No apologies needed

No apologies needed

Boston Herald Editorial Staff
Saturday, October 15, 2011

We shouldn’t be surprised that President Barack Obama wanted to visit the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to apologize for the atomic bombs dropped on them in World War II. Obama has been willing to “blame America first” for almost anything wrong with the world, but these visits would have marked a new low.

Fortunately, the Japanese government refused to permit such abasement. Obama had to be content on his 2009 world apology tour with lamenting (in his Cairo speech to Muslims of the Middle East) a “colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims” (Which part of the Middle East was colonized by Americans again?) and with begging Iran, in a totally ineffective televised plea, to play nice.

According to Investor’s Business Daily, a State Department cable made public by Wikileaks reported to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka told U.S. Ambassador John Roos that an apologetic visit to Hiroshima was “a non-starter” because it might arouse anti-nuclear and anti-United States sentiment in Japan.

Our country is afflicted with a president dangerously enraptured by what he thinks is the power of his words, and ignorant of history, how the world interprets what he says and the nature of his country’s adversaries.

President Truman ordered Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombed in 1945 in an effort to end a ghastly war and avoid an invasion of Japan that experts believed could have cost a million Allied casualties. The bombings must be judged by what was known or knowable at the time. They may or may not have been unwise, but they did help end a war started by Japan. Those facts make an apology ridiculous, and Japan did America a favor by preventing one.

Honestly, I just shake my head when I hear crap like this.

Obama has to be the most ignorant or the most deluded (or both) president we have ever had.

I would never apologize to a country that murdered our citizens from the outset (Pearl Harbor) and tortured hundreds and hundreds after that.

I guess that since this apology stuff is playing so well right now, I ought to jump in an say I'm sorry because... well, my grandfather and his family were moonshiners along the Tennessee-Alabama line.

Yeah, there's just no telling how many people woke up with terrible headaches and throwing up all over because of that hooch. Best I can gather, they had three stills that ran everything from corn to potatoes to apples. Family lore says that the folks down Atlanta way held this fine whiskey in high regard and used to pay good silver during prohibition for the product.

I really do feel so gawd-awfully bad so, I would like to offer my official apologies to those late residents of Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee who got their money's worth.

Sincerely...

TexasBlue wrote:

According to Investor’s Business Daily, a State Department cable made public by Wikileaks reported to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka told U.S. Ambassador John Roos that an apologetic visit to Hiroshima was “a non-starter” because it might arouse anti-nuclear and anti-United States sentiment in Japan.

That person has obviously never been to Japan. I've heard from many people that have been to Japan, that the Japanese people there always apologize for Pearl Harbor, once they notice you're an American.

Arx Ferrum wrote:I really do feel so gawd-awfully bad so, I would like to offer my official apologies to those late residents of Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee who got their money's worth.

Sincerely...

Reparations are in order because they spent lots of money on aspirin.

BubbleBliss wrote:That person has obviously never been to Japan. I've heard from many people that have been to Japan, that the Japanese people there always apologize for Pearl Harbor, once they notice you're an American.

That's all fine and dandy. I think the point here is between govt's.

We didn't start the war but we sure ended it.

TexasBlue wrote:I would never apologize to a country that murdered our citizens from the outset (Pearl Harbor) and tortured hundreds and hundreds after that.

But Obama would. Tells ya where his head is at... (hint, he can't see the sun from that vantage point).

dblboggie wrote:

TexasBlue wrote:I would never apologize to a country that murdered our citizens from the outset (Pearl Harbor) and tortured hundreds and hundreds after that.

But Obama would. Tells ya where his head is at... (hint, he can't see the sun from that vantage point).

A hint?

Arx Ferrum wrote:I guess that since this apology stuff is playing so well right now, I ought to jump in an say I'm sorry because... well, my grandfather and his family were moonshiners along the Tennessee-Alabama line.

Yeah, there's just no telling how many people woke up with terrible headaches and throwing up all over because of that hooch. Best I can gather, they had three stills that ran everything from corn to potatoes to apples. Family lore says that the folks down Atlanta way held this fine whiskey in high regard and used to pay good silver during prohibition for the product.

I really do feel so gawd-awfully bad so, I would like to offer my official apologies to those late residents of Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee who got their money's worth.

Sincerely...

My father was practically raised by moonshiners in the hill country of Eastern Kentucky. I wish I still had all those Snuffy Smith-style clay jugs we had sitting around the house when I was kid. They'd be worth thousands now.

For the record, I'm not apologizing for him.