The Political Spectrum

Now that it has been revealed that the Newsweek story about the Koran being flushed down the toilet is not true, or at least has not been confirmed and therefore should not have been published, there is a mini-dustup in the blogosphere over who to blame for the deaths of 16 people. On some level of course Newsweek deserves the scorn being unleashed in its direction. As Ace and Michelle Malkin so aptly put it, "Newsweek lied. People died." They decided to publish a story that they knew would be disastrous in terms of American foreign policy, and yet did worse than a sub-standard job in fact-checking said story. Now 16 people are dead, and anti-Americanism abroad is stoked again.

But Dave at Garfield Ridge understands where the real story is.

But let's face facts, folks: at the end of the day, the story here isn't about Newsweek, or the Pentagon.

It's about adherents of a religion that riot and kill because someone allegedly burned a book.

I don't care if it was the Koran, the Torah, or Curious George Meets The Electric Fence-- this sort of delusional behavior is not only irrational, it's psychotic. And it shows just how far we have to go for the Islamic world to be brought into the 21st-- hell, the 20th-- century.

. . .I've never heard a Colorado minister preach for honor killing. I've never seen deadly riots in Alabama over a crucifix in urine. Hundreds of Baptists didn't begin suicide bombing statehouses performing same-sex marriages, or grade schools teaching evolution.

Yet, the Left fears Christianity as if it were evil incarnate. Meanwhile, we patronize all Muslims by tacitly accepting sick and violent behavior from these evil men, casually writing off millions of innocent people all because we don't dare question how anyone practices their religion.

Hey, they're just Muslims; they don't know any better, right? We here in the West are so much smarter than they are. Better to forget about them, let them kill themselves, and sit tight at home watching Desperate Housewives.

One would have thought 9/11 would have convinced us all that we can just sit behind our walls and hope the evil doesn't come in.

We can all appreciate the emotional and psychological impact that the desecration of a sacred symbol can have on a people. So important is the American flag as a national symbol that no less a liberal jurist than William Brennan Justice Stevens (caught my mistake a bit late) thought that anti-flag burning laws did not violate the first amendment. Working in the Mayor's Office of New York City - the largest liberal enclave in the country - I saw a slew of e-mails denouncing the vile "Madonna covered in feces" piece of "art" that the Brooklyn Museum of Art exhibited. And yet I do not recall too many Catholics taking to the streets in protest, and have yet to hear about any deaths that resulted.

It's long been noted that bullies are those that lack self-esteem. They hate their own lives so much that they will take their frustrations out on others. Similarly, certain people choose to blame others for their putrid state of existence, and lash out in fits of rage over their so-called oppressors. Every time I see people from the Middle East waving their fists at the evil Americans it reminds me that so much of their anger comes from within. They have lived with despotism their entire lives, and have seen their governments curtail any and all freedoms. As such, any perceived slight is magnified a thousand times. So they use an excuse a purported desecration to take to the streets and vent their anger.

I guess this is all a good thing for many of the Middle Eastern states. I was watching the Prime Minister of Egypt on Meet the Press yesterday and he had to sit there and pretend that anti-Americanism wasn't a convenient outlet for Egyptians whose true enemies were the men running their own government. Oh sure, elections in that country are a farce and real democracy does not exist there, but as long as the tyrannized can turn their anger on a distant land rather than the real tyrants, then those in charge can sit back and relax. But that won't last for long. As Fareed Zakaria noted,

Tomorrow, were the Egyptian Street to voice its views—I mean the real Egyptian Street, not President Mubarak's state-controlled media—we would probably discover that its deepest discontent is directed not at the president of the United States, but at the president of Egypt. Perhaps Arabs and Muslims are not some strange species after all. It is their rulers who are strange.

Anyway, as Dave said, as much blame as Newsweek deserves, it's the people who actually did the killing that are the evil ones, and as such are the people we ought to be focusing our anger upon.