On Jan 26, 2009, at 6:29 PM, Stefano Mori wrote: > > On 2009-Jan-26, at 23:03, Roger Howard wrote: > >>> So America, you have a shiny new president, who talks of hope. And >>> as >>> a people you talk about it being time to lead again--as opposed to >>> whatever y'all thought you were doing the last 8 years (knitting, I >>> suppose)--and as a nation you're going to lead us all towards >>> freedom >>> and prosperity and away from terrorism and poverty. And you're going >>> to do all that, as a great nation, a nation made of a people who >>> can't >>> even feel remorse. >> >> Bullshit. No one said there's no remorse except you. And I believe >> Obama >> has sincerely expressed remorse for the course this country has >> taken over >> the past decade. Whether he ought to apologize, given how new he is >> to the >> office and how much a work-in-progress these issues are, is I believe >> completely premature. You can twist that all you want. > > > So some Americans feel guilt and regret for the error of invading > Iraq?
'some' is important here. Is it regrettable? I'm not for sure. One cannot argue that at least some of the reasons were (at best) based on bad intelligence. Others were likely made by cherry picking what they wanted to hear and ignoring others. OTOH, it's hard to regret Saddam being gone and it would be stupid to apologize for removing him. After all it has been US policy to remove Saddam since Clinton. Might as well apologize to the UN for screwing up that Oil For Food scam they had going while were at it. How would you explain that apology to the kurds or the women that get to vote or the 20 odd millions of people that have better control of their destiny and less fear of a dictator. (Yes, their lot in life may be worse in some areas but not all areas) To me an apology would have to be so specific as to be meaningless or so wide as to have no effect. Kind of like the church apologizing for shuffling pedophiles around. It makes you wonder of they are sorry or just sorry they got caught.. > > > Why would an apology by Obama wouldn't constitute political suicide? Just speaking politically.. 46% of the people didn't vote for him. Doing something like that could very well be a galvanizing event for the opposition ala Hilliary's health care event during the Clinton Presidency. My sense right now is that even the folks that didn't vote for Obama are not actively trying to oppose him. (nutjobs excepted) They might fight an individual program but aren't trying to go to war against his presidency. An apology for Iraq would be spun as an insult to the soldiers that died there and to the Iraqi government. If done "correctly", would swing all of the right into opposition mode and a whole bunch of the Democrats that live in states or districts that are close to evenly divided. (Being political critters means that the moment they sense that the public is pissed, they would be 'outraged' and distance themselves.) So there is no upside. An apology would only matter to people that either don't live in this country or voted for Obama anyway. It just might give an opening for the opposition to say "see. we told you he hates the troops and gives comfort to our enemies". The end result would be that his folks would spend precious political capital fighting a battle of their own making. =c= > > > > stefano > > > _______________________________________________ > OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] > http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters > List hosted at http://cat5.org/ _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
