I just read another of those loony rants on the Internet, angrily repeating the charge that the president apologizes to foreigners around the world for alleged wrongs America has done. Supposedly, this makes us look weak and is disloyal to our citizens. Anyway, this is America, the best country on earth. We don’t do bad things.
I’m not here to defend the president, who’s quite capable of defending himself. But I will speak up for apologies. And say that, nearly perfect though we are, Americans are also capable of doing bad things. After all, we’re made up of Europeans, and Asians, and such.
I love my country. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. And while I’m sure the citizens of many other countries feel equally strongly about their own native land, and often with good reason, a significant number of them continue to fight to get here. Legally or illegally. So, yes, we have a great country. Not perfect, though.
Robert Simpson
Our imperfections aren’t all that hard to spot. Confining Japanese-Americans in concentration camps following the attack on Pearl Harbor comes to mind. Enslavement, disenfranchisement, and general denial of privileges of an entire race for a long time. Genocidal wars to wipe out another race and claim a continent.
If you want a specific example, and have a strong stomach, read a detailed account of the Sand Creek Massacre. This Civil War foreshadowing of My Lai was an attack on an unsuspecting band of Cheyenne and Arapaho, camped along Sand Creek in Colorado, flying an American flag over their encampment and believing they were under the protection of the United States government. Colonel John Chivington, Methodist preacher turned somewhat-soldier and ferocious Indian hater, led 600 militia in this attack, killing 133 Native Americans, 105 of them women and children. Bodies were mutilated and genitalia of both sexes were displayed as trophies. Wounded were searched out and butchered.
I doubt an apology would have done much good in this case. Even if the shivering survivors hiding in holes under the banks of Sand Creek could have been found and made to listen to it.
But sometimes an apology can work wonders.
Fast forward a little more than a century from the Sand Creek Massacre. I sat in a meeting in the Pentagon with the Surgeon General of the Army and a couple of his assistants concerning a complaint my organization was charged with resolving. An Army wife had alleged that, just prior to her husband’s reassignment to Germany, she had received medical treatment that involved insertion, and then removal, of two urethral catheters at a stateside Army hospital. Later, she had returned to the hospital with severe pain. The Army doctor found nothing wrong and angrily sent her back home. Twice.
Our experts thought the chances of two catheters breaking simultaneously in such a manner was extremely unlikely. So the Surgeon General assigned one of his doctors to work with one of our people in Germany to find the truth.
The truth turned out to be that both catheters had indeed broken, leaving the woman in severe pain and danger.
Now the danger was that the Army would be faced with embarrassment and a strong claim for damages. My boss, a three-star general, was going to Europe on another mission, and he decided to meet with the couple while there.
Meeting with them in their quarters, he told them the investigation had shown that they were telling the truth and the catheters had broken as alleged. He said that, on behalf of the Army, he wished to apologize for the pain and suffering this had caused, and for the insensitive treatment by the doctor at the post in the United States. He asked what they wanted us to do.
Nothing, they said. We just wanted someone to acknowledge the wrong that had been done and to say they were sorry. We felt we deserved an apology.
I doubt anybody suddenly decided the U.S. Army was weak and no longer to be respected because this senior officer, on behalf of the institution, apologized for a wrong.
I doubt anybody will attack the U.S. just because the president apologizes for a wrong. My defending a position that the president has taken may make you angry. If I find that I’m actually wrong in doing so, I’ll be glad to apologize.
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