Light On Dark Water

From John O'Sullivan at National Review Online. Sample:

A metaphorical casualty of this crisis — even at this early stage — is the reputation of the Obama  administration (and of liberal statecraft in general) for sophistication. Watching its spokesmen such as the hapless Susan Rice vainly seeking to maintain that these riots are solely and simply a reaction to an anti-Islamic video-trailer that has been on YouTube for weeks is like watching a very weak swimmer being swept out to sea — in Stevie Smith’s famous line, “not waving but drowning.” Does the State Department not know, for instance, that manufacturing pretexts for religious outrage is Lesson One in the Mideast lexicon of foreign-policy stratagems? The most obscene cartoons of Mohammed that provoked riots throughout the Middle East were actually added by the Muslim clerics who toured the region brandishing them; the Imam who accused a 14-year-old Christian girl of blasphemy has now himself been arrested for disfiguring the Koran and telling co-conspirators that this was the way to drive Christians from Pakistan. This kind of thing has been happening for centuries, but it happens more when both conspirators and rioters are unafraid of any consequences to themselves. The Obama administration has advertised its impotence as evidence of its virtue and pro-Islamic attitudes. Our Islamist enemies have noticed the first and seem unimpressed by the second. Unless the administration proposes to convert the Americans en masse to Islam — as Disraeli once said, “like the Chinese general who baptized his army with a hosepipe” — radical Islamists will continue to be unimpressed. Nothing less will be enough for them; closing down the First Amendment is just a starter.

(In a comment on the other post, Paul mentioned the story of the 14-year-old girl.)