The Painful Truth: My Fault, and Yours

The Newsweek riots of 2005 shone several spotlights onto the world stage and her players. The "news" magazine had run a short item, based on one annonymous source, that a copy of the Koran was flushed down the toilet at Gauntanamo Bay. This misguided attempt to elicit information from the prisoners resulted in mass rioting in parts of the muslim world, and the deaths of at least 17 people at the time of this writing.

Who is at fault for the riots and deaths caused by Newsweek's Koran in the krapper story? Well, it took a little while to figure out. First it seemed to be the magazine or Michael Isikoff, the author. Then it was America's fault, of course. Now we are told that the real culprit is, the ultra sensitive Muslims who can dish it out but can't take it.

Here is a summary of the three camps:
The MSM hates us and will stoop to any low in order to humilliate the military, Bush and anyone with a different view than the MSM.
Ann Coulter
Rich Lowry
Barrett Kalellis

America Brought it on Herself. The whole thing is really America's fault; because if we weren't so bad, then a story like this would not be so easily believed.
Molly Ivins: "Reports of Quran desecration are nothing new"
The rest all parrot Ivins, aparently unaware that the jihadists have copied a page out of the Communist's playbook on feigning victimization.

It's time for Islam to grow up.
Jeff Jacoby: "Why Islam is disrespected"
Mona Charen: "Caution: Muslims easily inflamed"
Brent Bozell: "No riots for Hollywood"

All of these have some validity to them. Yes, the MSM does hate Bush; many have openly admitted it. Yes, America is doing a fine job of making mistakes on her own; and yes, the world is growing tired of tribalistic Arabs who fear introspection and honest debate more than most socialists.

The real culprit is not the media, nor America, nor even the overly sensitive religious fanatics. The guilty parties in this whole mess are you and me. More precisely, the problem lies in our poor collective memory. Maybe if someone, any one, could have reminded the rest of us that Newsweek was the same magazine that, 30 years ago, trumpeted catastropchic global cooling within "perhaps only 10 years", we may have been able to save some lives.
"The Cooling World" Newsweek 1975 .
Too bad the hysterical environ-mentalists were wrong, we could use a little global cooling, right about now.

If you are looking for the real truth; the right answer, of course, is that the riots were a terrorist hail mary.
"Newsweek's "infidels" trigger prepared Jihad"
"The Long Planned "Spontaneous" Riots"