Trying for moral high ground by apologizing

I say people are innocent until proven guilty, and I try not to jump to conclusions based on hearing one side of the story. As an example, the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture is completely one-sided. It claims that no actionable intelligence resulted from CIA torture (aka enhanced interrogation) of al Qaeda suspects. CIA officials say that is false, and that the Senate did not even interview them to get their explanation.

I do not know who is right. But others jump to conclusions, such as this opinion:

How The CIA's Torture Program Is Destroying The Key Foreign Power The US Had: The Moral High Ground ...

The basic stated values of the US are something worth spreading and perpetuating. But the only way you can legitimately do that is to admit when the country has strayed from those values, and that means a true and honest accounting of where things went wrong, along with a transparent and concrete plan for dealing with those failings and making sure they don't happen again. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be happening, and many in power don't seem to understand the damages this is doing to the US's power around the globe.

Huhh? I am not sure that things did go wrong. If the US Senate cannot get to the bottom of this, then how are people on the other side of the world to know whether we strayed from our values or not?

I am straying off-topic for this blog, but the above opinion seemed similar to yesterday's Ask Amy advice column in my local newspaper:

DEAR AMY: Quite some time ago, before we were married ... He eventually admitted this to me.

The story was that on a weekend trip with several of our friends there was heavy drinking. A flirtation (with no physical contact) developed.

She has told many people that he made a genuine pass at her and she refused. Everyone that was there refutes this, but my husband admits he may have been so drunk that he did it and doesn't remember. ...

My husband loves my children from a previous marriage and is everything I ever hoped for in a partner. I have truly forgiven him, but I can't stop torturing myself. How do I let it go? — An (un)happy Wife

This problem is all in her head. She found her Mr. Right to support her kids from a previous marriage. She should count her blessings. Even if the allegation is true, it was merely a drunken flirtatious comment before they were even married. It was a triviality. And the evidence is that the allegation is not even true. But Amy gives this advice:

I suggest you ask him for a sincere apology and a guarantee that this will never happen again.

What?! She owes him an apology for making a big issue out of a triviality, for interrogating everyone involved, for distrusting him, and for not giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Instead, Amy suggests demanding an apology for something that probably never happened, and that he does not remember.

What I get out of this is that the feelings are more important than the facts.

Much better advice would be for him to flirt with women at every opportunity until the wife quits bitching about it. If she wants to destroy the marriage over this, then he is better off without her and her kids. She probably gets excited about the possibility of him hitting on other women, and does not want to admit it.

I have read a bunch of online stories where the man says he had a lousy marriage because the wife was always nagging him to apologize for weird crap like this. Then he stumbles across some online advice saying that the marriage counselor advice is usually backwards. The complaint is not the complaint. She is reciting the complaint to test him. She wants a man that she can look up to, and if he does not have the balls to stand up to her stupid BS, then she loses respect for him. In the above story, some gossipy bitch is threatening to undermine their marriage, and she wants him to be strong enuf to stop the threat. The men report having much better marriages after understanding this aspect of female human nature.

So what do you do? Seize the moral high ground by apologizing for things that you did not even do, or be a man and show that you can deal with threats appropriately? You decide.