This was tailor made for an appeasing President to grovel before the Afghan people.  If an apology was to be made, it should never have come from the President of the United States. Maybe from the field commander or some low level diplomat if even that.  Since when does burning any book morally equate to killing innocent people, be they American or not?  It doesn’t in any extreme way of thinking.  Not only that, but as I write this I hear where the Iranians are railing about how bad a violation of human rights it is to burn a koran.  What about sentencing a Christian minister to death, just because he is Christian?  Is that upholding human rights? I don’t think so.  This whole incident shows the foolishness of Obama’s policies towards Islam.  You can not negotiate with any zealot, and it seems that the middle east is home to more jihadist zealots than anywhere else in the world.  When we grovel to negotiate, we negotiate from a place of weakness or ignorance or both.  When you negotiate from a powerful position, you get results.  I guess our chief groveller in Washington doesn’t understand that, or, he is totally in sympathy with those that kill over a burnt book.  Hmmm?  I wonder what his religious beliefs, if any, are?  They certainly do not seem Christain when I look at his record and his statements along with his actions.  It seems that Israel doesn’t trust the Obama administration very much either.

I seem to recall that when a head of state burnt (deliberately) the (real) Scriptures, the (real) Prophet - Jeremiah - just had another copy made and got on with the job. That’s the difference between true and false religion.
What we have here is a failure to grow up.

I did not take the President’s statement to be one that endorsed the idea that one should kill over a burned book, No. 1.  I did think that, rather than advocating that idea, he was recognizing the reality (a reality that, although superstitious and irrational is nonetheless a reality in some of these quasi-literate societies) that people will kill over a burned book and that his obligation to his troops is to do what he can to convey that the act was not intentional.  I suspect that the apology is not particularly effective, given the tribal customs, mentality and zealotry of the region, but I would have more problems with a Commander who was unwilling to make it than with one who was willing to go some distance to protect troops from death and injury.

How about a comment on the impending execution of a Christian pastor in Iran?

There’s been quite a bit of comment on that, here and elsewhere, no. 4.

General Allen USMC appears to be handling matters sensibly.

The Afghanistan people would be in a better position to defend themselves against the Taliban if so many of them were not illiterate and I wish the United States had done more to educate them but uninformed and illiterate as the Afghanistan people may be, they do remember what happened after the United States protected them from Russia and left them at the mercy of the Taliban last time.
Now that the draw down of U.S. troops is happening, they probably expect to be deserted again, so they seem to be doing whatever the Taliban requires in order to avoid being persecuted when the United States leaves and the Taliban come back to power there.

The White House said it was committed to continuing its plan to reduce U.S. forces in Afghanistan, turning over security responsibility to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.

This may reassure President Obama’s liberal supporters but it probably strikes fear in the hearts of Afghanistan people who realize that they will be deserted to America’s enemies and have to fend for themselves without the help of the United States.