By John J. Duncan Jr.

duncanj@knoxfocus.com

Two unrelated, very amazing, maybe even shocking, apologies were issued in mid-March by widely read political commentators.

The first by Naomi Wolf, had been viewed by 3.4 million when I wrote this column.

Dr. Wolf was a Clinton White House official, lifelong Democrat, and feminist author. She wrote what she called a "formal letter of apology" for believing the official version about the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6^th.

She wrote: "Peaceful Republicans and conservatives as a whole have been demonized by the story told by Democrats in leadership of what happened that day."

She added: "You don't have to agree with Mr. Carlson's interpretation of the videos to conclude that the Democrats in leadership, for their own part, have cherry-picked, hyped, spun, and in some ways appear to have lied about aspects of Jan. 6^th," turning it into "a politicized talking point aimed at discrediting half of our electorate."

She said the tapes proved that Officer Brian Sicknick was not killed that day and that even in Senator Schumer's attack on Carlson, the Senator did not say any of the tapes were false or altered.

Wolf also wrote: "I am sorry the nation was damaged by so much untruth issued by those with whom I identified at the time. I am sorry my former 'tribe' is angry at a journalist for engaging in – journalism."

Ms. Wolf ended her apology in this way: "I am sorry I believed so much nonsense. Though it no doubt is too little, too late – Conservatives, Republicans, MAGA: I am sorry."

I have been following politics very closely since I was 15 years old. I have never seen, heard, or read such a significant, heart-felt apology from a longtime liberal Democrat.

The second major apology concerned the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and was written by Washington Post columnist Max Boot, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Council is a very liberal, politically-correct institute that bashes anyone who believes in a fiscally-conservative, America First foreign policy.

George W. Bush ran for President campaigning against nation-building (helping other nations entirely at U.S. expense) and saying we needed a "more humble" foreign policy.

However, he changed completely after he was elected and came under the influence of people falsely called neo-conservatives.

Columnist George Will wrote that neo-cons were the "most magnificently misnamed people" in Washington, because they really were not conservative at all.

Most leading neo-cons were Jews who supported an Israel-first foreign policy and pushed for U.S. leadership in any war that would benefit Israel.

I believe the U.S. should be very friendly toward Israel, but I do no believe we should allow Israel or any other country to control or dictate U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East or any other place.

Max Boot was, at least until now, one of the leading neo-cons, thus making the following apology very amazing.

He wrote: " Regime change obviously did not work out as intended. The occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq were, in fact, fiascos that exacted a high price in both blood and treasure, for both the United States and – even more, of course – the countries it invaded."

Boot added that "after seeing how democracy promotion has worked out in practice, I no longer believe it belongs at the center of U.S. foreign policy. In retrospect, I was wildly overoptimistic about the prospects of exporting democracy by force, underestimating both the difficulties and the costs of such a massive undertaking. I am a neo-con no more..."

Most people know I opposed the war in Iraq. Not as many know how often I spoke out about getting our people out of Afghanistan many years before we pulled out.

And we never should have left over $85-billion of new military equipment of all types over there.

Both of these apologies, while they are too little too late, hopefully will cause some on the left to not be so hateful toward conservatives and will also make some of our leaders not so eager to go to war in the future.

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