“If I made you cry, I’m sorry. From the bottom of my heart, I apologize if I caused you pain, I know I’m to blame…. I apologize….Please let me make amends….” So warbled Billy Eckstine many years ago, and so sings our President today.
The Obama team feels compelled to express regret for most of American history. We must say “sorry” for on-going racism, never mind that we now have a black President; for Hiroshima, never mind that Truman saved millions of American soldiers’ lives by using a nuclear weapon to make it unnecessary to invade Japan; for inattention to the wishes of our European allies, never mind that our troops spent 50 years protecting them from a Russian takeover; for taking out Saddam, never mind that we liberated millions of Iraqis from tyranny; for Guantanamo, never mind that our interrogations extracts life-saving information from terrorists.
Barack Obama is the apologizer-in-chief, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, his top aide. The New York Times, hardly the organ of the lunatic right, notes, “It has become a recurring theme of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s early travels as the chief diplomat of the United States: she says that American policy on a given issue has failed, and her foreign listeners fall all over themselves in gratitude. …”
Most recently, President Obama apologized to our Latin American neighbors. It seems that “our promises of partnership have gone unfulfilled in the past… we have been disengaged and at times we sought to dictate our terms”. Guilty as charged by his new friends, Hugo Chàvez and Daniel Ortega.
What The New York Times calls Clinton’s “contrition tour” includes visits to China to apologize for America’s emissions of greenhouse gases; to Mexico to accept responsibility for that nation’s inability to curb its drug wars and police corruption — we buy drugs and sell guns, activities that do not seem to have caused problems on our Northern border; to Indonesia to confess that our Myanmar policy has failed; and to the Middle East, to suggest that our failure to talk to Iran is the reason that country is seeking nuclear weapons with which to wipe the Zionist entity off the face of the earth.
Secretary Clinton, says The New York Times, is operating within her family’s tradition. Her husband was a serial apologizer, although not for activities involving “that woman”. He apologized for American support of slavery and our “neglect and ignorance” of Africa, our “complicity in apartheid”, and our — his — slow response to the slaughter in Bosnia.
His wife’s boss, of course, has already apologized to Europe for insensitivity and bullying, to Turkey for not showing appropriate respect to practitioners of the Muslim faith, and to…. Well, you get the idea. Ideology “is so yesterday,” the Secretary of State tells reporters.
Does all this apologizing pay off? So far, no. Chàvez’s prestige has been enhanced by the President’s smiling handshake, but his destruction of Venezuela’s democratic institutions continues apace; Iran has imprisoned an American reporter on charges so trumped-up as to embarrass Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; China has not cancelled any of its planned coal-fired power plants; our European friends have refused to augment Obama’s stimulus spending or provide additional fighting troops for Afghanistan; and Obama’s apology for Guantanamo prompted the approving French President Nikolas Sarkozy to accept one — count ‘em, one — released detainee.
There are two ways to look at all of this contrition. One is as a mere continuance of campaign mode: after two years of attacking George W. Bush, the campaign to denigrate the former president remains in high gear, and requires repudiating every aspect of his foreign policy. We are in Year One on the Obama calendar; all that went before requires apology and atonement.
The more favorable view of all this apologizing is that it is laying the basis for wider support for American foreign policy goals. By apologizing for our carbon emissions, we encourage China to reduce its own emissions; by softening our Cuba policy, we encourage the Castros to relax their grip on the island’s political life; by apologizing for a lack of respect for Muslim culture, and seeking to engage Iran in “dialogue”, we lay the groundwork for a broader Middle East settlement.
The jury is out, of course. But while we await its verdict some of us would appreciate it if the President didn’t raise that old song to the level of national anthem.
