The Bonfire of the Qurans

[VDARE.COM note:
The Florida pastor who said he`d burn the
Korans has either called off, or postponed the bonfire (Pastor`s
agreement to call off 9/11 Koran burning beset by
confusion,
by Warren Richey, Christian Science Monitor, September
9, 2010). But that doesn`t really change anything in
either

Michelle Malkin`s
or Pat Buchanan`s syndicated columns tonight.] 

Is there anyone who has not weighed
in on the Saturday night, Sept. 11, bonfire of the
Qurans at the
Rev.
Terry Jones` Dove World Outreach Center in
Gainesville, Fla.?

Gen. David Petraeus warns the Quran
burnings could inflame the Muslim world and imperil U.S.
troops in Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton declares it
"disgraceful." Sarah Palin calls it a
"provocation." President Obama

calls it "a
recruitment bonanza for al-Qaida. You could have serious
violence in … Pakistan and Afghanistan," and
Muslims could be inspired
"to blow themselves up."

The State Department has put U.S.
embassies on alert in the near 50 countries where
Muslims are a majority. The
Vatican
calls the bonfire

"an outrageous
and grave gesture.
… No one burns the Quran."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the

defender of the

ground zero mosque, is consistent. Burning Islam`s
most sacred book is
"distasteful," he says, but the

"First Amendment
protects everybody."

Everybody frets and wrings their
hands. No one acts.

Yet if, as President Obama and his
commanding general both say, the torching of hundreds of
Qurans could so enrage the Islamic world as to incite
terror-bombings against U.S. troops and imperial our war
effort, why does not the commander in chief send U.S.
marshals to arrest this provocateur and abort his
provocation?

For

Jones, who sells t-shirts saying

"Islam is of the
Devil," may be an Islamophobe, but he is also a
serious man, willing to live with the consequences of
his deeds, even if he causes U.S. war casualties.

The questions raised by his
deliberate provocation are not so much about him, then,
as they are about us.

Are we a serious nation? Is Obama
up to being a war president?

Constantly, we hear praise of
Lincoln, Wilson and FDR as war leaders.

Yet President Lincoln

arrested thousands of citizens and locked them up as
security risks, while denying them
habeas corpus.
He shut newspapers and

sent troops to block Maryland`s elections, fearing
Confederate sympathizers would win and take Maryland out
of the Union.

President Wilson shut down antiwar
newspapers, prosecuted editors, and put Socialist
presidential candidate and

war opponent

Eugene Debs in prison, leaving him to rot until
Warren Harding

released him and invited the dangerous man over to
the White House for dinner.

California Gov. Earl Warren and FDR
collaborated to put
110,000
Japanese, 75,000 of them

U.S. citizens, into detention camps for the duration
of the war and ordered the Department of Justice to

prosecute antiwar conservatives.

During Korea,

Harry Truman seized the steel mills when a
threatened strike potentially imperiled

production of war munitions. Richard Nixon went to
court to

block publication of the Pentagon papers until the

Supreme Court decided publication could go forward.

This is not written to defend those
war measures or those wars. It is to say that if a
president takes a nation to war, and commits men to
their deaths, as

Obama did in doubling the number of U.S. troops in
Afghanistan, he should be prepared to do what is within
his power to protect those troops.

And if

Petraeus says letting Jones set this bonfire could
imperil U.S. troops, Obama should act to stop it. And if
he is so paralyzed by uncertainty as to whether he can
do anything—and, as a result, soldiers die—what would
that tell us about their commander in chief?

Would stopping Jones and
confiscating the Qurans violate Jones` First Amendment
rights? Perhaps. And perhaps not. But if

Eric Holder cannot find a charge against Jones, or
an inherent power of a war president to prevent actions
imminently damaging to the war effort, Obama should find
some

Justice Department attorneys who can.

Let the
ACLU
make the case that interfering with Jones` bonfire
violates his First Amendment rights. Let a U.S. court
decide whether Obama has the power to take a decision
previous wartime presidents would have taken without
hesitation.

And if Obama does not have the
power to stop actions like this, imperiling our troops,
then

we should get out of this war.

This episode reveals the gulf
between us and the Islamic world. Despite all our talk
of universal values, tens of millions of Muslims, in
countries
not
only hostile but friendly, believe that a sacrilege
against their faith, like the burning of the Quran by a
single American oddball, justifies the killing of
Americans. What kind of compatibility can there be
between us?

What do we have in common with
people who believe that evangelism by other faiths in
their societies merits the death penalty, as do
conversions to Christianity, while promiscuity and
adultery justify

stonings, lashings and beheadings?

And what does it say about our
ability to fight and win a "long war" in
the Islamic world if our war effort can be crippled by a
solitary pastor with 50 families in his church who
decides to have a book burning?

Action creates consensus, Mr.
President. People follow when a leader leads.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan
needs

no introduction to
VDARE.COM readers; his book State
of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and
Conquest of America, can
be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book
is Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How
Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost
the World,
reviewed

here by

Paul Craig Roberts.