The clash of Islamic culture vs. Western culture is coming to a head faster than I think most expected. Rodney King asked the seminal question years ago. "Can we get along here? Can we all get along?" Of course, he wasn't the first to ask that question, and his plea to Los Angeles Rioters has often been put in the more succinct, "Can't we all just get along?"

When the citizens of one of the most metropolitan of American Cities can descend into a veritable orgy of rioting, pillaging and burning that requires the mobilization and deployment of the National Guard, can we really expect the citizens of theocratic and dogmatic nations to really do any better?

Freedom of Speech, and tolerance have been tested time and again in the United States, and so far the forces of tolerance have been victorious. Christianity in its many forms has mellowed to the point that it is not going to spark mass riots and burn down government, or even media facilities in reaction to offensive presentations. They will speak up against presentations that they see as offensive, and threaten and even implement boycotts, and there might be isolated incidents of violence against individuals, but if Christians were as aggressive as their Moslem counterparts a whole lot of Western Media would have burned to the ground long ago.


I understand the position of those that feel that the publishing of offensive cartoons is probably a bad idea. The problem of course is that creates a society where you can't offend anyone, and true discourse can't occur in such a society. The fact that the American Media has studiously avoided re-publishing the offensive images is an interesting conundrum. I tend to feel that it is basic "gutlessness" that has driven that decision, but interestingly enough it actually strengthens America's position when it comes to middle east intervention. This makes clear to the European nations that this isn't simply a middle east vs. the United States issue, but rather an "Extremist Muslim" vs. Western values issue.

The unfortunate part of this is that it wll likely get a lot worse before it gets any better. Terrorism is basically the proxy for those people that are willing to give up their lives for their way of life. They want a war, but they can't really wage one, so they move to terrorist actions. the problem with this is that they won't get the sort of body count that a proper war would give them, and so they are unlikely to get tired of dying, and on the other side of the equation, it is unlikely that the peacekeepers will really get tired of killing them because they just aren't killing all that many of them. Western media has a really low tolerance for seeing Westerners die though, and that's what the terrorists play to.

Unfortunately, this is only the beginning. It will be pretty interesting if the Europeans decide to take action before the United States does though.