[spence]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

I don't think Obama, nor anyone else, can concince these sociopaths that a few pieces of paper are not worth more than dozens of human lives. This is where you ALMOST stubled into the truth. In my opinion, if somepne is willing to kill innocent people over the loss of a piece of paper, that psycho needs to be dealt with. You, on the other hand, want to coddle the psycho.

And a lecture from Obama about why human life is worth more than a piece of paper? While such a lecture will have no impact on Islamic fanatics, it would at least give peace of mind to the families of murdered servicemen that the commander-in-chief realizes that tyhe atrocity WAS NOT that paper got burned. Rather, the atrocity was the murder that followed. Obama is telling the fanatics, by apologizing, that the accidental burning of a book warrants death.

While the sensativities of the family members are important, the President is also responsible for the 90 thousand other service people still in harms way. If they believe an appology is the best tactic to further the mission there should be some respect for that. I'd be confident that this response was carefully planned and not some capitulation to fit a liberal stereotype.

I'd note that the Afgan Government appologized for the killings along with the US Government condemming "it in the strongest possible terms".

There should be no confusion that Obama was appologizing to the murders...that's not reading the facts.

Funny, since you still haven't called anyone out for violent behavior.

Actually, by mentioning "uncesessarily violent behavior" I was explicitly labeling the "behavior" as "unecessary violence".

As usual, you could not be more wrong. When Islamic extremists kill innocent servicemen because somepone else accidentally burned a piece of paper, THE VERY LAST THING I WANT TO SEE is my president apologizing to the murderers. What I want to see is a cruise missile shoved up their aszz.

Launch a cruise missle at who?

A bump in the road? That's what you call the mass murder of completely innocent US servicemen? Those guys suit up every day to keep yuo safe, and all they ask is that you show some shred of respect for the sacrifices which they answer the call to make.

It's a figure of speech, but perhaps a bad choice of words. The point is we need to get past the events and violence to keep the mission on track.

Spence, it's too bad for Hitler that you weren't the US Secretary Of State in 1940..."Heck, if we need to let him cook a few million jews in order to placate him, who are we to say he's wrong? Let's apologoze to Hitler for all the bad things the Jews did to his master race, and then we can all get along."

And he plays the Nazi card!

Remember here we're 10 years into a war that we'd really like to get out of. While we've been very successful in killing terrorists a military solution to the Taliban doesn't appear likely. Without the political support of the Afgani government and tribal leaders we're never going to have a smooth draw down. The PR battle here is critical.

We need to wind this thing down but some still want to position it as the Battle of Civilizations Bush's cronies postured after 9/11.

Others just want to play politics.

-spence