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Demanding a Meaningless Apology From an Administration That Doesn’t Apologize

Kori Schake starts a post on another non-apology from Obama by referring to the non-existent “apology tour”: It seems odd that President Obama is willing to apologize for American actions in so many instances, but not for the actual violation of an internationally-recognized border by the United States in the conduct of an espionage operation. […]

Kori Schake starts a post on another non-apology from Obama by referring to the non-existent “apology tour”:

It seems odd that President Obama is willing to apologize for American actions in so many instances, but not for the actual violation of an internationally-recognized border by the United States in the conduct of an espionage operation.

What seems odd is that some Republicans feel the need to keep repeating an obvious lie at the same time that they are commenting on Obama’s refusal to offer an apology to another government. Maybe Schake really thinks Obama ought to apologize to Iran for spying on it, but it seems more likely that if Obama had done so this would have been held up as yet another example of “bowing to dictators.” Because it is flatly untrue, the “apology tour” nonsense has made it impossible to take seriously any Republican criticism of Obama’s handling of relations with other states.

Schake continues:

By not apologizing for what is a clear infraction of an (often compromised) norm of international behavior, President Obama both justifies Iran’s attempts to conduct espionage inside the U.S., and makes us look like a brutish superpower that flaunts the rules.

Surely this is some kind of joke. How many times have U.S. drones violated Pakistani sovereignty, attacked targets inside Pakistan, and killed Pakistani civilians in the process? These are all clear infractions of international norms, in addition to being harmful to U.S.-Pakistan relations, but I cannot recall anyone at Shadow Government or Republican foreign policy circles generally making any calls for apologies or making claims that these attacks justified Pakistan’s unfriendly behavior.

Obviously, one problem with our Pakistan and Iran policies is that the U.S. ignores the sovereignty of these states and flouts international rules on a regular basis, but since when has this been what bothered hawkish Republicans about Obama’s conduct of foreign policy? Anti-Obama rejectionism would seem to be the only thing that can reconcile this new concern for international norms with the constant whining about Obama’s non-existent tendency to offer apologies all around the world. Of course, Schake doesn’t really attach any significance to the apology she is demanding that Obama offer, and the rest of the post is a rather tedious exercise in repeating the standard boilerplate about Iran.

In fact, the smartest thing the administration could have done in this case was to say nothing at all. It is ridiculous to ask for the drone back, but it would be even more foolish to provide a lengthy explanation for what the drone was doing, which is what Schake recommends.

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