I’m sorry…I apologize
Posted by: Fredster on: February 29, 2012
As you are aware, the United States military had one of those little oopsie moments in Afghanistan when they burned what they said were some older copies of the Quran (insert your own favorite spelling of the book).
It was not intentional.
The reason behind the burning according to the Associate Press was because:
Military sources told the Associated Press that books were removed from the library of a nearby detention center because they contained extremist messages. Prisoners had been writing in the books as way of communicating.
Okay, I can see that. The prisoners were sending cryptic messages to each other via their Holy Book. The military authorities decide to remove the books and replace them. The older ones needed to be disposed of. How do you do that? Well, when we have an old flag that is in disrepair and is no longer presentable to be flown, we take the flag and burn it in a dignified manner. I’ll assume that is what the authorities at Bagram Air Base thought they were doing. Well, we know how that turned out, don’t we? Did we commit a grave and serious offense? Beats me. For example, here are some suggestions on how to dispose of an old, torn or worn out Bible.
Now, until point I had no idea of how to dispose of a worn or torn Quran, but a search did lead me to this, and even here there seems to be some *wiggle-room* shall we say.
There are numerous schools of Islamic thinking and differences of opinion, but broadly speaking there are two preferable options.
Muslims are advised to wrap a worn and unusable copy of the Koran in cloth and to bury it in such a way that people do not walk over the place where the Koran is buried. That would be considered disrespectful.
The other option is to wrap the Koran and place it in a moving body of water, with some jurists advising that the Koran be tied to an object so that it sinks.
Where these two options are not available, some scholars do argue that Muslims can burn a Koran.
All of this that I’ve written leads up to the fact that because we did an *oopsie* President Obama issued an apology to Afghan Prez Karzai and said “sorry, we won’t do that again”. And then all hell broke loose.
upset afghans
No, I don’t mean the Afghanis who were upset over this. Nooooo….I mean the Republican presidential candidates are upset over the apology. Lil Ricky in particular was *very* upset about this. Said Lil Rick:
“There was nothing deliberately done wrong here,” Santorum said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week”. “This was something that happened as a mistake. Killing Americans in uniform is not a mistake. It was something that deliberate.”
Lil Ricky
True enough Lil Rick, but generally when we do something inadvertently that’s a mistake, we tend to apologize. If I come over to visit your house and I spill some wine on your carpet, I am going to profusely apologize and try to clean it up. Likewise if I were to accidentally hit a golf ball through your window I would do the same and offer to pay for the window.
Presidential apologies for bad or unintentional things we have done are not something unusual. For example:
- Bill Clinton had to issue a mea culpa when we sort of accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Now of course it did not help that we were using out of date information. Oops.
- Dubya apologized for the way we treated some folk at Abu Ghraib prison. Again, an oopsie moment.
- Hell, even the Gipper signed legislation that issued an apology for the internment of Japanese-Americans during WW II. Ditto on the oopsie.
- George H.W. Bush, ever the proper New Englander, issued another apology to Japanese-Americans in 1988, just to keep things tidy.
Really, I’m not overly concerned about the apology Obama made. Now, I think it was overkill to send someone from DoD out to a mosque in Washington to issue another apology and the same goes for any other apologies that may have been made. We made a mistake, oops, will not happen again. Moreover, I absolutely promise that if we do something like this again, I will be totally upset about it and will gnash my teeth in public.
But only if Karzai stops wearing that bathrobe in public.
Karzai-bathrobe
Like this:
19 Responses to "I’m sorry…I apologize"
February 29, 2012 at 8:29 am
“We are the US. We don’t apologize for anything!”
This is what the GOP believes , repeatedly expressing “we’re number one!”.
I love my country too but I am willing to admit that we often do harm with our foreign policies, particularly when we bomb the hell out of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 for starters.
Had Obama not apologized the GOP would have seized on that as well.
However, it just goes to show how insane the logic when anything connected with religion is involved. Salman Rushdie is still living with the treat of assassination for his criticism of Islam.
The insanity just marches on.
February 29, 2012 at 9:36 am
Well done!
I found it interesting that Santorum appears to have lost the Catholic vote to Romney by 8-10 points in both Arizona and Michigan. Hmmmm…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/28/rick-santorum-catholics_n_1308467.html
February 29, 2012 at 1:28 pm
janicen@1: Yes, it just seems that the Repubs have to have *something* to say on anything Obama does. And in the grand scheme of things this wasn’t that bad. At least this time we didn’t bomb the wrong embassy or shoot a civilian airliner out of the sky like we did to the Iranians. And let’s face it: the Afghans were going to riot or whatever no matter what we did and no, there was no reason to kill any American military personnel. I’ll be glad when I see the last American leave that god-awful place.
