George W. Bush Quotes
I will never apologize for the United States — I don't care what the facts are.... I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.
The President was commenting on the USS Vincennes which had accidently shot down an Iran Civilian Air Flight flying in a commercial air corridor two months before. 290 innocent civilians were killed. This quotation illustrates a puzzling aspect of U. S. politics. Somehow if an American politician, especially a President, apologizes for something the country did, a substantial proportion, albeit a minority, of the nation feels that the apology somehow shows weakness and affects national security even if we made a horrendous mistake as we did in this case. Many Americans and foreigners see this as arrogant, unfair, and unfeeling. No one knows whether Bush was pandering to his right wing who oppose all U.S. apologies or he really believed that regardless of what we may have done, we should never apologize.
George W. Bush, 41st President of the United States (Republican, TX), Quoted in Time Magazine, September 12, 1988
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
See Carl Schurz {33636} for an 1872 version and G. K Chesterton for perspective {597471}.
For variations on this theme see Stephen Decatur, Meyer London, Charles Churchill and Carl Schurtz
George Walker Bush is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush previously served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. He was born into the Bush family; his father, George H. W. Bush, was the 41st president of the United States from 1989 to 1993.
