Friday, February 3, 2006
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - A. Lincoln
Not exactly an on-target quote, but it's what come to mind.
Demonstration in Britain:
See LGF for posts: British Muslims Threaten Death, Muslim Mobs in London: "Europe: Your 9/11 Will Come", Muslim Mob Attacks Danish Embassy in Indonesia.
Also, Michelle Malkin: IN THEIR OWN WORDS, THE MUHAMMAD CARTOONS BLOGBURST, FOLLOWERS OF THE RELIGION OF PEACE and also, Qaradawi's THE "INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ANGER".
The State Department is taking a lot of heat for throwing Europe to the crocodile, but I'm not ready to jump on that bandwagon quite yet. Beyond the small measure of shadenfreude at the sight of Europeans doing more to stir up Muslim anger and violence through the posting of a few cartoons than we ever did in defending our citizens by dropping bombs on terror states in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, or the Israelis have ever done in defending themselves from suicide murder...beyond that...here's the fact: Our guys are dodging IED's in Baghdad and beyond, and our efforts across the Middle East require some measure of winning hearts and minds and the reaction to us is important -- rational or ir, it doesn't matter. We don't need a few cartoons destroying all that effort put in with all that "we're not at war with Islam" talk.
So our government needs to balance things. Is making a statement on this important? What's the balance of issues? Maybe the State Department missed a good opportunity to shut up, since the whole point in the West is that it's not a government issue, and so far America has kept out of it, but maybe they had to say something...
That's not to say I'm happy with what the State Department has said -- I'm clearly no fan of that institution -- merely that there are a lot of factors to balance, and it's an imperfect world.
Here's some more: Judith Apter Klinhoffer: IMAM: MUST SEVER CARTOONISTS' HEADS
Update: This post at LGF indicates that what the State Department actually said is a lot more nuanced than what was reported in the linked AFP piece.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Cartoons in an imperfect world -- Updated.
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One word to describe, imho, the State Department's comments: Dhimmitude.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,398853,00.html