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The Wall Street Journal reports:
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said the planned burning of Qurans on Sept. 11 by a small Florida church could put the lives of American troops in danger and damage the war effort.
Gen. David Petraeus said the Taliban would exploit the demonstration for propaganda purposes, drumming up anger toward the U.S. and making it harder for allied troops to carry out their mission of protecting Afghan civilians.
"It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort," Gen. Petraeus said in an interview. "It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community."
There can be no doubt that Gen. Petraeus is personally a very smart and exceptionally brave man. He alone dreamed up the Iraqi counterinsurgency strategy that, if not wholly successful, certainly brought us closer to victory there than anyone else's schemes.
What's more, his observation here is true on its face. If our goal is to win "hearts and minds" in Muslim lands, then wantonly desecrating their holy book is counterproductive. Whole books could be written - and have been - on violent Muslim responses to religious "disrespect"; the Taliban will most certainly use Pastor Terry Jones' "Burn a Koran Day" to inspire the murder of more American soldiers.
So? Since when does pissing off our enemies worry us?
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain has become a byword for pusillanimous appeasement because of one simple misunderstanding: he thought he could "do business" with Adolf Hitler. It turned out that he couldn't; Hitler signed whatever agreement was proffered, gladly took whatever goodies were on offer (the Rhineland, Austria, half of Czechoslovakia, the rest of Czechoslovakia...), and then came back for more from a stronger strategic position. Only when Chamberlain was replaced by Churchill, who knew there's no compromising with evil, did England get its act together and start to do what needed to be done.
When Churchill said that the Nazi leader was bent on bringing about a new Dark Age, one can only suppose that ol' Adolf didn't feel flattered. No doubt this disrespect inspired him to new heights of frothing fury, and his soldiers to new depths of depravity.
Should Churchill instead have held his tongue? Of course not! Hitler was evil; the Nazis did need to be stopped, and mincing words would only show fear.
In our world today, Western governments and cultural leaders have shown nothing but fear of Islam since modern terrorism began. Instead of sending murderers to meet their Maker, we are told, we have to instead understand their deprived background, or the evil Israeli occupation of Muslim lands, or the lack of respect for Muslim culture, or...
Hogwash! Murder is murder. Evil is evil - and as much as the New York Times refuses to admit it, Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, the 9-11 terrorists, indeed the whole lot of them, are inspired and motivated by the Koran.
Countless polls have shown that overwhelming numbers of Muslims, while too wimpy to personally blow themselves up, agree with the goals and methods of terrorism. Sad to say, terrorists are not an insignificant minority of Islam; they are solidly in the mainstream, no matter how the media tries the spin the numbers. For goodness' sake, a quarter of young American Muslims support suicide bombing!
Yet far from confront our true enemy, instead we defend barbaric Muslim practices with our blood and treasure. Our own soldiers are forbidden from distributing Bibles, and now the otherwise-admirable Gen. Petraeus seems to want to enforce Koran-respect within the United States that we won't even extend to the Book our Founders quoted more than any other. Is it any wonder that bin Laden thinks he'll win in the long term?
We've been down this road before. Even while WWII raged in Europe, the New York Times and Franklin Roosevelt at first refused to believe, and then refused to widely publicize, the depravity of the Holocaust. Only as Eisenhower's troops encountered the stark and starving evidence were the full horrors revealed to an appalled American public.
...In 1942, after hearing that 2,000,000 Jews had already been killed, he urged Rabbi Stephen Wise to stop pressuring him for immediate action. "The mills of the gods," Roosevelt said, "grind slowly."
Yes, Roosevelt did end the Nazi regime and its Final Solution; we rightly remember him as a noble war leader. His silence on Jewish issues during the war forever casts a cloud; could millions have lives have been saved by an earlier condemnation? We'll never know.
But at least he knew who the enemy was; our modern leaders still refuse even to name the exact sort of person who has been killing us at every opportunity for many decades.
If you sit down and read Mein Kampf, the only rational response upon closing the back cover is to throw it into the fire and wash your hands. The same is true of the Koran, with its oppression of women, its harsh and inhuman sharia law, its taqiyya doctrine of lying to non-Muslims, and most of all, its doctrine that jihadi holy war is to continue until the entire world bows the knee to Allah.
Where is a general who will speak the truth, and inspire our troops with a clear and accurate vision of the evil they are fighting against? Gen. Patton had a far healthier view:
The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
Let's get back to fundamentals here, before we're again slaughtered by Muslim fundamentalists.