During Monday’s Presidential debate on foreign policy, Governor Romney reminded us of President Obama’s apology tour in 2009. As if I could forget it! (By the way, that’s President Obama bowing to the King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia although the spin was that he tripped…)
Just in case you’ve forgotten, here’s a sampling of our President’s apologies to the world for America.
Just one week after his inauguration, the President chose Arab television, Al Arabiya, to give his first sit-down interview and said “… America was not born as a colonial power,” he told the Arab viewing audience – implying we are now. And he regretfully confessed, “We sometimes make mistakes. We are not perfect.”
At the G-20 Summit in London, he said, “I would like to think that with my election and the early decisions that we’ve made, that you’re starting to see some restoration of America’s standing in the world.”
A day later in Strasbourg, he said, “There have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” And further said, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” In other words, no country is truly exceptional.
Apologizing for “certain interrogation practices,” he said in that same speech, “I don’t believe that there is a contradiction between our security and our values. And when you start sacrificing your values, when you lose yourself, then over the long term that will make you less secure” implying that we had lost our way.
How about when he spoke in Ankara in April 2009 and said, “The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history.”
Then, during the same month, in Trinidad and Tobago, he said, “While the United States has done much to promote peace and prosperity in the hemisphere, we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms.”
In 2010, the President, apparently embarrassed by our country’s exceptionalism, refused to allow our flag to fly in Haiti after its horrific earthquake even though France’s, Britain’s and Croatia’s flags flapped in the wind and even though our contributions dwarfed the rest of the world’s.
Then, of course, you have the President in May apologizing to Mexican President Calderon when he said Arizona’s Immigration Law was “a misdirected expression of frustration.”
Also in May, during talks about human rights with China, of all countries, the State Department raised examples of problems on American soil and cited Arizona’s Immigration Law as an example of “racial discrimination.”
Was President Obama apologizing for the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima when he sent the U.S. Ambassador to Japan to the 65th anniversary of the attack in August of 2010, something no other President had ever done?
And, let’s not forget his backing of the Ground Zero mosque, basically apologizing for the 70% of Americans who oppose the building of it at that location.
I don’t get it, but if you do, God bless you.
