Daily Archives: April 14, 2006

Iran Again Vows to Destroy Israel – CNN Tells us Iran Toning it Down

I don’t know what’s more shocking; that Iran’s president again vowed to destroy Israel, soon, in “one storm”,or CNN’s coverage of the story in which they omit reference to these horrific statements, and then characterize the speech as more moderate than previous speeches.

I guess the whole prospect of the Jewish state being wiped off the map is too much for us common folk to handle. Might as well give us the watered down, less scary version. The last thing we’d want is us little people going and supporting some sort of aggressive stance against the misunderstood mullahs.

Iran: A Nuclear Crisis?

I’ve been reading about increasing calls for a “creative solution” to the Iran crisis in editorials. Today the USA Today cites the Cuban missile crisis solution as an example. Earlier in the week the Washington Post also cited Kennedy’s actions towards Cuba as the type of “creative” conduct that the U.S. should be engaged in.

The problem is that the Iran crisis is the diametric opposite of the Cuban missile crisis.
With the Cuban crisis, the U.S. was faced with the prospect of dangerous rogue regime acquiring nuclear capabilities. What brought the world to the brink of WWIII was the fact that the missiles were being sent from the Soviets. Stopping a gathering threat had to be weighed against the possibility of the complete annihilation of the U.S. via a Soviet first strike. Consider that for a moment: the U.S. was seriously contemplating taking out the Cuban missiles, even in the face of a nuclear attack.

In order to draw an honest comparison with the Iran crisis, we need to imagine a Cuban missile crisis absent the prospect of the immediate annihilation of the U.S. Imagine Castro, as the leader of a rogue state, was not directly backed by the Soviets, but simply developed the missiles on his own. Is there any doubt the U.S. would have taken out the sites, and/or taken over Cuba entirely? In that scenario there would have been no “crisis” at all.

Here we are, five decades later, and a rogue regime which has repeatedly declared hostile intentions towards the U.S., actively supports terrorism, and has called for the destruction of Israel, is openly pursuing nuclear capabilities. In the 1960’s would this have been a “crisis”?

The paradigm pertaining to the use of the military in the face of gathering threats certainly has changed over the last half century. Are the risks of not taking military action are any different today?

South Park – Cartoon Wars

Freedom of speech is at stake here, don’t you all see? If anything, we should all make cartoons of Mohammed and show the terrorists and the extremists that we are all united in the belief that every person has a right to say what they want. Look people, it’s been really easy for us to stand up for free speech lately. For the past few decades, we haven’t had to risk anything to defend it. One of those times is right now. And if we aren’t willing to risk what we have now, then we just believe in free speech, but won’t defend it.

That was from Part I.

In Part II the image of Mohammed was censored out by [tag]Comedy Central[/tag] (Spruiell, NRO Media Blog)

In Part II, what was not censored was an “Al-Qaeda” video showing two “Americans”, President Bush, and Jesus pooping over each other and the American Flag.

That was okay in Comedy Central’s books – but an image of Mohammed handing a football helmet with a salmon on top to Peter from Family Guy was not.

Vaughn Ververs over at Public Eye has more.

The Anchoress says this

I thought the Al Qaeda “retaliation” cartoon was effectively dumb but meaningful. In a perfect world, terrorists and extremists would respond to offensive cartoons with offensive cartoons. The point was made to America by SP putting up a cartoon bound to offend various Americans – and any American who would rather not see “pooping” on the flag. Once again, they put the question out there – “what will you allow and what will you ban? And are you willing to fight for the First Amendment or just pay lip service to it until one of your sacred cows-or-icons are insulted?”

I agree with her.

As usual Michelle Malkin is all over it. She also has another post with new Comedy Central Logos. This is Allah Pundit’s submission. I agree with Michelle that it is indeed the frontrunner.

comcentralmo004.jpg

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[tags]cartoon wars[/tags]

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