick has been a high priority in the press since even before his election. Not sure how Bush will respond in the future to these inevitably continuing demands. But if he’s going to be in the apology business, he might consider hiring Tim Blair as a speech writer. Here’s Tim’s advice for addressing other countries who now find themselves in a position to pass judgment on America. Now this is an apology:

To the planet’s assembled corrupt nations and institutions, what else can I say but this: I am sorry. I am sorry, Syria, for distracting you from your wonderful torturing and killing and obliteration of elemental freedoms. Egypt -- my heart aches for the concerns you must have had for the prisoners in Abu Ghraib, cruelly denied the electric shocks you routinely administer in your own country. The traditions of liberty in Jordan are likewise affronted by our inexcusable behaviour. Who knows how many schoolgirls have escaped burning buildings in Saudi Arabia while that beautiful nation has wrung its hands over America’s evil? And to the United Nations, bravely shaping a wealthy future for many previously impoverished UN officials, I also say: I am sorry.”