"Apologies are Not Cooling the Anger"

"To the noble torch-bearing Afghans...  We understand your justifiable hatred and shouty murderousness!  We bow down to your righteous rampaging."  

Our bowing and scraping is not cooling the feral, instinctual anger sparked by us burning some books that the holy jihadis had desecrated first by scribbling in them.  Instead, the flames climb higher at each western apology.

When has apologizing to ignorant, intolerant, bigoted haters ever worked? When? When in the entire history of Islam has an apology to it or its practitioners ever quelled the bonfires of fury and murder?

First we apologized, some of our troops were killed, we apologized again, Afghans "on our side" killed two more of our military officers working at an Afghan ministry. Now our government has announce that within the next 10 days, every one of our soldiers in Afghanistan will be "intensively trained" in "the proper handling of religious materials." Sure.  Those 100,000+ troops have nothing better to do over there...

I'm waiting for leadership to completely collapse and announce that all 130,000 troops will be forcibly converted to Islam and be ordered to receive religious instruction from the Taliban.

Grievance Hustlers

This is being stoked by a small number of misanthropic manipulators that do not represent all Afghanis or all Muslims.  Sadly, the vast majority are far worse than that.  They are ignorant and manipulable; a willing crowd dancing to the macabre tune when Explody the Fire-Breathing Clown and his Rampaging Circus comes to town.

Aussie Brendan O'Neill sees striking similarities between the east and west's professional victims who manipulate their enemies with perpetual outrage and offense-taking:

Ironically, these pretty craven apologies from NATO and the Obama administration for an innocent mistake made by two NATO personnel are likely only to have inflamed the protests.

Because, as is the case over here, in our ever more touchy and sensitive societies, when you tiptoe around a certain group of people, when you buy into the idea that offending cultural sensibilities is the greatest sin of our age, you actually give people a licence to feel offended.

When you apologise for causing offence and promise never, ever to do it again, you give succour to the idea that offensiveness is a unique and terrible evil, and you flatter the ostentatious offence-taking of groups who wish to be protected by a moral force-field from public debate or ridicule.

[...] NATO has made itself a hostage to fortune, giving Afghan radicals a licence to go mental at the next whiff of any slight, whether intentional or accidental, against Islam. (Buying into the Myth)

Canuck Lorne Gunter says we need to get out now, and I agree...

The deadly riots over the burning of Korans at the NATO airbase at Bagram prove that Western forces have accomplished about as much as they can to civilize the place (which isn't as much as many of us had hoped) and now it’s time to go.

No apologies for the burnt holy books. No charges against the soldiers involved, as demanded by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Just pull up stakes and leave and let those screaming and shouting their hatred for America and the West fend for themselves under the next Taliban government. (Time to Quit Afghanistan)

We need to get the hell out now. No negotiations, no deals, just get the hell out. Turn it over to the Taliban, the Iranians, the Uzbeks, anyone, who cares... Turn it over the the Pakistanis, tell the Chinese who are in there mining millions in precious metals that they've got to provide their own protection, but just get the hell out.

They can tear Karzai limb from limb on CNN and burn down every last female clinic and girls's schoolhouse.  I don't care.  We are messing with crazy people who don't want democracy, they don't want their nation built, and they sure as hell don't want us messing around in their business.

We need to respect that and get the hell out.

BBC News - Rabid Protests

CNN - How many more Americans have to die helping these feral pigs before we learn a lesson and cut sling?