WASHINGTON — Allow me to offer a suggestion as to how our
government might avoid the slaughter of our personnel in diplomatic
installations around the Islamic world by mobs.
It seems to me most probable that insults to the Prophet
Muhammad appear regularly in the modern world. After all, insults
against revered figures in the world’s other major religions pop up
all the time. As for Islam, a book such as Salman Rushdie’s
Satanic Verses can be published anywhere. A
thirteen-minute anti-Islamic video can arrive on YouTube, and my
guess is there are others that have and will appear there. In some
obscure land, far from the major media, a cartoon is published
perhaps with the Prophet in an absurd pose. Why not a simple slur
on Facebook? Who can control Facebook? Will a slur found there set
off the mobs next time? And what constitutes a slur? These Islamic
mobs keep changing their standards. What was a minor lapse of taste
yesterday becomes a cause for terrible indignation today.
The metamorphosing angers of Islam have been a feature of the
modern world for decades. Possibly the first show of anger was in
Tehran with the takeover of the American embassy. But I trace
Islamic anger back further, at least to Sirhan B. Sirhan, who
assassinated the 1968 presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy,
for some fancied transgression. From all I can tell, the angers of
Islam are getting worse. Even with the presidency of Barack Obama,
the Nobel Laureate, the angers of Islam have worsened. He began his
presidency tendering the olive branch of peace to Islam. Now the
Islamic world is afire. Mobs are burning our diplomatic
installations in places where moderate Islam reigns, for instance,
Tunisia. In Libya unspeakable desecrations take place against us.
Egypt seems to be out of control, and Egypt is supposedly an ally
and recipient of foreign aide.
The rest of world seems to be going forward toward prosperity.
Even countries like China, India, and Russia are proceeding into
the future. Islam, at least in Arab lands, is going backwards. It
is doing something I would have thought preposterous in decades
past. It is heading back toward the Middle Ages and embracing that
time and earlier times with open arms. I think some day we will
recognize it as the season following the vaunted Arab Spring.
Yet back here in America the news is not all that bad. For one
thing, we are approaching energy independence. Thanks to an
abundance of recently discovered natural gas, we may in the years
ahead be shipping it abroad. Also, thanks to “fracking” we can
extract oil from long dead oil wells and from newer ones. If
President Obama will just get out of the way, we are going to be
energy independent and our independence will last for years. The
angers of Araby will be inherited by the Chinese and the Indians.
I, for one, will enjoy seeing how China handles the murder of
Chinese diplomats and the torching of Chinese embassies.
For with energy independence we can close our embassies in lands
where they are endangered or perhaps stand as a provocation to the
passing mobs. In the modern world, diplomatic business can be
carried on in civilized countries rather than in dangerous
backwaters. We can treat a Libyan or Tunisian envoy in Geneva,
Switzerland or possibly in New York at the United Nations complex.
Diplomats from those countries would still be free to visit New
York City. It would be a shame, if civilized citizens of Islam
could no longer line up at our embassies or consulates for visas to
the United States, but such is life. If there was business to be
transacted, the businessmen could always transact it on the
telephone or, for the advanced, the Internet.
Probably there would not be much business transacted once we are
energy independent. The world would be a more peaceful place. The
forward-marching nations would be happy and contented in the 21st
century. The Islamic nations would be happy or angry or whatever in
the 10th century, possibly earlier. They could reside in any
century the chose. If an Arab potentate wanted heart surgery, he
could fly off to foreign parts for the procedure. And if an
indigenous mob wanted to go wild, its members could burn down the
local Chinese embassy. Again, it will be interesting to see how the
Chinese respond to such madness.
