Obama Began His Presidency With an Apology Tour

My opponent provides some background about how the term "apology tour" came into common use. As best I can make of it, Con is saying that because critics of Obama started the phrase, it can't be true. That's the ad hom fallacy of attacking the source rather than addressing the issue. The question here is whether the description "apology tour" is apt, without regard for who originated it. I gave the dictionary definition of "apology" as basically a confession plus an expression of regret. Is there any doubt that Obama confessed what he considered to be past sins? Is there any doubt he expressed regrets? Is it possible that he actually likes arrogance and torture and doesn't regret them? In a debate about appropriate semantics, Con didn't dispute either the definition I gave or my arguments as to how the definition was met. Con instead offers a claim of exemption from the definition, as if the dictionary had a clause exempting policy changes from having associated apologies. Con's contentions are:State Apologies must be explicit. Con gives no source for this assertion. However, no one to my knowledge has claimed that Obama was making an official state apology. Informal apologies are nonetheless apologies. The Statements in question are not "apologies" but policy change announcements, criticisms of European anti-Americanism, and Muslim extremism. Where does the dictionary say that an apology is no longer an apology if it is followed by a policy change? If you apologize to your girlfriend and then promise to change your ways --a policy change-- does the promise of a new policy cancel the apology? No, the concept is wrong in any context. A promise of change in fact reinforces the regret for an old policy just explicitly denounced. It is possible to make policy changes without apologies. Among the ways to do that are a. to make no reference to past policies while announcing the new ones, b. to reference past policies and say that circumstances have changed so that new policies are appropriate, or c. to say something equivalent to "we're going to try something new in hope of getting better results." Obama did not take any of those delicate diplomatic approaches. He made it clear he thought past policies were not merely wrong, but immoral. Immorality is always regrettable, so the regret is clear without being specific. Such policy change announcements are common. Yes, policy changes are common, but trashing past policies with denunciation of their immorality is not common. The norm is to use one of the easy outs like "time have changed." Whether policy changes are common or not is in any case irrelevant to whether apologies were made. Foreign Press did not view these statements as apologies. Con gives no evidence of what the foreign press thought; he just points to the text of Obama's speech. The foreign press was at the time even more in the tank for Obama than the American press, with the Europeans awarding Obama the Nobel Peace prize for who-knows-what. Nonetheless, they may have accepted the apology as appropriate. Con gives no evidence. (Now der Speigel headlines, Obama's Middle East Policy Is in Ruins, 4. http://www.spiegel.de... ) What counts is how the Muslim world took the news, which was with elation over the perceived possibility of reduced US support for Israel, recently followed by anger when their dreams were not fulfilled by Obama. No one claimed the apology was formal Con cites Politifact. Politifact is very careful in choosing their words in an attempt to defend Obama. Politifact concedes that Obama confesses past sins of both the Bush Administration and the United States. the provide a good list of his denunciations. Politifact rests their case on the idea that Obama didn't meet the definition of a "formal apology." [5. http://www.politifact.com... ] They say, "He did not make a formal expression of regret." So who said Obama's apologies where formal? This is like defense counsel arguing that his client should be acquitted entirely on the grounds that he only met the definition of second degree murder. A speech communicates meaning to its audience, and no one except Obama apologists thinks of the issue of formality. Politifact saying formality matters does not make it matter. Politifact was once an honest fact checker, but their strained antics to justify leftist claims have reduced them to the status of a partisan blog. (For example, Politifact denounced Republicans as lying when they said Obamacare would cost up to $2 trillion, when the Congressional Budget Office said it would cost $1.76 trillion.) They occasionally dispute some hopeless leftist lie to try to make a claim to impartiality, but they side with Democrats on issues of claimed lying nine times as often as Republicans. [6. http://www.humanevents.com... ] Their opinion has no authority on formality counting. Pointing to the context of the disparaging remarks in the speeches is supposed to show that they were in the context of policy change and that Obama said positive things as well. Having a policy change does not erase the apology. Making positive remarks is a fine thing, but irrelevant to the issue. For example, Con cites Obama saying, "... Part of this was due to opposition to specific policies, and a belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others." No matter how that is wrapped in other pronouncements, it is clearly an admission of guilt and an expression of regret. Acting without regard for others is unethical, and it is not possible for a President to admit unethical action without implying regret for it. Con is correct that conciliatory language is not necessarily an apology (if it doesn't reference past immorality) , admission of wrongdoing is not necessarily an apology (if it is accidental), and changing policy is not necessarily (if it is because times have changed). None of those circumstances apply to the statements made in the apology tour. Only the unexpected is news Con says that every President uses "frank language" to announce policy changes. He gives only one example, of Bush saying that blaming all Muslims for the acts of terrorists is wrong. For that to be a policy change, it must have been the policy of the Clinton Administration to blame all Muslims for the acts of terrorists. That's absurd. No Administration has ever had a policy of blaming all Muslims for acts of terrorism. It was not a policy change, and it did not deserve to be news. It wasn't news. The news that made the apology tour what it is was the lengthy denunciation of many aspects of American policy, but the clear judgment that the policies were immoral, and not just out of step with current affairs. Immoral acts cannot be acknowledged by a moral person without regret, so they are apologies. Con says, "... we could easily create similar "apology tour" narratives for Lincoln, Washington, FDR, or any other president." I invite Con to go right ahead and do that. Show past presidents denouncing past policies as immoral and giving that as reason for changing the policies. Show past Presidents as denouncing the US as arrogant, uncaring practitioners of torture. I won't claim it is impossible; Lincoln quite likely denounced slavery. But whenever it happened it was an apology. Remember, our debate in not about whether apologies are appropriate. It is about what counts as an apology. It is for good reasons that the name "apology tour" has stuck. The resolution is affirmed.