Friday, February 03, 2006
Confrontation and appeasement
In our household, where the children are one-quarter Norski, this was the last freakin' straw.Muslim demonstrators burn a Norweigian flag in the West Bank town of Nablus where Muslims during a protest against the countries who published cartoons representing the Prophet Mohammed.
Meanwhile, the Arabists in the State Department have folded up like a cheap suitcase (it seems to have declared the cartoons "offensive" and called for press "responsbility"). We had our big opportunity to stand by our "traditional allies," in addition to any number of actual allies, and we blew it. Not only did we fail to defend free speech, but we sandbagged Europe in its moment of need. Did the White House know about this disaster? There's a chance that the State Department's appeasement might have been an unscripted choke, more than a policy decision. If it stands uncorrected, how do we look at ourselves in the mirror?
UPDATE: The morning's New York Times article shows the State Department walking a finer line than some of the wire service accounts. There remains this false moral equivalence, though:
The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, reading the government's statement on the controversy, said, "Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images," which are routinely published in the Arab press, "as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."
These images, if "anti-Muslim" or anti-Arab at all, are nothing compared to the anti-Semitic stuff promoted in the Arab world. Nothing. More relevantly, the storm of outrage is over the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. The equivalent offense would be a disrespectful portrayal or Christ or Moses, which of course would be far more likely to occur in the West than in the Muslim world. The comparison to anti-Semitism is not apt.
Now the Danish cartoonists who touched off this controversy have gone into hiding, justifiably fearing for their lives. What is the West going to do about this outrage? What will our State Department say? We simply cannot live in a world in which people who express an opinion about somebody's god live thereafter in fear of their lives. This has been a long time coming -- after the Rushdie fatwa, the West cannot claim that it isn't on notice. It will be a long time in the undoing, too.
12 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Feb 04, 03:26:00 AM:
What really makes it ridiculous is the fact that
3 additional dispicable cartoons were created and
added. This from GatewayPundit:
Danish Imam Behind Fake Cartoons Celebrated 9-11 Attacks
Imam Ahmad Abu Laban, the leader of the Islamic Society of Denmark toured the Middle-East to "create awareness" about the 12 cartoons that were published in Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, on September 30, 2005...
As far as most Western news services are concerned these are the cartoons that are creating all of the uproar.
However, the truth is that Imam Ahmad Abu Laban, brought at least 3 additional images, which HAD NEVER been published in any media source. They included a cartoon of
- Muhammad as a pedophile demon,
-Muhammed with a pig snout, and
-a praying Muslim being raped by a dog.
The drawings in Jyllands-Posten were harmless compared to these:
posted by Gateway Pundit at 2/04/2006 06:26:00 AM | 0 comments links to this post
Click here: Gateway Pundit
And all this happens 4 months after the original publication and just when
Iran and Palestine/Hamas
are on the front burner.
As the UN has weighed in
on the Cartoons - State
may have acted as they did
in order to take away the
use of this by the UNers
and thus give them the out
they want on Iran.
Who knows - but it looks
to be a 180 from the Bush
Doctrines.
Hard to play any game when
one side has no rules.
Tim Blair regarding a clash
of civilizations wrote -
that takes two civilizations!
By 
Gordon Smith, at
Sat Feb 04, 01:57:00 PM:
militant fundamentalism is a source of suffering throughout the ages, regardless of which faith. Christian fundamentalists have their culture wars here in the U.S. in the present, and in the past they took to forcibly converting entire contintents. Looks like that worked out for them, eh?
Now we've got a radical Islamic fundamentalist sensibility to deal with. More religious militarism, more war, more nonsense.
Allah/Yahweh/God must be so pleased.
By , at
Sat Feb 04, 02:02:00 PM:
Winston Churchill: "Appeasers are hoping to be the last one eaten by the alligator."
American and European liberals never see that appeasment only delays the arrival of the alligator, if it delays it at all. You would have thought that they remember Hitler. Their public education systems must be even worse than ours is.
