While the U.S. public is indeed furious over the release of Mr. Megrahi, the Obama administration’s criticisms are probably pro forma. From his apologetic speech in Cairo to the Ramadan dinner he held at the White House last week, Mr. Obama has placed good-faith gestures at the heart of his Middle Eastern policy. It is almost as if he believes that the West’s tensions with the Muslim world involve an accounting of manners. We have run up a big deficit of slights, which must be paid down with courtesies. Letting Mr. Megrahi go is consistent with that.

The American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, did feel that she needed to say something about Megrahi. How could she not? But here’s what she said: The U.S. was “offended by the reception accorded to Mr. Megrahi in Libya upon his return from the UK.” Oh, so so diplomatic. To the government of Mr. Brown and to the Libyan tyrant himself. Is there no decent sentiment for the surviving families and friends of the victims of the Libyan atrocity?

This is further evidence that, far from assuming the role of an “honest broker” in the Middle East (that would be an improvement at this point), Obama is affirmatively choosing sides, making every effort to identify with and sweet-talk the “Muslim world” as he conceives it.

But this is not only a pro-Muslim tilt or identification. It often appears that Obama sees his task as revisiting every perceived American failing or error — from the 1953 revolution in Iran to American support for Central American strongmen to the dropping of the atomic bomb — that his Left-leaning academic friends and followers have laid at America’s feet, then systematically reversing them, however counterproductively or haphazardly.

He sees something bearing a vague resemblance to a “coup” in Honduras (but that isn’t if you stop to examine the facts), so America must not merely stand back but also pull for the Chavez-backed leftist. We are making up for past sins, you see. In his eyes we are still burdened with the guilt of dropping the atomic bomb, so we must shoulder the burden and lead the world in denuclearization — well, except for those who won’t go along.

And likewise, in the war on terror, he’s convinced that we lost our “moral standing” by roughly interrogating terrorists and housing them indefinitely in a secure facility at Guantanamo. Now we must live all that down — in short, forgo serious interrogations and scatter the Guantanamo detainees around the world.

It’s quite a record. Perhaps Obama does believe in “American exceptionalism” — but it is the exceptionalism of a country so burdened by its past and filled with remorse that we must humble ourselves before the world and renounce specifically American interests in order to get along with those we supposedly wronged. You can’t say it’s not “change.”

Unfortunately, we have yet to see evidence that this approach will lead to a freer, more stable, or more peaceful world.