Bugs Bunny "What A Maroon!" Award VI

This time around the high coveted and hotly contested "What A Maroon!" award goes, not to pastor Terry Jones, who has proved himself too brilliant a captor of the media and world "leaders" beyond count to even enter the running, but to the President of the United States, Barack Obama. The Clueless Smiley Nice Young Man From Chicago has outdone his previous performances as Global Apologist In Chief with his cringing adoption of what might be kindly called, "a passive prevent-defense."

Handed a perfect opportunity to go on the offensive against the advocates of political Islam and their snivelling co-religionists currently holding purportedly responsible positions in governments from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan, Pakistan to Indonesia, Mr Obama instead went on the pure defensive. Instead of holding the banner of American "exceptionalism" high for the world to see, rather than proclaim the existence of the First Amendment for all ears to hear, Mr Obama retreated behind the cordon of fear.

He (correctly) stated that torching a pile of Korans would put American lives at risk. He (incorrectly) restricted the heightened risk to American military personnel in Afghanistan. It was alright when General Petraeus singled out the enhanced risks attending American troops in Afghanistan, for the POTUS to do the same was disingenuous at best, a means of framing the narrative in a way which attempted to invoke patriotism and evade the reality that most risks would pass on to the unarmed, the unprepared, the unsuspecting, the tourists, the business wallahs, the humanitarian workers.

By focusing on the presumed threat to troops, Mr Obama tried to place himself above the fray, above the most critical issue involved in the Great Jones Fire Threat. The real issue sits at the heart of the vast difference which separates the United States from the bastions of Islam, from the repressive Islamic states as well as the proponents of violent political Islam.

The issue is simply freedom versus submission. Had the current American president the backbone of a banana split, he would have pointed out that in the US unlike the feudal states of Islam (including those with a transparently thin veneer of democracy) a citizen is free to say what he thinks free of any governmental let or hindrance. In the US the basic law of the land protects even the most obnoxious among us to speak--either literally or symbolically--and there is absolutely nothing the federal or state governments can do about it.

The meaning of Islam is "submission." In states having a Muslim majority, the idea of submission goes far beyond that of the believer submitting to the perceived will of Allah. It embraces the notion that the government has the right to control the speech (and presumably the thoughts) of all those living under its sway. The proof of this contention is found in the numerous quotes from Muslim clerics to the effect that pastor Jones could not be contemplating this incendiary exercise absent the approval of Mr Obama's administration and the demand that pastor Jones be arrested and his church be permanently shut down.

Mr Obama ought to have had the moral and intellectual courage to state clearly that the First Amendment was one of the features which marked the exceptional nature of the US as well as the even more exceptional freedom of its citizens. He ought to have challenged the Muslim majority countries as well as the proponents of violent political Islam to demonstrate even one percent of the faith in citizens and their institutions which our First Amendment requires.

At the same time Mr Obama could have made a strong reference to the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy. In this affair as in the pastor Jones contretemps, the basic law of the US prohibits any governmental action beyond the requirements of local land use authorities to block the construction of a building, even one whose location is disapproved of by some three quarters of We the People. American freedoms, the freedoms still available under the Constitution, are an ax which cuts in all directions with remarkable equality. Mr Jones has his rights and the folks behind the mosque and community center have theirs. Neither must nor can be forced to submit to governmental dictate.

In his moronic use of the defense, Mr Obama threw away a fine chance to show the world--including Muslims--just what the US stood for. He tossed aside a way by which people around the globe, again including Muslims, could decide which side they supported or at least the side toward which they inclined.

Instead, by his example Mr Obama gave Americans and the world generally tacit permission to surrender to fear. To submit to the coercive effect of fearing what those Mad Muslims might do if they felt insulted, or if they did not get the fullest of their demands. His invocation of the defense and eschewing of the offense have served to make more potent the panic producing potential of even implicit Muslim threats.

The bully has won. Mr Obama may not have appeased as he has so many times before but he did the equivalent by going on the defense. A defense which admitted fear is not even one full step removed from fear induced appeasement. In either case the bully is emboldened. In either case the bully will be back ready to extort more, able to gin up fear--and capitalize on the fear he engenders.

There is a grain of truth in the hoary military maxim: "The best defense is a good offense." In this case Mr Obama chose to ignore the fine offensive platform provided by the First Amendment. He hid our freedoms behind the troops who have pledged their lives to protect those freedoms. By doing so he not only weakened us and our freedoms, he made mockery of the oath sworn by all military personnel, and, come to think of it, himself.

All Actions Have Consequences

Pastor Terry Jones, the capo of the fifty or so member--and grandiosely named--Dove World Outreach Center has copped himself the propaganda prize of the year, perhaps the decade, with his planned "Burn a Koran Day." For a middle aged businessman whose theological credentials are, to put it kindly, sparse, he has garnered for himself and his minuscule flock several oil tankers worth of notoriety, public attention of a magnitude that even Paris Hilton can only dream of.

While it is commonplace to blame the internet, the twenty-four hour news cycle, or the electronic global village of today's globe, the pastor would never have been heard of beyond the limits of Gainesville, Florida were it not for another, very simple and highly inconvenient fact.

And that fact is, Geeko?

