I was thinking more about this topic, and it seems to me that Americans should never, ever apologize for mistakes seems even more batty than it did before. In my personal life, the people I admire most are the ones who are willing to admit when they make a mistake. This is not a sign of weakness but of strength--it shows not only self-confidence enough to insist that one's talents are valuable despite the mistake, but it also shows self-awareness that one is not perfect--in other words, humility. Admitting that one made a mistake means that the moment can be teachable, that one can emerge stronger and wiser from the experience.
Now, obviously, the rules governing states and individuals are different. For example, an individual might lay down his life for a family member or close friend, but no nation will ever destroy itself even for its closest ally. And I do think that using a forum like the Cairo speech to just trash the motives and results of the Bush Administration might well have been in poor taste (this is not, of course, what Obama did). But this notion that America should never apologize, should never listen, should never submit, strikes me as evidence that it is pride that is driving the neocons at this point. There's a reason why theologians decry pride as one of the worst, if not the worst, of all the sins. It's crippling, isolating, and deranging. It forces one to ignore one's limits because one simply wants to be better than others, everything else be damned. It causes one to ignore one's own faults by comparing them with others', and it ultimately leads to an unhealthy state of affairs in which one cannot trust anyone else, and thus cannot see their impending doom.
This is largely C.S. Lewis's analysis of how pride works on an individual level. Tell me that this doesn't sound exactly like the neocon conception of foreign policy. And the only way to combat pride, ultimately, is by admitting we have it and moving toward humility by acknowledging our weaknesses and mistakes, and by being honest. I suspect this is why the neocons hate Obama so much: he throws their personal failings--and, as I've said before, the neocons' personal feelings and arguments are at the heart of their foreign policy ideas--into very stark relief. Oh, and he's legitimately interested in peace, and could detonate their entire worldview if successful.
