Gingrich says Obama “surrendered” by apologizing to Afghans

SPOKANE, Wash. — Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said President Obama “surrendered” Thursday when he apologized to the Afghan government for the burning of several Qurans at an American military base near Kabul.

Referring to the burning of “radical Islamic material” that included the Qurans, the former House speaker said the situation had been “blown into a huge incident by various fanatics in Afghanistan.” He told a crowd gathered at a campaign rally at the Bing Crosby Theater that while the president had apologized for the burning, he had not called on the Afghan government to issue an apology for the deaths of two NATO soldiers who were killed by a man wearing an Afghan army uniform during increasingly violent protests of the desecration of the Muslim holy book.

“There seems to be nothing that radical Islamists can do to get Barack Obama’s attention in a negative way,” Gingrich said, “and he is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the president of the United States, period.”

Obama sent a letter to Afghan President Hamid Karzai in which he wrote, “I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident. I extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies,” according to the New York Times, quoting Karzai’s press office. Obama did not release the text of what it called a three-page letter on a “host of issues” between the two countries, “several sentences of which relate to this issue,” the Times reported.

Although Presidential apologies are rare, they are not unheard of. President George W. Bush offered an apology to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki after a U.S. soldier fired several bullets into a Quran in 2008. And Bush also said he was “sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families” following the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Read More at CBS News By Sarah Huisenga, CBS News