Is the EU finally waking up?
February 6, 2006
Word just came in that Lebanon has apologized to Denmark for the torching of the Danish mission in that country by Islamist thugs. The spiraling violence over the cartoons that appeared in the Danish press some months ago depicting the 'prophet' Mohammed has now claimed at least 4 lives, and it is becoming clear that there will have to be some price paid for the damage to foreign embassies and missions throughout the Middle East. As reports the AP:
The European Union issued stern reminders to 18 Muslim countries that they are obliged under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to protect foreign embassies, and Austria — which now holds the EU Council presidency, reported calling in a top representative of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to express concerns for the safety of diplomatic missions.
I get the impression that it wasn’t supposed to go like that. Whoever fanned the embers of these months-old cartoons to flames of Islamic riot (and it appears that the most likely culprit is Syria) was clearly hoping that the apologies would be travelling eastward, rather than toward the west, when they started yelling about the insult of having their religious figures treated as they have always treated Christian and Jewish ones. Calls were made and threats delivered to bomb the media outlets and kill the publishers of the cartoons that first appeared in the Danish press. But a funny thing happened, one which was not achieved by threats to the Eiffel tower or the London and Madrid bombings -- Europe largely united at the effrontery of it all. The screamed-for apologies from Denmark have not arrived, and, moreover, newspapers across the continent have reprinted the offending cartoons in the face of threats that those who printed them should be killed.
That the first apology issued in the matter has come from the government of an Arab country has to be a bitter pill for the jihadists. While one can never know, it is possible that this result will help stiffen the resolve of the EU to press the matter of damage to its official sites in the Arab world, which, after all, constitute acts of war. It is certainly noteworthy that no US mission or embassy has been damaged thus far, even though the cartoons have been published by several US media outlets as well. Surely, even through all their trumped up rage, the Islamists realize that giving OUR government a casus belli like that is not the way to go. The interesting thing is, that in attacking the EU instead, they may have sown the seeds for a return to sane national defense on the part of one of their most weak-willed, accomodationist enemies.
topVisitors since Dec 1, 2005:
Copyright © 2005 by
batfink@orneryhorntoedvarmints.com
.
All rights reserved.
Revised: 05/19/08 08:07:06 -0400 .