Does Being the U.S. Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry?

This is another one of those posts that will set some people off ranting about me being anti-U.S., as if we haven't moved past, America, Love it or Leave It. But here goes.

Soon-to-be GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson laid out the philosophy in good red meat form for a group of Republican youth on Saturday. "I'm getting tired of having to apologize for the United States of America around the world. I'm tired of other people's perceptions that we need to apologize."

Mr. Thompson, we should note, got his start in U.S. politics serving as the Republican counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, where his mission was to defend Richard Nixon in the face of abuses of power so extreme that they warranted the first presidential resignation in the nation’s history. So, perhaps it is just his nature to defend lame behavior by the U.S. government.

In any event, it does seem to be intrinsic these days among some to declare – We're the U.S. and we don’t (expletive deleted) apologize to anyone. Now, is that because the current U.S. government hasn’t done anything wrong or just because we are the U.S. and we don’t have to apologize even if we are wrong? It’s a reasonable question.

Okay, it’s a fantasy. But wouldn’t it be something to see President Bush fly back onto that aircraft carrier deck off San Diego, with a nice apology banner at his back, and delivering something along these lines:

“To the more than 3,500 U.S. troops killed in Iraq and their families, I apologize for sending our soldiers in harm's way based on botched intelligence and without any kind of plan for what they would do after the invasion [Note: Of the 3,500 killed, more than 3,300 of those deaths took place after ‘Mission Accomplished’]”

“To the more than 75,000 Iraqis killed and the million others forced to flee their country as refugees, I am sorry. I just didn’t think this whole thing through very well beforehand. You know, sometimes you just get an idea in your head about being a hero and get carried away.”

Okay, not gonna happen.

You have the same sort of unfortuante “We don’t apologize to anyone” attitude on display here in Bolivia from the U.S. Embassy in ‘ammogate.’ Now I presume that U.S. Ambassador Phillip S. Goldberg is a very smart fellow. When he got word one Thursday morning two weeks ago that a young woman from the U.S. had been detained at the airport bringing in ammunition for a Colonel in his Embassy, I suspect that he figured out right away that he had on his hands what they call in the diplomacy trade, ‘the makings of an international incident.’ And dealing with ‘international incidents’ is, presumably, one of the things that U.S. Ambassadors are trained to do.

Now, a wiser diplomat might have called Colonel Campbell into his office that morning and said something along the lines of the following:

“Colonel Campbell, you are a helluva guy, a patriot and a good public servant, but having this young woman bring in 500 rounds of ammo for your shooting practice was just stupid. Even if it was legal, you know how bad it could look to Bolivians who are suspicious enough of us already. So here’s the deal. You have two choices. Choice One: We can announce this morning that you suffered a lapse in judgment and are being reassigned to the U.S. Choice Two: We can call some Bolivian reporters in here this morning and you can apologize publicly in time for the midday news. I think the second option is the better choice. Take thirty minutes and decide.”

Imagine if that U.S. Colonel had gone on Bolivian TV and declared:

“Hey folks, I screwed up. The fact is I have been a target shooter since I was a kid and I have this gun I have always used and I asked this friend of our family to bring me in some ammunition. Even though it was legal, I should have thought about how people here might feel about that and should have let the customs people know in advance what I was doing. No conspiracy, just one guy’s screw up. But I love Bolivia, I love Pique lo Macho and I think you should all be able to play soccer right here in La Paz against all comers. Really, I’m sorry.”

I think that the whole thing would have been diffused and the U.S. would have come out in even better public shape than before. But what did Ambassador Goldberg do? He kept the Colonel under wraps, made a private apology to the Vice President, had his press people utter some public words about “There was an ignorance of the provisions of Bolivian customs,” and hoped it would all go away. Then Evo made great hay out of it a few days later, warning of U.S. conspiracies. By then you could well imagine the conversations within the fortress-like Embassy walls. “We can’t apologize now, it will seem like we are responding to Evo.”

Note to Embassy: Rule #1 of media relations is never make a bad story an ongoing story. Deal with it fully all at once up front. That lesson seemed oddly lost on the U.S. Embassy here, probably because, once again, the U.S. government makes no mistakes and hence, never needs to apologize.

Now, to be sure, the Morales government made a way bigger stink out of this than it warranted. Come on, a conspiracy directed by the White House? Let's please be real. But before we criticize the Bolivian government too much on this, let’s just turn it around a minute. Imagine this headline:

Bolivian Ambassador’s Daughter Detained with Ammunition at Miami Airport

The 20-year-old daughter of Bolivia’s ambassador to the U.S., Gustavo Guzman, was detained on entry to the Miami airport, carrying a suitcase filled with 500 rounds of 45-caliber ammunition. When reached for comment, a Bolivian Embassy spokeswoman said, “There was an ignorance of the provisions of U.S. customs.” An Embassy source also explained that the munitions were for the Ambassador's personal hobby of shooting firearms.

Now, do we really think that a U.S. government that denied visas to a Bolivian senator and its vice-minister of water to attend meetings in the U.S. would actually have let that one slip by with a gentle wink and a nod? Again, please, let's get real.

All of which comes back to the point that as human beings, we make mistakes. When human beings run governments those mistakes can become huge. The U.S. does little to make more friends and fewer enemies in the world when it makes “We don’t apologize” a national mantra.

I mean, think how much easier Bill Clinton's life would have been if he had just copped up front and apologized for the fact that, well, he did "have sex with that woman."