MEXICAN KIDS ARE SHOOTIN' FIREWORKS BELOW:

Apologize, George W. Bush! (Douglas Kern, 10/19/2004, Tech Central Station)

Apologize for fighting an unwinable war. Apologize for failing to win that unwinable war before the All-Star break. Apologize for fighting the insurgents too aggressively, and apologize for showing them too much mercy. Apologize for forcing democracy and freedom upon the mere 85% of Iraqis who desire them. Apologize for ignoring the thoughtful and nuanced objections of some civilian-bombing terrorists in the Sunni Triangle. Apologize for not sending enough troops and apologize for taking too many troops away from their homes and families. Apologize for…oh, apologize for something. It really doesn't matter what. Just admit that you were wrong about something important. It's ever so much easier to defeat your arguments when you concede them to us first.

Apologize, George W. Bush, because there's something delicious about watching righteous men eat their words. You won't be so quick to dismiss nuances and overtones and penumbras when you have a shame-faced apology sticking in your craw. And when we've neutralized your moralizing tone, it will be vastly easier to neutralize the popular, we're-the-good-guys morality that you propound. Oh, we could take the high road, of course, and praise an apology as a dignified gesture that will help to heal the bitter divisions in our society. But we won't. Your apology will be reduced to a lurid sound-bite on some vicious DNC advertisement that mocks your confident faith and uncompromising principles. And let's not even think about how America's enemies will use your apology to undermine your credibility. Get used to the smell of your apology, George W. Bush. It will be rubbed in your nose until the day you die. [...]

Apologize, George W. Bush, although wartime presidents never do. Roosevelt didn't apologize. Truman didn't apologize. Neither did Eisenhower, Johnson, Kennedy, or Nixon. Every wartime president has made mistakes -- sometimes ghastly mistakes that cost the lives of soldiers and civilians. But no one ever demanded apologies from those presidents, perhaps because Americans used to understand that war is an inherently chaotic and unpredictable thing in which awful mistakes will always be made.

Apologize for saying there were WMD in Iraq, for not securing the WMD at al-Qaqa, for not attacking Iraq before those WMD could be moved, and for attacking at all.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 29, 2004 11:31 AM