The Greenies and Tree Huggers should be upset over this.It is a waste of perfectly good toilet paper.
Posted on 02/23/2012 7:03:18 AM PST by SeekAndFind
After several days of unrest in Afghanistan over the burning of Korans removed from detention facilities, President Obama has sent a note of apology to Hamid Karzai. Obama stresses that the destruction was inadvertent, and that those who made the “error” would be held accountable:
President Obama sent Afghan President Hamid Karzai a letter on Thursday apologizing for the alleged burning of Korans at a U.S. military base, Karzai’s office confirmed on its website.
“I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident,” Obama wrote. “I extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies.”
The president concludes the letter: “The error was inadvertent; I assure you that we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible.”
Was it really “inadvertent,” though? According to CNN’s report on the destruction of the materials, they had good reason to seize and destroy the books:
The Qurans were among religious materials removed from a detainee facility at Bagram Airfield. The materials were gathered for disposal and were inadvertently given to troops for burning, Gen. John Allen, commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, said Tuesday.
“This was not a decision that was made because they were religious materials,” he said. “It was not a decision that was made with respect to the faith of Islam. It was a mistake. It was an error. The moment we found out about it, we immediately stopped and we intervened.”
A military official said the materials were removed from the detainee center’s library because they had “extremist inscriptions” on them and there was “an appearance that these documents were being used to facilitate extremist communications.”
Well, if detainees were marking up the Korans for “extremist communications,” didn’t that deface the Korans anyway? Either way, the US couldn’t return the books to the detention center after having discovered the secret communications added to them, and we couldn’t just store them forever, either. I’m not conversant on the proper destruction of Korans in the Muslim faith, but burning them sounds better than throwing them into a landfill. The responsibility for the need to destroy them rests with the terrorists who defaced them in the first place.
That brings us to the issue of the apology. Although I’m likely to be in the minority here, it’s probably a smart and cost-free move for Obama to apologize to Karzai. Regardless of how difficult it is to work with Karzai, he’s the best option we’re going to have in Afghanistan for quite a while. If an apology can bolster his standing in the face of the riots, or at least minimize the political damage he takes in this tempest in a tea cup, then it’s a minor trifle to offer it.
In the future, though, the US can avoid the problem by removing all of the Korans from detention centers. Let them read Hayek or de Tocqueville instead, and when they deface those books for their communications, no one will riot if we burn them. We are under no obligation to provide detainees with Korans, and that will avoid all of the problems associated with their handling and disposal.
Update: Allahpundit e-mailed me this new development:
“An individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform turned his weapon against International Security Assistance Force service members in eastern Afghanistan today, killing two service members,” ISAF said.
ISAF did not identify the nationalities of the dead soldiers and gave no further details of the incident, which came on the third day of fierce protests against the burning of the Koran at a US-run military base.
Asked whether the events were connected, an ISAF spokesman would only say: “There was a demonstration in the province.”
Afghan troops defending a foreign base in eastern Nangarhar province had “joined demonstrators and opened fire on foreign troops”, a protester told the Afghan Islamic Press news agency.
Thousands of furious Afghans besieged a US base for the third day in a row on Thursday, throwing rocks and climbing up the outer walls.
If an apology can defuse that situation, then as I wrote above, it’s a cost-free sop to Karzai and Obama was correct to offer it. We’ll see how effective it is.
The Greenies and Tree Huggers should be upset over this.It is a waste of perfectly good toilet paper.
He should be apologizing to all Americans for the way he intentionally destroyed this country.
Please explain to me if you can why this country full of asswipes is worth the life of one single American serviceman or woman.
Too bad Zer0 isn’t apologizing for nuking Mecca.
Did he ever apologize for the Bible burning incident in Afghanistan?
A true apology would be followed by ACTION: resignations by Obama and his #2, Joe Biden, ought to do the trick.
Of course that would make John Boehner the Commander in Chief. He would do a better job than those two clowns.
I wish I had said that. Well done.
Not that I ever heard.
A Pentagon adviser is blasting what he calls an "egregious" and "politically correct" decision by the U.S. military to destroy Bibles sent to troops in Afghanistan.Reuters reported earlier this week that Bibles in Afghan languages sent to a U.S. soldier at a base in Afghanistan were confiscated by chaplains and later destroyed to make sure that troops did not violate rules which bar them from sharing their faith. According to the report, the Bibles were destroyed after Al Jazeera television showed soldiers at a Bible class on a base with a stack of Bibles translated into the local Pashto and Dari languages.
2. - U.S. military destroys soldier's Bibles
Obama has directed our military not to tell the whole truth.
In fact, those Korans were used as intel portals. We are forbidden to confiscate or even handle Korans. All the prisoners were given identical Korans....by us.
That meant we could no longer distinguish one from another. Guess what? Their visitors showed up with the same Korans.
Yup, supplied by us.
Then, the visitors would simply swap Korans that were full of handwritten notes passing intel back and forth.
The prisoners did the same thing with each other. We finally figured that out and started confiscating Korans and giving out new ones.
We had no option but to harvest what intel we could and destroy the old ones somehow.
We should have just shredded them.
Who’s stupid idea was this?
And use “Apologizer-in-Chief” as screen name.
No apology necessary.
We no longer know who we are, what we are fighting for, or even who the enemy is. Why waste more of our military blood and our own treasure pursuing a fool's errand being led by a fool whose sympathies lie with the enemy?
We are forced to use Afghan jailers, enter chaos.
The jailers also rat us out every time they can and we are not careful enough around them.
No problem here...Karzai is sending US a letter apologizing for killing two of our boys...Oh wait! My bad...there are no stamps in Afghanistan.
BO STINKS....
Exactly! Why did this story get leaked? Why didn’t we shred them like you mentioned? Next thing will be Seal Teams playing in Hollywood movies. WTF is going on?
Apologizing to terrosist. Tosday is Feb 23,,,,,, any bets Boko Haren, Sudan, Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iraq, Syria ( etc etc) pulls a MAJOR bombing or slaughter because his idiot apologizwd? Double the sand berms Christians, bend over and here comes the nobel peace prizer with such words of pacifism and ignorance not seen since Trotsky was murders, Joan of Arc( new she was fromnt lines not like golfer in chef with wookie mama), more like Me Chamberlain bamboozled by Hitler...what happened to all the hundreds of thousands of bibles. i say we light them muzzie silent but deadly farts on fire from now on. F**** them and FUBU!
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