Unflinching Commitment Quotes



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.