By , at
Sat Feb 04, 02:05:00 PM:
Screwy Hoolie,
Gosh, when was the last time a Baptist minster lopped the head off a Methodist? I don't recall the college of cardinals calling for the death of any muslims, jews or protestants lately.
I happen to believe in choice, but opposing abortiion does not make one a memeber of the Taliban. Nor does disputing tax breaks for same sexed couples.
The fact that you draw a parallel between non-violent citizens who attempt to use the political process to favor their policies with confessed masss murders says a hell of a lot more about you than the Christian right.
Hoolie, quite simply you are part of the problem, here, a big part of it. Because you lend credence to the worst sort of barbarism. I hope you're proud.
By Jason Pappas, at
Sat Feb 04, 02:40:00 PM:
Excellent point. Other good essays taking the State Department to task can be found in today's New York Post editorial. I have the link in my blog
By Lanky_Bastard, at
Sat Feb 04, 02:49:00 PM:
Amuses me how the same people who support an anti-flag burning ammendment can't grasp the intensity of others' desire to protect their icons.
Either drawing pictures of prophets and flag-burning are both not a big deal, or they'e both "the last freakin' straw".
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Feb 04, 02:52:00 PM:
Heh. Lanky, I really don't care about the Norwegian flag. It sort of pales in comparison to burning down the Danish embassy. When I say stuff like "last freakin' straw," it is (almost) always tongue in cheek. You ought to know that by now, Lank! :)
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Feb 04, 03:24:00 PM:
Oh. And Lanky, I don't support a flag-burning amendment. Waste of time.
By , at
Sat Feb 04, 03:28:00 PM:
I just read that several embassies have been burned. I may be mistaken but I believe that is an act of war.
I sure do wish we could give these islamic folks a little more respect.
By respect I mean credit them with being rational adults accountable for thier actions not children throwing a temper tantrum.
The muslims are such hypocrites. Cartoons about jews good, cartoons about muslims bad. Give me a break!
If burning an embassy is an attack on another soveriegn nation which I think an embassy represents then burn down the city it was in. You want war, bring it on. Turn sand into glass.
By Papa Ray, at
Sat Feb 04, 03:52:00 PM:
Dark times are coming because Muslims as a whole (billions of them) are bound, deaf, dumb and blind.
Foremost, they are bound by the cult of Islam, told what to do, what not to do, what to believe, how to treat others and how to live for the remainder of their lives.
They are deaf, they hear only what they want to hear, all is filtered, changed by their belief in Islam, which explains all unbelievers are to be against them and that they must be against all unbelievers.
They are dumb, maybe not uneducated, but dumb to the world outside of what they have, they envy what unbelievers have. They are dumb to the fact that Islam is their own worse enemy and is what is holding them back.
They are blind to anything not covered by the Qur'an or its tortured Islamic laws, blind to anything that says they are the ones to blame for their poverty, their dispair and their hate.
So they have only two things that hold them to their reality, their shrill voices and their sharp teeth. So all they have left is to scream and slash and wonder why they and the cult of Islam are so dispised and feared.
Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
By , at
Mon Feb 06, 12:29:00 AM:
"We had our big opportunity to stand by our "traditional allies," in addition to any number of actual allies, and we blew it. Not only did we fail to defend free speech, but we sandbagged Europe in its moment of need."
Yeah, sorta like what the euro-weenies did to us not so long ago. Perhaps the administration figured that the burnt hand teaches best. The euroweenies are ever so brave when they are hiding under our shield - tilting it to let them catch a few arrows might be what it takes to motivate them.
As ugly as it sounds, it would be in the Wests best interest to provoke a war with Islam sooner rather than later. Demographically they are growing stronger while we are growing weaker.
What would history have said if Churchill had formented a conspiracy to provoke war with Hitler in 1934 which resulted in a brief but bloody war to overthrow the Nazis? He might have gone down in history as a villan, be the world would be a better place.
By Lanky_Bastard, at
Mon Feb 13, 12:28:00 PM:
Sorry, I didn't mean to impune you personally. Just wanted to throw a new perspective at popular opinion.
