The Life of Brian

In life, there are some situations that beg for an apology, but there is no easy way to do it. For example, suppose you are a senior citizen attending a funeral for a friend of the family. You lean over the open casket and your false teeth plop out and clamp on the nose of the deceased. You panic. You don’t think many people saw it happen, so you pluck the teeth off the stiff’s nose and shove them back in your mouth as discreetly as possible. Unbeknownst to you, someone caught the whole thing on video and it becomes a worldwide sensation on Youtube before the deceased is in the ground.

My point is there’s no way to apologize for that situation. For one thing, the guy who most needs the apology is dead. And his widow probably isn’t in the mood for it.

I was thinking about this apology problem in respect to Iraq. Whatever you think about the reasons for invading, everyone seems to agree that we botched the occupation, and the results have been a disaster for the Iraqi civilian population. I feel like I owe them an apology for letting my idiot government screw them so thoroughly.

Your first reaction might be to explain all the rationalizations, and how war is messy, and it was really Saddam’s fault, and blah, blah, blah. But apologies don’t work that way. I could be wrong, but I think the Iraqi people who were minding their own business would like to hear an apology.

But how? My idiot government won’t apologize on my behalf. And if I fire them and get a new idiot government, they won’t do it either, until fifty years are past. That seems too late.

So here’s my public apology to the Iraqi civilians who did nothing to deserve their current situation: I’m sorry I trusted my idiot government to handle things correctly. I should have been watching more closely. To be honest, I never once thought to even ask if there was a post-war plan. That was clearly a mistake on my part. For that, I am sorry.

We’re putting a lot of lives and money into making things right in Iraq, and that’s appropriate. But in addition, and for whatever small comfort it provides, I’m genuinely sorry for my part in allowing things to get this bad.