Tom’s Brain Is Flat

Since the Oregonian printed my letter about George Galloway last week, I suspect they’re not going to run this one:

Thomas Friedman’s syndicated column last week must have hit the Oregonian editorial funny bone when he complained that Muslims across the world were protesting against reported abuse of the Koran rather than Iraqis killed by insurgents in Iraq, because on Saturday the editorial page ran two editorial cartoon on the very same theme.

What is it with those Muslims? Protesting alleged religious desecration instead of the killing of hundreds of people a month? It’s too bad Friedman spends so much of his time these days on talk shows chortling about how witty his new book’s title is, otherwise he might have seen some parallels in his own country where there are heated debates over whether the words “under God” belong in the Pledge of Allegiance and whether giant rocks with the Ten Commandments should be placed in courthouses.

Of course, what might be really bad is for him to get his wish, because tens of thousands of civilians are estimated to have died in Iraq at US hands in the past two years, equal to years’ worth of insurgent attacks at the current levels. If Muslims around the world decide to protest about innocent people being killed in Iraq, there’s a far bigger target than the suicide bombers.