“Hamid Karzai Owes Us an Apology”

Even if U.S. soldiers humiliate an entire nation by burning the Koran, Republican Newt Gingrich decides the real scandal is something else entirely. The atmosphere in the United States is so super-heated by presidential politics that even conciliatory gestures bring forth negative reactions. Beyond U.S. borders, that could have devastating results.

It is said of Newt Gingrich that he has a gut feeling for politics — that is, a reliable instinct for what his countrymen think and feel. The portly Republican has based his campaign for the presidency on that talent. Now that his campaign seems to be faltering, he has lately resorted to especially strong assertions.

His statements concern Afghanistan, particularly the Hindu Kush, where Muslims have engaged in bloody protests against American troops. It is here that Gingrich has discovered “a scandal.” The scandal isn’t the sacrilege in which careless U.S. troops burned several copies of the Koran along with the garbage; Gingrich is outraged that President Barack Obama apologized to the Afghan people and asked their forgiveness for the incident.

“It is an outrage that on the day an Afghan soldier murders two American troops, Pres. Obama is the one apologizing,” Gingrich said in a Twitter message. This from a blusterer who is honored as the intellectual voice of their party by many Republicans. “It is Hamid Karzai who owes the American people an apology, not the other way around,” said Gingrich, the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

During a subsequent campaign appearance Gingrich even threatened, “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.”

Gingrich, known as a foreign policy hawk, is obviously betting that television images of rioting Muslims protesting in front of U.S. military installations will help muster support for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. That demand has thus far been low on the priority list among Democrats. President Obama must hope that the situation in the Hindu Kush soon calms down. His expression of “deepest regret” to the Afghan people, along with his promise that those responsible would be held accountable, will help avoid further acts of retribution and even more fatalities in Kabul, Herat or Kandahar.

On the home front, White House spokesman Jay Carney noted that even George W. Bush apologized on behalf of the American People when a G.I. misused a copy of the Koran for target practice. But Democrats know that Republicans will brand any apology as weakness on the part of President Obama. His probable opponent in the coming election, Mitt Romney, published a book last year with the title “No Apology.”

Washington is interested mainly in damage control for this crisis. The Pentagon rejects speculation that withdrawal from the Hindu Kush could result in an acceleration of violence directed at U.S. troops. Current plans call for a reduction in troop levels to 68,000 by year’s end, after which commanders plan for no further cuts until 2014. The White House, in contrast, would like to begin bringing more troops home starting in 2013.

It must be troubling to the Pentagon that another two American soldiers died at the hand of an Afghan soldier. Training the Afghan military and police forces is at the heart of the U.S. mission and is an essential accomplishment that will permit the United States to withdraw its combat forces in 2014. Incidents between U.S. and Afghan forces have thus far been dismissed as “isolated,” but a New York Times article published in January cited a classified Army study that warned of a fast-growing danger of similar homicides there.

The report went on to say, “Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history).” It depicted a deep level of mistrust and latent hatred between soldiers from two markedly different cultures.

The latest Koran burning may well inflame this mistrust and hatred, and increase tensions between Kabul and Washington. President Karzai is no longer Washington’s docile ally.