Perhaps what you meant to say — minus the hysterical ranting and petulant namecalling — was something like this:

“My German friend said of Dresden, ‘But I believe we deserved it.’ Of course, he was overstating matters considerably, because it’s never true that civilians deserve to be carpet-bombed. Still, his comments showed a level of self-reflection, and willingness to admit to his countrymen’s own wrongs, that I wish were more present in Americans.”

If that’s what you meant to write, then you simply need to start thinking and writing more clearly. Clear writing is a benefit not just to others, but to yourself, because then you wouldn’t be so sorely misunderstood.

Because one “cannot imagine” an American saying what my German friend says, DOES NOT MEAN that either Germany or America “deserved,” say, the bombing of Dresden or the destruction of the World Trade Centre; it simply means that almost no American would ever PRY INTO THE CONSEQUENCES (i.e. “blowback,” in Ron Paul’s words) of an arrogant and ill-thought-out foreign policy.

And “repentance” IS a characteristic of a “Christian nation,” and it most certainly IS NOT a characteristic of the American South or Southwest (the parts I know best) regarding treatment of, say, Native Americans or African Americans. (That is mostly the operative mode of the more liberal, or better educated part of the country that I presume Magdalena is representative of.)

I stand by my opinion that my German friend’s remark is unusual and remarkable, and by my conclusion, from your sweeping statements, that you are an illiterat moron.

Obviously digby’s comment ridiculed Americans for refusing to say, like the quoted German, that we “DESERVED” 9/11. After quoting the “DESERVED” statement, digby says:

Can you, in your wildest imaginings, EVER imagine an American saying that about, say, our defeats in Vietnam, or–even more unbelieveably–about the “blowback” that came at the U.S. (I’m only quoting Ron Paul–a “conservative,” remember!) in the form of the Twin Towers’ bombing?

Not in the part of America that I just left, you couldn’t. As MM correctly observes, time and time again, America is NOT an orthodox Christian nation, because most Americans (unlike Catholics, one hopes) can have no sense of REPENTANCE for anything done by the nation; in the mythic national narrative, she has always been on the side of GOD.

So not only was digby ridiculing Americans, he was saying that our refusal to admit that we “DESERVED” 9/11 proved that we’re not an “orthodox Christian nation.”

In light of that stunning accusation, it’s quite idi0tic for digby now to pretend that everyone should have read him to be saying that “NOBODY deserves” to die in such attacks.

In my opinion we have to fight an terrorist organization like the Hamas just like free Nations faught Nazi Germany and totalitarian Japan.
The type of religious motivated intollerance that Hamas and likeminded organizations propagate should have no future.

I said that MY GERMAN FRIEND said “We deserved it,” and I said that you’d never hear American making such a statement about any deplorable thing their country had done. Magdalena suggested (correctly, I guess) that my second statement was an exaggeration, that SOME American HAVE noted such American misdeeds as the genocide of Native Americans, but, that, I believe, is coloured by her experience living among a far more enlightened and better educated segment of the American population than I did, for so many years–but I’ll grant HER point–not yours.

YOU, as opposed to her, have become so brainwashed, so cretinous (probably as a result of listening to Right Wing “attack radio” for half of your life) that you believe that an OBSERVATION of something unusual or remarkable is an ENDORSEMENT of it. I think you’re a true brainless wonder.

And yet you seem to be accused of this very thing several times a week.

How utterly silly. What I said wasn’t a misinterpretation at all, let alone a deliberate misinterpretation. You approvingly quoted a German who said that his country “DESERVED” civilian bombings, and then reproached Americans for not saying the same, which would necessarily mean saying that we “DESERVED” 9/11. I interpreted this to mean that you were speaking of whether America “DESERVED” 9/11.

It’s understandable that you now wish to pretend you had written something else, but you didn’t. The least you could do is just say that you misspoke. It’s a fool’s part to blame other people for correctly reading the words that you wrote.