“Never apologize, Mr. Pennell, it’s a sign of weakness.”

So remonstrated Captain Nathan Brittles with a shavetail lieutenant of the U.S. cavalry in “She Wore A Yellow Ribbon.”

About now, Mr. Trent Lott, the veteran senator from Mississippi, might wish he had thought about the fictive horseman’s sage advice. To your enemies, apology is appeasement.

Sen. Lott, everyone knows, unbosomed an unwise remark at Sen. Strom Thurmond’s centennial birthday bash. Although he apologized, he is still under siege. His enemies and even some friends demand his resignation, but their unvarnished hostility shows his apology is futile.

Lott’s troubles began when he waxed nostalgic about Thurmond’s failed bid for the presidency. In 1948, Thurmond ran for president under the segregationist Dixiecrat guidon, denouncing President Truman and integration.

Long ago, he recanted his ideas, warmly supported the civil rights movement, hired a black staff member and became a mainstream conservative Republican. For the last few years, he has been a quaint relic padding about the Senate, waiting, mostly, to celebrate his 100th birthday in office.

Recalling Mississippi’s support for Thurmond’s presidential bid, Lott said, “if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

The reaction was volcanic. Supposedly, and perhaps inadvertently, Lott divulged his real feelings about segregation, Jim Crow, cross-burnings and whites-only lunch counters and water fountains.

He quickly apologized, admitting he was “terrible” and “insensitive” and “wrong” and that he “repudiates segregation.”

But it wasn’t enough. Denunciations from the usual suspects, even the president and “conservatives” who should know better, have rained down on the Mississippian with the ferocity of the British fleet’s gunfire at the Bismark in May of 1941.

When it became clear the left wouldn’t let the issue drop, that banal poseur and faux Catholic from South Dakota, Tom Daschle, who had “accepted” Lott’s apology, demanded a “fuller” statement of remorse. Good grief. If a mea culpa isn’t enough, maybe a mea maxima culpa will work. How much “fuller” can the apology be?

That’s why Lott never should have apologized. He said nothing offensive, and merely offered a few kind words for Thurmond.

The defamation Lott suffers could not be worse if he had bravely said, “I said nothing wrong and will not apologize.”

Lott’s enemies thought he was a racist before his remarks, and they likely think all Republicans are racists anyway. Bob Herbert of The New York Times delivered this vile calumny: “The Republican Party has become a haven for white racist attitudes and anti-black policies. The party of Lincoln is now a safe house for bigotry.”

Herbert doesn’t know enough history to know Lincoln was a bigot, but the big-shot columnist’s ignorance aside, Lott’s enemies sniffed blood in the water when he apologized. So they went for the kill.

The irony of it all? If Lott must apologize for simply saying Thurmond would have been a better president than Truman, then surely everyone in the GOP must apologize for allowing Thurmond to join the party. And so must all those GOP senators and presidents who have colluded politically and broken bread with Thurmond for more than 30 years.

Hopefully, Mr. Lott and the GOP learned something: An apology admits wrongdoing; we don’t apologize when we haven’t done something wrong.

Apologies are, as the captain wisely said, a sign of weakness.

R. Cort Kirkwood is managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Va. His e-mail address is: kirkwood@shentel.net.

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