February 29, 2012 at 1:35 pm
chat@3: I think the Catholic vote in this instance can be compared to the Tea Party: NO socialized medicine, but leave MY medicare alone! 
February 29, 2012 at 1:51 pm
OMG! R.I.P. Davy Jones of the Monkees!
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2012/02/monkees-singer-davy-jones-dies-report/
February 29, 2012 at 5:42 pm
Funny how we all know who Davey Jones was. RIP for sure.
WRT the apology, you are absolutely correct Fredster. If my Milly pooped on your carpet, I would clean it up and arrange for professional cleaners to come in and do what they do best. Just common courtesy.
February 29, 2012 at 6:25 pm
Well said, Fredster. To be honest, I was initially pissed that he apologized because it is his MO to apologize for America all the time. Yes, we do some crappy stuff in the world, but c’mon already.
I understand that he had to apologize because of the retaliatory violence. That’s what pissed me off the most. I’m for not being there at all. If you are a foreigner and you burn an American flag (in the “free speech” manner, not the retiring the colors manner), you are not likely to be shot by American patriots (although they might want to) and if they do, you will win in a court of law.
Obama’s apology should have included that the soldiers who burned the Qurans thought they were doing the right and respectful thing because the books had been defiled by people writing code messages on its sacred pages.
February 29, 2012 at 6:42 pm
Sophie: We agree. For all we know, an order came down from on high to “destroy” them and the order got passed down to some grunt who had no idea on the protocols of it, since, ya know, *their* book is more special. 
As you could see from the link I provided, it’s okay to burn a worn-out or disfigured Bible so our guys probably didn’t know any better.
February 29, 2012 at 6:47 pm
Okay everyone. Let’s have a moment of silence for these poor folks. Crying for them is optional.
February 29, 2012 at 6:52 pm
@11: The technicality I was trying to highlight was that the books had been defiled by the “fidels” themselves. The American soldiers were merely doing an honor killing.
February 29, 2012 at 6:54 pm
Hey fredster, I’d be so much better if someone cut off my left arm at the shoulder. Who knew a broken shoulder could be so problematic, however even my GP told me how much sympathy she had for what I was going through – I didn’t understand how bad the break was until she outlined it – she was trying to ensure I went for physio. This has been the shittiest month on record – what with the wounded wing, and the death of my little brother.
Sophie, I agree the apology should have been handled much more diplomatically, however, it’s over, so how does the government proceed? it’s a very difficult situation – dealing with crazy people. Ask my children – they’ve been dealing with a crazy woman for two months (well actually since they were born). It’s a dicey situation. Hillary would have known, but that day has passed, unfortunately.
February 29, 2012 at 7:12 pm
Sophie@13: I understood what you were saying but in my response I probably didn’t do a good enough job of getting that across.
Hang in HT!! It can only get better.
February 29, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Fredster, from your lips to my left shoulder, please and thanks. Actually I think the death of my little brother left me flummoxed hence all this sturm and angst about politics is just so much chatter. There isn’t a day that goes by without stuff that I used to think belonged in the National Enquitrt but is now treated like headline news in what used to be reputable news sources. Sad that we are now living in a world of celebrity politics. Time for me to prepare my green tea and retire to the bedroom with my crosswords.
February 29, 2012 at 7:37 pm
HT: I also wanted to offer sympathies for the loss of your brother. I know it can be difficult losing a sibling.
February 29, 2012 at 11:27 pm
Let me wrap my head around this — the Sleeveless One, in between chastising JFK, universities and all things estrogen, has decided that any apology must be carefully crafted, massaged and parsed so that a people who consider a roundish rock and a sharp stick high tech won’t get the wrong idea that we are really sorry.
And this finely hewn apology would be disseminated how — printed up, mixed with hay, and fed to free range donkeys to wander the country side and “deliver” the just right apology?
March 1, 2012 at 1:46 am
Actually no Prolix. The Sleeveless One (Sanitorium I’m guess you mean) didn’t want us to issue *any* apology to Karzai or the Afghans. BTW, that’s a new one on me, The Sleeveless One.
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February 29, 2012 at 8:16 am
I agree, Fredster. I couldn’t see what the big deal was, other than that the apology came from Obama, so the conservatives had to find something to scream about.
Thanks for the clip from “Fish…”. It made me laugh all over again.