I'll put in my final word on this thread, addressing why I think it's inappropriate at this time, at least in terms of domestic politics.
The fact is, Obama is a new President - he's accomplished little. His election, while clearly won, is still perhaps a 10% spread between supporters and opponents, and had the election been purely about the war he may have, in fact, not done so well - conventional wisdom is that it's the economic/domestic issues that propelled him over the finish line... the war was barely a factor. In other words, today, Obama certainly does NOT speak for all Americans with regards to the war itself - he may have a slight majority, but probably not more than that. Issuing a public apology to the world, on behalf of American citizens, when nearly 50% of those citizens do not yet recognize the folly or cost of the war, would be wrong. Much as I pointed out, had Germany apologized right after WWII on behalf of all Germans, we'd be right to point out that the apoplogy is at best hollow when a large number of those being apologized on behalf of do not agree with the sentiment. My hope is that in the long term, public opinion will move much farther from supporting this war, and at a certain point it may (hopefully) become largely the conventional opinion that the war was a massive folly and gross abuse of power. For now, this is hardly the universal, conventional opinion. I'm sure others can offer their opinions why they object - in my case, it is this: Obama is too new to have demonstrated anything different with respect to the war, and he definitely could not plausibly speak for the American people in any apology. _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
