The Boston Globe recently ran an editorial concerning the Muhammed cartoons. The final paragraph:
"Depicting Mohammed wearing a turban in the form of a bomb with a sputtering fuse is no less hurtful to most Muslims than Nazi caricatures of Jews or Ku Klux Klan caricatures of blacks are to those victims of intolerance. That is why the Danish cartoons will not be reproduced on these pages."
The cartoons are offensive? You dont say! That isn't the issue here. The issue here is that we should be allowed to express an opinion without the fear of violent reprisal. If I drew and published Nazi-like caricatures of Jews, that would make me an asshole. However, I could still do it without fear of being attacked or killed in response. I find it ironic that the left has been making this huge fuss about Bush infringing on our freedoms lately, yet they are condemning the European newspapers for publishing these cartoons. Evidently, the freedom of speech is less important than the freedom to make international phone calls to terrorists without being wiretapped.
The threat of violence is becoming ever greater as well. These images from a protest in London are extremely disturbing to me. Some of the phrases on the protestors' signs read, "Be prepared for the real holocaust", "Europe you will pay. Your 9/11 is coming", and "Exterminate those who slander Islam". Seriously, who says these sorts of things?
There is no way that the West can back down on this issue. To do so would imply to those fanatics who distort Islam that massive threats of violence and protest will push the West to do anything. It is a slippery slope that we cannot start down. They can be oppressive and overly sensitive in their own cultures if they want, but they shouldn't be telling us how to act.
The US State Department issued a response. The US is condemning the cartoonists. Ideologically, I am strongly opposed to this statement, but strategically I am regretfully supportive. The US is deeply involved with four Muslim nations/groups right now; we are occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and negotiating with Iran and Hamas. Each of these precarious situations seems to be on a knife's edge. I'd hate to see this cartoon controversy push each of those situations over the bad side.
Andrew Sullivan posted a reader comment that I found comforting as well:
The State Department's comment on the Danish cartoons was brilliant. This is a European problem and we owe Europe nothing. The comment a) gave us a small chance to look good to Muslims (even if the comment was admittedly bullshit) b) allowed the focus of the anger to remain on the Europeans which will only reinforce the truth that Islamic extremism is a threat to the entire West, not just the United States and c) frankly, it was a nice "fuck you" to Europe. I LOVED it. Of course, given that it was the State Department, they probably had none of these things in mind, but hey, whatever.
A final thing I wanted to mention is this growing awareness that there are three particularly insulting cartoons that appeared out of nowhere. For example, one of them shows Muhammed involved in a sexual act with an animal. None of these three mysterious comics was drawn by the Danish cartoonists, yet they are being widely circulated around the Middle East with the original 12 Danish cartoons. I wonder where they came from? Who would benefit from such extremely insulting comics being included in the controversy? Perhaps, a group that wants to see the drama escalate into a clash of civilizations. Right-wing elements in Europe and Al Qaeda both have that goal...my bet is that an extremist group, potentially on either side, is behind them.
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5 comments:
I don't understand one thing. You say, correctly, that "There is no way that the West can back down on this issue." Yet you say that the State Department's cowardly response is "strategically" correct. Even if there were a sound strategic purpose in declaring a publication's contents "unacceptable," the U.S. government has no business making such a declaration.
Not every nation in the West needs to be directly involved in this issue. It makes more sense for a bunch of European countries to take the heat; everyone knows they're speaking for us all. Its also not like the US government is going to censor any of our newspapers, should they decide to publish. So whether the US government says it supports Muslims, its not going to do anything to stop the publishing - which is exactly what European governments say.
I think the Europeans will successfully deal with this battle on their own. Not having all of this hatred directed at the States will free up the USA to hopefully bring our issues with Iraq, Hamas, Iran to a positive outcome, which is almost as important.
Dear Nicholas, with all due respect, your last comment appears furiously to be like a « dhimmitude attitude »...
Your country invaded Iraq three years ago and killed and will kill thousands of civilian muslims (including a lot of women and children).
I don't think that the non-printing of 12 miserable Muhammed cartoons by the U.S. newspapers will change anything to the anger of Fundamentalist Islamists and terrorists towards the U.S.A.
baron,
Indeed, the fundamentalists and terrorists will continue to despise America regardless of our stance here. I'm not very concerned with the attitudes of these particular groups of people though. I am more concerned with the attitudes of the larger and more influential groups of Muslims that we are working with.
In WW2, the West allied with the Soviets, even though Stalin had invaded Poland right along with Hitler. Nobody believed that Stalin was anything more than a temporary ally. Sometimes its smarter to make decisions based on their long term strategic implications, rather than their short term effects.
Yea, I'd love to see America stand right along with Europe in defiance of those who would impose their beliefs on us.
In doing so, we would lose the support of the Iraqi Shia, with whom we are attempting to establish a stable democracy there. And those secular Iraqi Sunnis who have been coaxed away from the insurgency, may be driven right back to it. The rifts between those secular Sunnis and Zarqawi may be closed by a new common rallying cry.
We are attempting to get Hamas to recognize Israel and renounce terrorism; we're trying to get Iran to cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons. How likely are any of those goals, even without the added insult by the US government of mocking the Prophet?
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