Everybody knows the cliché about the man crying “Fire!!!” in a crowded theater. Nobody in their right mind would ever blame the theater’s audience for going berserk after that. It was clearly the instigator’s crime, through and through.
There are laws in the United States and in all civilized countries to protect society against such maniacs. We are familiar with the legal definition and the legal consequences of “hate speech” and other cases of inciting violence. When I was younger, I used to be under the impression, long proven mistaken, that in America, at least, such laws surely offered sufficient protection against the most egregious offenses, such as the one that had been long in the making, in front of all of us, yet was allowed to be perpetrated, and, in all likelihood, will go unpunished, written off as “free speech,” while its horrific consequences already in evidence, will be felt and compounded for a long time to come.
Pastor Jones’ intent to burn the Quran had been made public a long time ago. His congregation had known about it, so had his fellow pastors, the National Association of Evangelicals, the whole American Christian community, the politicians, from the locals in Florida to the whole United States Congress, the media, both national and international, and, of course, the American public and the whole world.
Yet, he had not been stopped. Even worse, he must have been strongly encouraged, rather than discouraged, or, putting it mildly, placed in a safe mental institution.
The very unfortunate conclusion from all of this is quite obvious: there are extremely powerful forces in the United States today, for whom the current American presence in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya is only a small part of a wholesale war against the Islamic world. It is a tragedy that apparently this demented and suicidal perception is the only big game in town, as everybody else holding a different opinion has offered nothing better than casual lip service to the opposite view.
It is also tragic that some very wrong conclusions have been drawn from the Quran burning incident and the reactive violence against the UN in Afghanistan. No, the burning of Islam’s Holy Book was not an instance of “religious intolerance.” It was clearly a criminal political act, provoking Moslem violence, in order to be able to raise the stakes exponentially, in the ongoing “war of civilizations.”
…I deeply regret President Obama’s inadequate reaction to the series of events started by the Florida Quran burning. To begin with, he called the burning “an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry,” certainly, a very bad understatement. He also said that it did not justify attacking and killing innocent people in Afghanistan, which effect, rather than the cause, he called “outrageous and an affront to human decency and dignity.”
The crazed reaction of the audience in the crowded theater to somebody crying “Fire!!!” could probably be also characterized as “outrageous and an affront to human decency and dignity,” as people go over the top, stepping on children and the elderly, to save themselves from a non-existent threat. You can say I am mixing apples and oranges, comparing the proverbial theater massacre to the real massacre in Afghanistan? To which I can only reply that the extent of the crime perpetrated by Pastor Jones with the complicity of the American establishment is much-much greater, on a global scale, than that of that miserable theater pervert. Yet Pastor Jones has been allowed to enjoy his celebrity status with impunity, while people have died, and more are to die, as a direct result of his monstrous action.
Mr. Putin certainly knew what he was talking about, and why, when he compared the latest Western military involvement in yet another Moslem country to a “medieval crusade.” After all, the former President George W. Bush was the first to talk about “crusades.” And, most regrettably, the current President Barack Obama has missed a perfect chance to clear the air in the crowded global theater, to let it be known that the theater was not on fire.
There are laws in the United States and in all civilized countries to protect society against such maniacs. We are familiar with the legal definition and the legal consequences of “hate speech” and other cases of inciting violence. When I was younger, I used to be under the impression, long proven mistaken, that in America, at least, such laws surely offered sufficient protection against the most egregious offenses, such as the one that had been long in the making, in front of all of us, yet was allowed to be perpetrated, and, in all likelihood, will go unpunished, written off as “free speech,” while its horrific consequences already in evidence, will be felt and compounded for a long time to come.
Pastor Jones’ intent to burn the Quran had been made public a long time ago. His congregation had known about it, so had his fellow pastors, the National Association of Evangelicals, the whole American Christian community, the politicians, from the locals in Florida to the whole United States Congress, the media, both national and international, and, of course, the American public and the whole world.
Yet, he had not been stopped. Even worse, he must have been strongly encouraged, rather than discouraged, or, putting it mildly, placed in a safe mental institution.
The very unfortunate conclusion from all of this is quite obvious: there are extremely powerful forces in the United States today, for whom the current American presence in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya is only a small part of a wholesale war against the Islamic world. It is a tragedy that apparently this demented and suicidal perception is the only big game in town, as everybody else holding a different opinion has offered nothing better than casual lip service to the opposite view.
It is also tragic that some very wrong conclusions have been drawn from the Quran burning incident and the reactive violence against the UN in Afghanistan. No, the burning of Islam’s Holy Book was not an instance of “religious intolerance.” It was clearly a criminal political act, provoking Moslem violence, in order to be able to raise the stakes exponentially, in the ongoing “war of civilizations.”
…I deeply regret President Obama’s inadequate reaction to the series of events started by the Florida Quran burning. To begin with, he called the burning “an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry,” certainly, a very bad understatement. He also said that it did not justify attacking and killing innocent people in Afghanistan, which effect, rather than the cause, he called “outrageous and an affront to human decency and dignity.”
The crazed reaction of the audience in the crowded theater to somebody crying “Fire!!!” could probably be also characterized as “outrageous and an affront to human decency and dignity,” as people go over the top, stepping on children and the elderly, to save themselves from a non-existent threat. You can say I am mixing apples and oranges, comparing the proverbial theater massacre to the real massacre in Afghanistan? To which I can only reply that the extent of the crime perpetrated by Pastor Jones with the complicity of the American establishment is much-much greater, on a global scale, than that of that miserable theater pervert. Yet Pastor Jones has been allowed to enjoy his celebrity status with impunity, while people have died, and more are to die, as a direct result of his monstrous action.
Mr. Putin certainly knew what he was talking about, and why, when he compared the latest Western military involvement in yet another Moslem country to a “medieval crusade.” After all, the former President George W. Bush was the first to talk about “crusades.” And, most regrettably, the current President Barack Obama has missed a perfect chance to clear the air in the crowded global theater, to let it be known that the theater was not on fire.
No comments:
Post a Comment