So now we see where this is leading. The head of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah,
"said there would be no compromise before Denmark apologizes and the European Parliament and individual assemblies in Europe pass laws that prohibit insulting the Prophet."
And he essentially made a threat:
"Today, we are defending the dignity of our prophet with a word, a demonstration, but let George Bush and the arrogant world know that if we have to ... we will defend our prophet with our blood, not our voices."
People keep talking about avoiding conflict. They are in denial. The conflict is already here. It is outrageous to be informed by a crowd of hundreds of thousands that the West must give up its freedoms in order to avoid violence. I'm relieved to see that this moment has forced some very hard thinking on the left. I got an email from a leftist British reader this week, passionately opposed to the foreign policies of Bush and Blair. Now he writes:
"What the Islamic world has succeeded in doing is forcing me to decide whether I'm going to side with a US policy which I think is often dirty but is nevertheless open to public scrutiny or an almost medieval, bloodthirsty and closed religious dogma whose intention - and partial achievement - is to undermine my way of life.
The British media and Government are, yet again, behaving in the same appeasing way towards Muslim fundamentalism in our own country as Chamberlain did towards Hitler in 1938 and as Stalin did towards Hitler in 1941. In both cases the results were disastrous; whilst the Allies eventually prevailed, it was at the cost of 50 million lives."
Another liberal reader comments:
"I'm honestly starting to suspect that, before this is over, European nations are going to have exactly four choices in dealing with their entire Moslem populations -- for elementary safety's sake:
(1) Capitulate totally to them and become a Moslem continent.
(2) Intern all of them.
(3) Deport all of them
(4) Throw all of them into the sea.
This sounds a bit shrill even to me -- but what the hell else can you do with several tens of millions of potential Branch Davidians?
The whole worldwide situation would be SO much easier to deal with if Pakistan didn't already have the Bomb. Think how much more interesting it will be when Iran has it, too."
Interesting is one word for it.