Why America Has to Apologize

Republican presidential candidates finally have an actual apology from Barack Obama to talk about: the one concerning the accidental incineration by U.S. forces in Afghanistan of copies of the Koran. One still looks in vain for that worldwide apology tour by the president that Mitt Romney has talked so much about. Evidently Romney has been equating “apology” with any foreign policy that is not my-way-or-the-highway unilateralism. This weekend Romney offered one of the milder criticisms of the real apology about the Korans, noting that in light of the sacrifices the United States has made in Afghanistan, for many Americans the apology “sticks in their throat.” Newt Gingrich has been far more vituperative on the issue, calling the apology an “outrage” and saying that if Afghan president Hamid Karzai doesn't instead apologize for the subsequent deaths of U.S. soldiers “we should say goodbye and good luck.”