Commentary: I think it best to put the cartoon controversy in some context.
First the US State Dept has said:
The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, reading the government's statement on the controversy, said, "Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images," which are routinely published in the Arab press, "as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."
Still, the United States defended the right of the Danish and French newspapers to publish the cartoons. "We vigorously defend the right of individuals to express points of view," Mr. McCormack added.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/politics/04mideast.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1139202530-Fx8on4wKRRRMnfpTnf9m8QThat all sounds quite reasonable, if the US really believed in Freedom of the Press. It should be clear, to anyone paying attention, that it emphatically does not. As can be seen by the article excerpted below. Finally, it is not so simple to choose one of either two positions. In the real world there can be more than one. One can say that it is wrong to threaten the lives of people for printing an offensive cartoon, and also say it was offensive and wrong to print it, as many Muslims have done. I would point out that it is also wrong to wage a war of aggression on the people of Iraq, to support a brutal occupation of Palestine, to dehumanize others and suppress almost all avenues of political expression except as exercised through religious extremists.
As any progressive observer of the war on Iraq can plainly see, the US assault on Arab/Muslim people has been nothing short of barbaric. Bush does not have pre-9/11 thinking... he has pre-911 (the year!) thinking. Still, the United States is filled with many decent beautiful people... and many, who despite their prejudices and flaws, are part of the human community. Even if many still support this illegal war. I think that kind of tolerance should be applied to all national communities.
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Did Bush Really Want to Bomb Al Jazeera?On November 22, Britain's Daily Mirror published a startling allegation: In an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush proposed bombing the Arab TV network Al Jazeera's international headquarters in Qatar. The report was based on a memo stamped "Top Secret" that had been leaked by a Cabinet official in Blair's government.
<snip>
What Al Jazeera was doing in Falluja is exactly what it was doing when the United States bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001 and when US forces killed Al Jazeera's Baghdad correspondent, Tareq Ayoub, during the April 2003 occupation of Baghdad. Al Jazeera was witnessing and reporting on events Washington did not want the world to see.
The Falluja offensive was one of the bloodiest assaults of the US occupation of Iraq. On April 5, 2004, US forces laid siege to the city after the killing of four Blackwater mercenaries days earlier. When the US forces, led by the First Marine Expeditionary Force, attempted to take Falluja on April 7, they faced fierce guerrilla resistance. A US helicopter attacked a mosque, hitting the minaret and killing at least a dozen people. Within a week, some 600 Iraqis were dead, many of them women and children. By April 9, some thirty Marines had been killed and Falluja had become a symbol of resistance against the occupation.
<snip>
Faced with a public relations disaster, US officials did what they do best--they attacked the messenger. On April 11, with the unembedded reporters exposing the reality of the siege of Falluja, senior military spokesperson Mark Kimmitt declared, "The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies." A few days later, on April 15, Rumsfeld echoed those remarks calling Al Jazeera "vicious."
<snip>
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20051212&s=scahill____________________________________________________________________
Read the whole thing. Bush wanted to do it, Blair said no... this time. The bombing that took place in Afgahnistan was quite successful. Perhaps the people on the streets calling for Danish blood see it as an inspiration. It should at least be a lesson for us that we need to put our own house in order before we are quick to condemn others.
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