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THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - September 14, 2010
The Bonfire of the Qurans
by: Pat Buchanan
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 Davis,
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 Davis'
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.
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