Okay, I realize that pointing out the many hypocrisies and inconsistencies of Newt Gingrich is a bit like casting a fishing line in a goldfish bowl. The man has proven time and again that he is capable of saying pretty much anything in his never-ending quest to pander to whatever audience he is standing in front of at that particular moment. Nevertheless, his recent criticism of Obama for apologizing after some of our servicemen burned a bunch of Korans over in Afghanistan was really pretty stunning in its implications.
First, lets set the stage. As reported by Reuters, the Afghans are just a little bit honked off by the Koran burnings:
Seven U.S. military trainers were wounded on Sunday when a grenade was thrown at their base in northern Afghanistan, police said, as anti-Western fury deepened over the burning of the Koran at a NATO base.Sure is funny how you can occupy a country for over a decade and wantonly drop drone missiles and otherwise indiscriminately bomb its citizens for years, but it isn't until you burn a bunch of holy books that the population begins to rise up en masse against you. However insincere Obama's apology obviously was, he really had no other choice than to at least try to calm things down.
Despite an apology from U.S. President Barack Obama, riots raged across the country for a sixth day on Sunday against the desecration of the Muslim holy book at a NATO air base at Bagram. Some protesters hoisted the white Taliban flag.
The Afghan Interior Ministry identified one of its employees as a suspect in the fatal shooting of two U.S. officers in its headquarters a day earlier, an attack that prompted NATO to recall its staff from ministries.
One civilian was killed, 15 more were wounded and three policemen injured in riots near the NATO base in northern Kunduz province, where the blast that wounded the Americans took place, regional police chief Samihullah Qatra told reporters.
NATO confirmed there had been an explosion outside one of its bases in northern Afghanistan, but declined to comment on casualties.
The protests have killed 30 people and wounded 200, including two other U.S. troops who were shot dead by an Afghan soldier who joined rallies in the country's east.
But that isn't how the Angry Little Attack Muffin sees it. Here's the story from Russia Today:
Gingrich responded to the president’s attempt to qualm anti-American sentiment by insisting that Obama is in the wrong for trying to make peace with people whose religion has been ridiculed by US troops. Americans official are calling the Koran incident inadvertent, and, nonetheless, Gingrich says there is no point in the president saying he’s sorry.Blah...blah...blah. So typical of Gingrich, a man who was great for his party when he was a sniping backbencher in Congress, but an absolute disaster when he was elected Speaker of the House and had to, you know, actually run things. But the real stunner came in this next series of quotes:
“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,” Gingrich told supporters during a campaign stop Thursday in Washington State.
"It is Hamid Karzai who owes the American people an apology, not the other way around,” said the speaker.I never could have imagined that anything would ever pop out of Gingrich's stinking pie hole that I could agree with, but damn if didn't finally happen. Not the part about Karzai apologizing. That I couldn't give a shit about. It's the "we don’t need to be here risking our lives and wasting our money" part that is true now and has been true for more than a decade ever since President George Bush the Lesser became impatient with the Osama Bin Laden manhunt and misdirected the military's attention towards Iraq instead.
“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,” he added.
Obama should jump at the political cover he was just given by the Newster and announce that since Karzai hasn't apologized to the United States, all NATO forces will be immediately withdrawn from Afghanistan. And when the Republicans shriek in horror and try to call Obama an appeaser, he can then say that he is merely following the wise and sage advice of one Newt Gingrich.
