Hasbara Buster
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2010
- Messages
- 4,612
- Reaction score
- -7
Obama Says Sorry for Vaporizing Two Westerners With a Drone. Brown People Still Fair Game
Danielle Ryan
The same drones wipe out hundreds of (brown and/or Muslim) people every year and no one seems to notice.
Have you noticed anything strange recently in the 24-hour news cycle? Like maybe the fact that the US has actually apologized for one of its many “mistakes”?
The mistake? The accidental killing of two aid workers, an American and an Italian, during a drone strike on an al-Qaeda compound in Pakistan.
The apology is notable for a few reasons.
First, the United States usually doesn’t really ‘do’ apologies. It’s normally ‘deep regret’ or ‘sincere condolences’ or another formation of words meant to make up for the fact that they’ve just done something horrific without sacrificing their exceptionalism for a real apology.
As soon as I got over the bafflement at reading the phrase ‘Obama apologizes’ in a headline, I trundled through the rest of the article until I came to this.
These words actually came out of the American president’s mouth:
“One of the things that sets Americans apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional is our willing to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.”
Sorry, what?
Barack Obama thinks what makes America exceptional is its willingness to confront its imperfections and learn from its mistakes. Just take a moment and let that sink in.
Okay, are you still there?
I think it’s pretty clear that what, if anything, makes America ‘exceptional’ is exactly the opposite: a complete inability to see its own imperfections and absolutely no capacity whatsoever to learn from its mistakes.
Yes, apologizing too much is why Obama is a failure. Okay then.
And my personal favorite. He shouldn’t have apologized, because it serves to “weaken America’s moral position”. Nothing else does, just apologizing.
The most outrageous part of this whole charade, though, was not the unexpected apology or the predictable reaction. It was the sheer lunacy of calling a press conference to apologize for killing two Western people with a drone, when the same drones wipe out hundreds of people every year and no one seems to notice.
As the Guardian reported last year, American drone strikes are sold to the public as precise procedures, yet these ‘precise’ attempts to kill a few men have instead killed hundreds of innocent children and regularly wiping out entire families.
If the drone operation Obama has apologized for never killed those two hostages but instead killed maybe a couple of families nearby, there would be no press conference.
That would just be collateral damage.
Obama Says Sorry for Vaporizing Two Westerners With a Drone. Brown People Still Fair Game
Danielle Ryan
The same drones wipe out hundreds of (brown and/or Muslim) people every year and no one seems to notice.
Have you noticed anything strange recently in the 24-hour news cycle? Like maybe the fact that the US has actually apologized for one of its many “mistakes”?
The mistake? The accidental killing of two aid workers, an American and an Italian, during a drone strike on an al-Qaeda compound in Pakistan.
The apology is notable for a few reasons.
First, the United States usually doesn’t really ‘do’ apologies. It’s normally ‘deep regret’ or ‘sincere condolences’ or another formation of words meant to make up for the fact that they’ve just done something horrific without sacrificing their exceptionalism for a real apology.
As soon as I got over the bafflement at reading the phrase ‘Obama apologizes’ in a headline, I trundled through the rest of the article until I came to this.
These words actually came out of the American president’s mouth:
“One of the things that sets Americans apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional is our willing to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.”
Sorry, what?
Barack Obama thinks what makes America exceptional is its willingness to confront its imperfections and learn from its mistakes. Just take a moment and let that sink in.
Okay, are you still there?
I think it’s pretty clear that what, if anything, makes America ‘exceptional’ is exactly the opposite: a complete inability to see its own imperfections and absolutely no capacity whatsoever to learn from its mistakes.
Yes, apologizing too much is why Obama is a failure. Okay then.
And my personal favorite. He shouldn’t have apologized, because it serves to “weaken America’s moral position”. Nothing else does, just apologizing.
The most outrageous part of this whole charade, though, was not the unexpected apology or the predictable reaction. It was the sheer lunacy of calling a press conference to apologize for killing two Western people with a drone, when the same drones wipe out hundreds of people every year and no one seems to notice.
As the Guardian reported last year, American drone strikes are sold to the public as precise procedures, yet these ‘precise’ attempts to kill a few men have instead killed hundreds of innocent children and regularly wiping out entire families.
If the drone operation Obama has apologized for never killed those two hostages but instead killed maybe a couple of families nearby, there would be no press conference.
That would just be collateral damage.
Obama Says Sorry for Vaporizing Two Westerners With a Drone. Brown People Still Fair Game