Here it is. Get a grip on it. We are all scared to the point of blithering idiocy by fear of Muslims. To sharpen the focus a bit, we are frightened out of our wits by the probability that some individuals, using this insult to Islam as an excuse, will turn violent, start blowing themselves to Paradise while taking those in unfortunate propinquity along for the ride.

There is beyond doubt sound reason for the fear which has come as a necessary consequence of pastor Jones' intended bonfire of Korans. As the world found out a few years back, the capacity of Muslims for violent response to what most in the West see as picayune acts is profound. Whether the rumor of Korans being flushed down latrines in Gitmo or the cartoons of a Dane himself outraged by suicide bombings carried out by men shouting, "Allahu akbar," the result was mob violence around the world.

The sensibilities of Muslims to presumed offenses against their premier prophet or their sacred writings boggles most Western minds as it does the less emotionally invested within the Muslim world. The Muslim reaction to any perceived slight on the Koran is justified by the recurrent animadversion that it constitutes the literal word of the deity and must not be splotched by the stain of human action. The possibility that once the presumed words of the deity have passed through the mind and hands of man they have lost the proximate provenance of the divine and are simply one more artifact of humanity is beyond the pale of consideration for many, (most?) in the Muslim community.

Thus the burning of a Koran is an act of profound sacrilege. As such the True Believer has the duty of responding with violence, with destruction, with murder.

That simple progression well expressed in recent years throughout the world gives rise to and justification for our fear of what will happen before the flames of burning Korans have faded in the Florida sky. And, it is this which has given pastor Jones the unprecedented capacity to rivet the attention of the American president as well as his counterparts in Europe and Asia, to capture the media as if at gunpoint.

Under all the calls for Mr Jones to refrain from carrying through his threat of Koranic combustion is the unspoken, pervasive fear of the hours, days, and months to come. How many will die because some Muslim somewhere has seized upon the Jones Conflagration to maim, to kill, to destroy? For how long will the toxic smoke from the Gainesville event circle the world, inflaming how many Muslims to how many acts of murder? How many Americans will finally pay the price for Mr Jones' quest for fame?

There is no doubt but leaders of Muslim states as well as the Organization of the Islamic Conference have been in a race to outdo one another in both the vitriol of denunciation (as if the US government can intervene, but these dudes don't get that fine point being unused to any sort of restrictions on the capacity of government to suppress) and the insinuations of horrid things yet to come should the Korans be rendered into smoke and ash. Along with the leaders the mob has already gotten up and running, spewing the usual "Death to America" slogan along with promises to join the jihad.

There is a high probability that should pastor Jones proceed, there will be Muslim mobs in the streets, Muslims with suicide vests will detonate themselves, Muslims will join the jihad, the relations between Muslim majority states and the US will worsen. That is to be expected. For these negative results not to occur will require divine intervention--an unlikely proposition at best.

But, then what? The question Muslims both high and low in position never ask: What will be the consequences of our venting our legitimate rage at this blasphemy?

As recent polls have shown, the American public has been demonstrating an increasingly negative appreciation of Islam and Muslims. The argument has been advanced that this decline in positive perceptions has resulted from a combination of ignorance and the blandishments of vocal opponents of all things Muslim.

There is no denying the fact that most Americans are not well versed in Muslim history, Islamic theology and jurisprudence. There is no reason to believe that most of We the People see any need to remedy these presumed lacks. Nor is there any reason to assert that even a great increase in knowledge of the history, theology, or jurisprudence of Islam would alter the negative perception in the slightest.

The poor view of Islam and Muslims held by most Americans is the direct result of actions performed by Muslims. The suicide bombings, the violent misogyny, the waves of Muslim men chanting, "Death to...," the spewing of hatred for the values and imperatives held dear by Americans on the part of assorted Muslim clerics have combined to lower the esteem in which Americans hold the religion and its adherents. At the same time, these factors, all of which are directly and easily observed in all their full and blood toned color in all the media, have vastly increased both the fear and the loathing with which many Americans view Islam and Muslims generally.

Another factor is at work. The concept of deference has long been eroding in the West generally and the US in particular. The pace of erosion has increased with the growth of horizontal means of communication including but not limited to the internet. This means the power once held by the opinion molding elites both in the US and Western Europe no longer exists to the degree it did even twenty years ago.

It no longer matters what presidents, or high officials, or church leaders, or pundits might contend. The old elite no longer can pronounce and expect the hoi polloi to tug their forelocks in obedience. The elites have been chorusing the need for "tolerance" and "interfaith respect" while the Legions of the Great Unwashed have observed that when it comes to Islam and Muslims the avenues marked "tolerance" or "respect" are one-way streets.

There is a profound and evident dissonance between what can be directly observed about Islam and Muslims on the one hand, their demands for special treatment as well as their reflexive resort to violence in response to irritants, and the bland statements from the "Betters," the "Older and Wiser," the self-appointed custodians of what is right and wrong, permitted and impermissible on the other.

The takeaway for Muslims is simple. Insofar as there are violent, murderous reactions to the admittedly very ill-advised Koran burning, the American public will show a further downward trend in its collective view of Islam and Muslims. This will have an impact on the policies of the US in both foreign and domestic affairs.

The US Marines have a motto of recent vintage, "No better friend; no worse enemy." The same motto can apply with utter accuracy to We the People. It would behoove any Muslim, here or abroad, to consider that his actions can have consequences.

Muslims do not have any patent on the right to be insulted.