When should governments apologise? Is apology a sign of weakness or a sign of strength? Did Obama act appropriately in this situation in terms of waiting until all the information was in? Is Pakistan’s reaction understandable, or are they shooting themselves in the foot? Finally, what can be done to minimise friendly fire incidents like this one supposedly was?
President Obama’s reaction was completely rational in my opinion. He delayed the apology to gather all the information about the tragedy. He wanted to get his facts straight in order to prevent further public humiliation because of insufficient information. Although the article states that some personnel from the Obama administration worried that if the president was to apologize to Pakistan then his opponents would use it against him in their upcoming campaigns I would have to disagree with this as I don’t find apology as a weakness, however it is important to gather all the information when apologizing in such a public way. It is really unfortunate to hear that some troops have injured or killed their fellow comrades in the battlefield by accident. Was Pakistan’s reaction justified? It depends on the perspective from which you look at the issue. From the point of the NATO forces killing Pakistani units it is clearly justified, but on the other hand, the Pakistani forces should have maintained a sufficient amount of communication with the NATO forces in order to minimize these incidents.
ReplyDeleteIt’s tragic that these so called “blue-on-blue” mishaps still take place even with today’s technology. This happens because of certain flaws in the area of the battlefields. These flaws are often wrong positioning, insufficient communication between the forces, errors of identification and sometimes poor planning. However they all fall into a category of communication. Communication between forces is essential to the correct functioning of operation, therefore in order to minimize the friendly-fire incidents the forces in the battlefield should find a better way to communicate with each other and exchange their whereabouts. Apparently, today’s technology isn’t sufficient enough to completely prevent these incidents.
In my opinion the article either is missing some significantly important information, or the Pakistanis protests aren’t fully justified. In the case that the jets that performed the bombing runs were American, I believe that even Mr. Obama wouldn’t hesitate to apologize for the death of the two dozen Pakistani soldiers. On top of that the article mentioned that the president would have to overrule the military, which was clearly denying American responsibility. In the given circumstances where President Obama would accept full responsibility if he apologized, I think it is correct that he didn’t do so. Of course as I already mentioned, the information could be incomplete and there could be something else behind the American decision and Pakistani reaction.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I believe that if a government apologizes when necessary, and doesn’t say sorry every time something bad happens in the world, it is a strong government which clearly consists of intelligent people. Again, if the government apologizes too much, it might be taken as a sign of weakness and one of a government that is easily scared. Of course, the right amount of “I’m sorry-ing” varies between countries and situations.
Something that made me laugh, though, was Secretary Panetta’s statement [...and we are conducting an investigation into the incident…] which pretty much anyone with some knowledge of politics can translate into “nothing is being done, we are not going to change our opinions, so we are just going to wait for you to forget the matter”. This kind of politics shows up quite often in the modern day world and it will be no surprise if the Defense Secretary never comes up with a conclusion acceptable for both the American and Pakistani people.
Pakistan’s reaction is definitely understandable because for the people of Pakistan, the United States have been a pain for quite a while now and the relations between the two countries have been far from good for an extended period of time. When I said that the reaction is understandable, it does not mean it’s reasonable. When NATO does a bombing and they blame America, I don’t think it is completely fair. From a different perspective, all the people wanted was a “sorry” that costs nothing and would at the same time give them another reason to hate the Americans, since they accepted blame for what happened.
Unfortunately, I have very little detail of what had really happened that time during the bombing, but I don’t think the US would knowingly attack Pakistan soldiers and if that is what happened, I really think it was just an accident. To conclude, I just wish Pakistan stopped with its hostile politics, solved its problems without other country’s help, and stopped wasting time squabbling like they are now.