KRAUTHAMMER, AS HE OFTEN DOES, PUTS THE GITMO/KORAN situation into perspective. Reactionaries want the place shut down immediately, which of course would solve absolutely nothing. Terrorists will continue to be caught, and continue to require interrogation. Gitmo is simply a symbol and shutting it down will simply require the opening of another...and around and around we go.
In the meantime, the allegations of "mishandling" the Koran at Guantanamo is of such miniscule importance that I have trouble undertandiong what the hoopla is all about. I mean seriously, is the U.S. treating prisoners so well that the only thing leftist morons have to focus on is detaineee accusations of Koran abuse?
Krauthammer rates the crime...
On the scale of human crimes, where, say, 10 is the killing of 2,973 innocent people in one day and 0 is jaywalking, this ranks as perhaps a 0.01.
...and adds that the Korans would not even be there to be abused were it not for the U.S. government, which provided the books and the strict measures for handling, making it possible to create charges of mishandling.
As is usually the case, the most glorious of the hypocrits is the civil libertian set amongst the American left.
When an American puts a crucifix in a jar of urine and places it in a museum, civil libertarians rise immediately to defend it as free speech. And when someone makes a painting of the Virgin Mary, smears it with elephant dung and adorns it with porn, not only is that free speech, it is art -- deserving of taxpayer funding and an ACLU brief supporting the Brooklyn Museum when the mayor freezes its taxpayer subsidy.
This raises a pretty good point actually. It has been my experience that the folks defending against Koran abuse are generally the same people who vilify religion and demonize people of faith on a regular basis. Of course, it is so much easier to attack American people of faith, as they don't usually take hostages and saw heads off.
The U.S. should change tact on this Koran abuse story. Instead of apologizing for any actual abuses of the Koran, they should insist that the guards in question are simply exercising their free speech, and that the "desecration" is, in fact, art. The ACLU would jump immediately on the bandwagon and the National Endowment for the Arts could fund an exhibit in some swank New York Gallery. All of the cultural elites could go and comment on how beautiful the works are and pat themselves on the back for being so open-minded on the subject of religion.
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