Fantasy Politics USA

Burned copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, were found in a garbage pit on a U.S. air field in Afghanistan which kicked off a bunch of riots against all Americans in Afghanistan. Thursday morning President Obama sent a formal apology to Afghan president Hamid Karzai about the situation. About the same time reports were coming in that two American soldiers were killed and many more wounded after an Afghan soldier fired on them in retaliation for the book burning. The reason the books were burned is because prisoners were writing in them to pass messages. The proper way to dispose of a Quran is by burning it, but it has to be done in a respectful way, not in a trash pile.
Newt Gingrich was not cheerful about President Obama’s apology saying, “there seems to be nothing that radical Islamists can do to get Barack Obama’s attention in a negative way and he is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the president of the United States period.” “The President apologized for the burning, but I haven’t seen the President demand that the government of Afghanistan apologize for the killing of two young Americans,” Gingrich said. “And candidly, if Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, doesn’t feel like apologizing then we should say good bye and good luck, we don’t need to be here risking our lives and wasting our money on somebody who doesn’t care.”
The Obama team recognized that apologizing would be controversial and responded early, even before Gingrich had attacked. White House spokesman Jay Carney responded to reporters yesterday saying, “It is wholly appropriate, given the sensitivities to this issue, the understandable sensitivities…. His primary concern as commander in chief is the safety of the American men and women in Afghanistan, of our military and civilian personnel there. And it was absolutely the right thing to do.”