A brief moment from the last
Republican debate, which didn't get a lot of attention:
Cooper: Thirty seconds, Congressman Hunter. The question is, how do you repair the image of America in the Muslim world?
Hunter: Cooper, Cooper, very simply, to the critics of America I would say this. When you were faced with disease and starvation, the Americans brought food and medicine. When you had earthquakes and tsunamis and floods, the Americans came and helped you. And when you were threatened from outside, the Americans left the safety of their own homes to come and defend you.
I will never apologize for the United States of America.
(Applause)
This really bothered me. Especially the applause, which was loud and full of enthusiasm. My first thought was
what a bunch of f*cking yahoos!I deplore this kind of jingoism, but I get the impression that it's very strong in the Republican base.
Certainly the United States has done a lot of great things, but it's done its share of bad things too, many of them while George W. Bush has been at the helm. There is no quantity of good deeds that ever removes the need to be contrite about bad deeds.
Even if you believe the war in Iraq was justified, and even if you think the Iraqis are better off with the mess in their country now than they were under Saddam, the death and destruction in Iraq due to sheer incompetence and horrible planning is definitely worthy of an apology.
For abandoning so much of Afghanistan to go into Iraq, and letting that country fall back into the control of the Taliban and assorted warlords, is definitely worthy of an apology.
Our slow response to global warming and other environmental hazards, when we're the number one producer of greenhouse gases and many other pollutants, is definitely worthy of an apology.
Losing our way in being a model for freedom and democracy, becoming a country known for torture, absurd word games about what is and isn't torture, a country known for indefinite detention without recourse based on nothing but the unchecked decree "enemy combatant" by a "unitary executive", is definitely worthy of an apology.
No amount of chest-thumping blind patriotism changes the fact that the United States has plenty of reason to say, "We're sorry."