Victor Davis Hanson offers National Review Online readers some thoughts about the ongoing controversy:
[O]ur political and military leaders ? whether a general, a secretary of defense, or a president ? are making a grave mistake by commenting directly on this pathetic figure. If a gesture is needed by our leaders, a simple ?The United States ensures freedom of speech, even disturbing expressions of it, and has always paid the subsequent price for ill-manners? would have been enough.
We are at war with radical Islam, from the battlefield in Afghanistan to stealthy terrorists here at home, and we are struggling to win the hearts and minds of Muslim populations in general. But we can?t offer 24/7 exegeses of 300 million Americans? free speech. No such we-must-be-perfect-to-be-good burden was thought to accompany past wars, even though zealots at home often misinterpreted our efforts against Japanese militarism, German Nazism, or Communism, and despite the fact that our silence sometimes aided and abetted our enemies, both directly and indirectly.
We are reaching the point where the damage done to America?s image by 50 book-burners is outweighed by the damage done by hypersensitivity on the part of the United States government, which hopes to assuage the hurt feelings of those abroad who equate that tiny number with our culture at large ? often in an abjectly hypocritical fashion. We know where this leads ? to endless efforts to micromanage all of American life to protect the sensitivities of those who, by act and deed, are far more intolerant of different religions and cultures.
