AMERICA'S VIRGIN EARS:

Muzzling the wrong dog (Cal Thomas, Oct. 21, 2003, Jewish World Review)

The Bush administration is making a fundamental mistake when it promotes the fiction that our enemies can be made less threatening by what America says and does. That should now be obvious to Democratic senator and presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman, who spoke last Friday (Oct. 17) to an Arab American Institute meeting in Dearborn, Mich. Lieberman, who is Jewish, noted that Jews and Muslims are descendants of Abraham. "I am your brother," he said, and added, "Whatever differences we may have on the issues of the day are differences of ideas, not of religion or nationality." Members of the audience heckled him.

This notion that religion is not at the heart of the hatred directed at America from outside and now inside the country qualifies as extreme denial. Throughout the Muslim world, America is condemned not mainly because of its ideas but because Islamists believe we are infidels opposed to G-d. [...]

The problem is illustrated by this story: There are two dogs; one is vicious and the other friendly. The vicious dog regularly attacks the friendly dog. The owner of the friendly dog decides to muzzle his dog, hoping this will demonstrate to the vicious dog that the friendly dog means him no harm. The vicious dog sees his opportunity and kills the muzzled friendly dog.

In muzzling Boykin, the Pentagon has not converted those who believe they have a religious mandate to destroy us. It is silencing, instead of sounding, the alarm that this enemy is bigger than any threat America has ever faced.

If an American general gave this speech (warning: scatology alert) today, more than one of the Democratic candidates would call for him to be court-martialed.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 21, 2003 9:40 AM