I know, and I haven’t said that the cartoon manias were “mere venting”, or that the manipulation of the cartoons for political gain wasn’t planned. I disagreed with Terrye’s analysis of their intentions.

I reject the idea that the reaction to the cartoons was created from nothing, rather than simply provoked, and that the goal of the strategy was to anger both The West and the Islamic world.

This theory only holds together if you believe that the Islamic World, ALL of it, wants total war with America and others. What they want, as I believe, is to encourage fear, futility and resignation in the West with a view to our withdrawl and retrenchement. Not bellicosity.

If I’m right, they failed, at least if we discount the craven reaction of media outlets everywhere that refused to publish the cartoons. But I’m unsurprised that the print variety of the chattering classes folded and ran at the first sign of danger. Call it Ink Courage.

What we see now, except in the bunkers of The Left, is a gathering disgust with Islam in general, which is loosening the ropes on the dogs of war. And that’s good, but I don’t think that’s what the mullahs had in mind.

I think your failure of understanding was that you thought I was characterizing YOUR views as urging sensitivity. I was not. Essentially I agree with you. Re-read my last two paragraphs and I think that will be more clear now.

Nor do I hold everyone in the region responsible for the terrorists and those who preach it (though the longer this “everyone” sits pat and allows the mob to distort and disgrace their religion in the eyes of the world, the more culpable they will become in my eyes).

I am not talking about senstivity I am talking about not putting our troops in more danger than they are already in just so we can sit back safe and sound here in the US and show the ragheads whose boss.

As I said before we published the pics on our blog. I am not going to refuse to do that because of a mob. But at the same time I am not holding everyone in the region responsible for the behavior of that mob either and when we respond by attacking the entire religion and everyone who practices it, we are simply giving ammunition to the terrorists.

I fail to understand why that is so difficult to grasp.

While home for lunch, I begrudgingly watched part of a dramatization film of the 9-11 terrorists in the pre-9-11 preparation period.

In one scene, an angry and insulted terrorist is leaving a U.S. consulate office whining like a spoiled child to his buddy that they refused his visa “just because I am an Arab. Do you think a Jew would be denied? No, they would say where would you like to go and when?”

I don’t know who wrote the screenplay for this, but it rang true that an Islamist could and would simultaneously be able to be offended for being refused a visa for a trip to the U.S. while knowing full well that that purpose of getting the visa was to enable him to come here and mass murder its citizens.

I grow more weary every day of any call for senstivity to this enemy’s proclivity to taking offense. At the same time, there are countless cartoons that could and should be made and disseminated that ridicule the Muslim extremists that will disgrace them a’plenty without needing to include a depiction of their Prophet. Having the right to depict him in a cartoon and actually doing it are two different things. In this war, we must stir up many bees nests to bring the killer bees out of hiding. But stirring up all of them is not a plan for success.

Shaming, humiliating and disgracing the thugs and terrorists is the best weapon to have them lose stature, face and power in the wider Muslim world. But it must be smart-bombed.

The cartoon riots could be passed off as mere venting if they hadn’t been so heavily and so obviously orchestrated, from Abu Laban’s well-financed roadshow replete with three images that were extremely offensive that were not from Jyllens-Posten, but rather created by the imams to inspire a reaction. Then there’s the curious availability of a huge supply of Danish flags for burning, the embassy attacks in Syria and Iran — two countries were this could not have happened without official sanction — and, of course the curious timing, months and months after publication in an Egyptian newspaper. No the various middle eastern governments saw an opportunity to distract public attention at home and abroad from various events like the debacle at the Hadj, the sinking of that Egyptian ferryboat full of pilgrims, Iran’s nuke project and the crackdown on striking transit workers and Syria’s continued “activities” in Lebanon.

You make a very good point.

It’s a bridge too far for them, too. That’s how they got into the mess they are in now.

As far as I’m concerned, a moderate Muslim can have any opinion on the cartoons versus respect he wants. Rather, any opinion as long as he agrees that it wasn’t worth rioting over–then he is still a moderate. Once he crosses that line, he loses any claim to “moderate”, and has my attention as a voter of a nation with a policy that happens to conflict with his view of the world.

I never said we should refrain from standing up for our beliefs, in fact I made a point of saying the opposite.

What I said is that we are basing our definition as to what a moderate Muslim is upon his or her willingness to say “Hey those cartoons are just fine with me”. I certainly do not think the over the top hysterical reaction of the mobs to the cartoons is ok, but I don’t think that expecting Muslims to endorse the cartoons is sensible either. They are not going to do it and if we try to force that then we are doing exactly what the Islamists want.

Think about the Pledge of Allegiance and the words Under God. Not a big deal, not the end of the world…but when some lawyer from California tried to get those words out of the Pledge the American people rejected it. Of course we did not go crazy in the streets either, that is not the way we are…but to a lot of moderate Muslims those cartoons are probably in the very least in bad taste and people are going out of their way to offend them. So, are they supposed to say it is ok with them if it is not just because we want them to? I think our definition as to what a moderate Muslim is should have something more to do with whether or not they have explosives strapped to their bodies than it does to whether or not they think it is ok to print some silly cartoons designed to create a reaction.

I mean come on, we are talking about cartoons here and as wrong as it is for those people to riot because of them it is no more reasonable for us to walk away from or turn away from or abandon an entire policy over the issue.

I think it is getting to the place where it is surreal.

OK I lied. That was not my ‘last’ comment on this topic. I feel like Michael Corleone.

I hope you are not saying that we have some form of ‘responsibility’ to walk on eggshells because Muslims might take offense. While I do believe in not deliberately offending someone else just on the principle of being mannerly, that is the limit of my ‘goodwill’. It is a voluntary act. Not a compulsion.

I respect everyone’s beliefs. Well more precisely I respect their right to the belief. I might think they are profoundly wrong, but as long as they do not attempt to force their values on me or any others, I am content to ‘go-along-to-get-along’. I believe I already said that as far as I really cared, they could make their whole world into the Sudan . Their future happiness or lack thereof is a matter of some indifference to me. Not my job, man.

However when they demand that I respect their beliefs to the extent of not commenting on those beliefs, that is a bridge too far for me. I don’t care if they think depictions of Mohammed are a good thing or not. Fair enough. I have no problem with their displeasure. They are fully entitled. When they tell me that these depictions must not be done because they are offended, they can talk to the hand.

This appears to me to be a rather unbridgable gap. I am certainly not prepared to ‘adjust’ my behaviour to suit the internal demands of any ‘cult’ to which I personally do not belong. Not now— not ever. Perhaps this might be marginally acceptable for purely ‘tactical’ reasons( the fire warning in a crowded theatre exception), but there would have to be a very very very clear line between the actions and the expected results. And if there were that clear a line, then the ‘reasons’ to stay ‘involved’ would be very much in doubt, IMO.

No retreat or surrender of classic, secular, values in pursuit of peace with a conflicting value system. That way lies eventual defeat. There is simply no end to compromise once you compromise the essense of what you are. Incompatible is incompatible. You should not go out of your way to ‘offend’ but neither should you ‘take orders’ not to do so.