""Because we fall over ourselves for something we didn't have to apologize for. We made a mistake. " This man is supposed to be the social conservative, but he can't even master basic manners and respect for others? What the hell is wrong with this picture?
I do not know the context of this quote, so I would appreciate it, and I am sure fellow forum members would appreciate it if you could provide a link to a source.
If I understand what he is saying correctly he is saying that we shouldn't apologize for the actions we made as a nation when we have our troops dying. He's trying to say that why should we say sorry to people when they're killing our soldiers.
the full quote: Which I completely agree with. Apologizing only encouraged MORE violence because they saw it as us being weak....and MORE people DIED...
these people aren't interested in an apology, they just want an excuse to kill people. (and burning the Korans was NOT a mistake..they weren't burned to offend anyone, they were disposed of in the same manner we would dispose of a Bible)
By apologizing you saying that even though you killed some of our soldiers, we're sorry we burned your books. You're pretty much showing that if you kill our soldiers, we'll just say sorry and take no action. So people will think they can get away with killing people, thus kill more and more.
Rick Santorum's statement was as follows: He was making a reference to the violence going in Afghanistan in relation to the Quran burnings. The former Senator obviously believes we should not apologize for an act that was admitted by military officials to be an accident. From my perspective, there are two views one can take on such a matter. One can either believe that the United States should man up to its own mistakes if it causes chaos, no matter how harmless they were, or how radical the response. The other approach, which Rick Santorum took is that the United States does not need to apologize for an honest mistake, and an irrational response by some foreign civilians. Regardless, the reality is that we did apologize to the Afghan people, and our nation did admit it was a mistake deemed for an apology. I think that such an action was right for the course, but ending the discussion then and there is wrong. The President should have been more forceful in his comments, and our military officials should have taken action to remedy the situation, and prevent a crisis, hopefully understanding that many Afghanis would react irrationally. At the least, maybe our military leaders in the areas learned a lesson on how to deal with such a blunder, if one is to call it that.
So you believe that, had U.S. soldiers not been killed, Obama still shouldn't have apologized because it seems "weak." Why should anyone ever apologize then?
I do not believe you apologize if you make an honest mistake. You only apologize if you are deliberately malicous or grossly negligent. And I don't think the United States should ever apologize.
You are, quite literally, everything that's wrong with the world. You are actually stating that ignorance means you don't have to apologize, which explains why you spend your life being willfully ignorant.
So you're saying that Obama was right saying sorry to the Japanese for using an atomic bomb against them to win the war?
From my perspective, he was right in apologizing. He should have also affirmed that at the time, it was a decision between continuation of a massive fire bombing campaign that killed over 200,000 Tokyo civilians alone, along with a massive land invasion that would have ended in the demise of more Japanese soldiers and civilians, and United States soldiers, or the usage of a bomb that ended the carnage with just over 250,000 casualties. However, discussions of "what if" are meaningless. The President said what he said. You can take it or leave it.
I'll agree that Obama was right with his apology once the people responsible for 9/11 say they're sorry, and he goes fight in a war. Obama has no idea what the men had to even get with in bombing range of the four main island of Japan. Plus the the atomic bomb was futuristic technology they didn't have. So every time we use a weapon the enemy doesn't have we should apologize?
So Mr. Santorum, if I were to walk into your church, take a dump in the baptismal font and then use the Bible as toilet paper, that is all right if I didn't know it was offensive? I made an honest mistake, like the Japanese routinely do when confronted with Western plumbing? "No need to apologise fellah, a font does look a bit like a toilet bowl, and how were you to know that the Bible is the word of God" - yeah sure. Try burning a Torah in the orthodox Jewish part of New York and see what happens to you... Americans have been in Afghanistan for Ten years and STILL don't know the Koran is sacred???? Talk about handing the Taliban a free pass to whip up trouble. Sheesh! Of course we apologise. Wouldn't you if you desecrated something?
One of the self-empowering and scary things about recording history is the third option. You can take it, leave it or spin it so that it becomes something that suits your agenda.
Your points are relatively weak and irrelevant to the scenario. The point is that the United States utilized a weapon of mass destruction in conflict, and killed over a quarter of a million innocent civilians in the process. He was absolutely right in apologizing, yet as I stated, he should have affirmed that it could have been worse, for the United States, and for Japan. The fact that the pilots had trouble due to cloud coverage, or the fact that we revolutionized military technology change the point that we utilized a weapon that should have never made it out of the lab. Albert Einstien warned the United States to not use nuclear technology as a weapon. Was he right practically speaking? No. Morally speaking? Yes. While pragmatism indicates that the usage of the bomb was necessary, the morality indicates that it was not necessary.