The New York Post accused President Obama of implicitly apologizing for the Hiroshima bombing by sending the U.S. ambassador to Japan to an event memorializing the world's first atomic bomb attack. But by this standard, President Ronald Reagan apologized to the SS when he laid a wreath at a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where SS members were buried.

Reviving the conservative smear that Obama engages in an “apology tour” when he goes abroad, a New York Post editorial stated:

For the first time ever, an official US delegation -- dispatched by President Obama -- will be in Hiroshima today to note the anniversary of the atomic bomb attack that brought an end to the bloodiest war in human history.

Ambassador John Roos will join Japanese officials and survivors at the Peace Memorial Park near the original ground zero, where he will lay a wreath to “express respect for all the victims of World War II,” the State Department said.

[...]

The State Department insists, of course, that none of this represents an apology for the 1945 bombing -- and for the one at Nagasaki, three days later, which effectively ended World War II.

But it's hard to see the gesture as anything other than an implicit concession of US misconduct, given Obama's past eagerness to apologize for US actions -- none of which merited an apology of any sort.

The notion that Japan is due such consideration borders on the bizarre.

By this standard, Reagan apologized to the Germans when -- in a move that created much controversy at the time -- he personally attended a wreath-laying ceremony at a cemetery in Bitburg that, according to The New York Times, contained “the graves of nearly 2,000 German soldiers, including 49 SS troops.”

The Times reported that, after commemorating the dead at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Reagan visited the Kolmeshohe Cemetery at Bitburg. He also visited a U.S. air base and said: “We who were enemies are now friends. ... We who were bitter adversaries are now the strongest of allies. ... In the place of fear we have sown trust, and out of the ruins of war has blossomed an enduring peace.”

The Post's attack is part of a theme of conservative media attacking Obama while ignoring actions Reagan took as president Examples include conservatives attacking Obama for giving a speech to America's students but ignoring the fact that Reagan had also done this; attacking Obama for seeking a world without nuclear weapons while ignoring the fact that Reagan sought the same goal; and many other attacks.