Advisors to Bush: Never Apologize

Well, I'll be damned. Someone (other than bloggers) actually thinks we ought to start fighting the propaganda war.

Some members of the Bush administration have taken a cue from a classic John Wayne Western and are advising their boss to take the film's advice – "Never apologize" –- when dealing with Muslims, reports geopolitical analysts Jack Wheeler.

Wheeler says the goal of the John Wayne aficionados is to eliminate any "We're sorry" message in State Department cables and communiqués, National Security Council analyses, and Pentagon press briefings – "and inserting in their place, however subtly worded in diplo-speak, the message: 'If you don't like it, stuff it.'"

In his column, Wheeler quotes from a message the anti-apology staffers would like to see in a future Bush speech:

I want to make it very clear that neither this administration nor the American military nor the American people owe an apology whatsoever to the religion of Islam and its believers. The American people have every right to take enormous pride in the respect which our military treats believers in Islam, and in the fact that the American military is not just the most powerful but the most humanitarian fighting force in the history of humankind. It is the Islamic terrorists and their followers who owe us an apology for making war on us, and owe an apology to their fellow believers in Islam for making war on them.

Writes Wheeler: "So cross your fingers he takes the movie and the message to heart. The day the president of the United States announces that Muslims owe an apology to us and not the other way around will be the day we truly begin to win this war."

Darn tootin. And while we're at it, State may want to stop circulating namby-pamby bilge like this in the Arab world.