He’s doin’ what comes
naturally
By Wesley Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
Barack Obama just can’t help himself. Bowing to
rogues and rascals, stooping low enough to bang his
head on the sidewalk, comes naturally to him. He
learned to talk by apologizing to everyone in the
nursery. He was the prince of all he surveyed, and
learned early that slick talk could take him almost
anywhere.
The dreams of most little boys are made of throwing
a no-hitter, of scoring the winning touchdown or
stuffing a basketball down a hole with no time on
the clock. Not little Barack. He dreamed of cocking
his ear for the inevitable wave of applause after a
nifty little speech.
The president clearly doesn’t understand why his
countrymen are outraged when he goes off on one of
his frequent apology riffs when no apology is needed
or deserved. He never learned that Americans bow to
no one. He absorbed as a child the notion that
America is a rotten society with a debt to the
tribes of the Third World that it can never repay.
His apology to the ingrates of Afghanistan for the
accidental burning of copies of the Koran that
Muslim prisoners had defaced with written
invitations to fellow prisoners to kill Americans,
was the most heartfelt speech so far this election
year. “I wish to express my deep regret for the
reported incident . . . ,” he told Hamid Karzai, the
president of what passes for a government in Kabul.
“I extend to you and the Afghani people my sincere
apologies.” If read closely, the apology, studded
with the personal pronouns that dominate everything
this president says, was not, for which we can be
grateful, an apology from the American people. He
knew he was not speaking for the rest of us.
The president could have offered a simple
explanation, not an apology, of why and how the
Korans, mutilated by Muslim prisoners, were burned.
The defaced Korans were inadvertently included in
the refuse of the jail, and when the American
soldiers dispatched to supervise the burning of the
refuse saw the Korans they tried to retrieve them.
This is a lot more than Muslim trash-burners,
including our “allies” in Saudi Arabia, will do to
show respect for the Bible. Such an explanation is
what Americans would expect from a president with no
divided emotional attachments.
The president boasted this week that his apology has
“calmed things down,” observing that the rioting,
the national sport in Islamic countries, has more or
less subsided. “We’re not out of the woods yet,” he
said, and then made another little speech. “My
criteria in any decision I make, getting
recommendations from folks who are actually on the
ground, is what is going to best protect our folks
and make sure they can accomplish their mission.” He
added the usual blah-blah, familiar not only from
this president, that “we are making progress” and
“the overwhelming majority of Afghan troops have
welcomed and benefitted from the training and
‘partnering’ that we’re doing.”
Some partners. Some welcome. Two ranking American
military officers who were murdered at their desks
inside a “secure” government ministry building in
Kabul would beg to differ. Hamid Karzai’s abject
apology for the murders apparently got lost in the
mail.
Like his predecessor, who fatuously called Islam “a
religion of peace,” the president applies good
manners to mask reality. He rightly urges Americans
to show respect for the Islamic right to religious
belief, and condemns book-burning, even if
accidental. But he could have used this as a
teaching moment.
He could have reminded President Karzai and
like-minded Muslims that respect is a two-way
street, that if Muslims expect Americans to respect
the content of their belief—as opposed to their
right to believe it—they must show similar respect
for the rights of others. No more beheading of
“infidels,” no more banning of Bibles, no more
encouraging imams like Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Iraq
to describe “infidels” as equivalent to “urine,
feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs,
alcoholic liquors.” (He overlooked stinkbugs, cats,
bedbugs and chiggers.) The president of the United
States owes these people an apology?
President Obama obviously understands that he
offends many prospective voters with his craven
apologies to those who deserve no apology. He
nevertheless imagines that such apologies will
persuade the Muslim mob, as well as Afghan
“partners,” to be polite to the American soldiers in
their midst. The credulity of this commander in
chief knows no bounds. Fortunately for the rest of
us, such gullibility does not extend to the sadder
but wiser sergeants, corporals and privates in the
ranks.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The
Washington Times.