By Donnel Jones

What we really have with the Muslim uproar over the publication of Danish cartoons offering satirical depictions of Muhammad and the gang is simply this: a brilliant PR campaign against the West.

And it’s working.

The campaign against the freedoms of the West is so successful that, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we have American newspaper editors cowering in their offices, hoping the Muslim maelstrom will pass without it swallowing them. And their hope for being spared resides in their choice not to exercise the freedom to publish the cartoons. This is not only sad but infuriating. American journalists are neither brave nor free. They are craven and enslaved—and by their own hand. Yes, there’s the blogsphere and it just may be the only place where such freedoms are practiced, but the mainstream failure to publish in defiance of the Islamist mob is what is being noticed in the Middle East. As honor is something Middle Easterners cherish (and something we apparently have forgotten with the excesses of liberalism), the refusal to publish is seen as weakness, cowardice, and surrender. I have to say, just this once and for the record, that I, hopefully for the last time, agree with the Islamists!

Not even the horrible accounts of torture by American GIs nor even the incompetence of Rumsfeld’s Iraq post-invasion could arouse the Islamist beast into a critical mass of hostility toward the enemy—us. What Bush’s fumbles failed to achieve, the Danes have performed splendidly. As we all now know, the cartoons were published on the FRONT PAGE of an Egyptian newspaper last October! No riot in sight. No protest. No death to Mubarak. But of course not. That would land them in jail or worse. But one can rail against the West with impunity because, there, liberties are taken for granted, only to be thrown away out of fear.

A very sad day is upon us. Bush neither has the charisma nor the political capital nor the ability to launch a counter-campaign. He tried by appealing to the Iranian people during his SOTU but at that point, knowing full well we are bogged down in Iraq, his words sound good but will have little effect. The fourth estate cannot pick up the slack of our government, foregoing their responsibility to tell the truth, especially in a time of cultural and political emergency.

Meanwhile the words of imams and demagogues carry great weight in the enemy camp. The Islamists are rethinking their tactics. No one can say they will stop using terrorism. Another September 11th or worse could be around the corner, but there is a far more effective weapon the Islamists are using and it is working: ignite fury among the Muslim masses and have them intimidate a bulwark of American democracy: its free press.

With this new tactic the Islamists are, as of now, winning the war.

Special Report: Danish Cartoons

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Related: United States, Arab/Muslim World, War Against Islamo-fascism, Political Correctness

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