Nick, I agree that WWI was justified - it was truly a case of good vs evil. Things were much simpler then in many ways compared to today. I did not mean to imply anything about starting a war or nuking anyone, I simply wanted to point out the historical precedent that appeasement of a ruthless, fanatical enemy will give him the tactical and strategic upper hand, if not the moral high ground. And that's where I think you err...Islamofascists are convinced they have Allah on their side and they don't care one iota about public perception here in the US. They want to build this mosque as a victory symbol. As I posted before, if they were the least bit sensitive they would have backed off by now given the public outrage. They haven't...they will press forward until the mosque is complete. Our accommodations will be viewed by Islamists as weakness, and rightly so. The politically correct elements of our society are playing right into their hands.
That's not to say we should ignore our Bill of Rights and deny them the opportunity to peacefully practice their religion as they see fit. Our First Amendment is being artfully used against us; we can't bypass the First Amendment "just this once" because that's a slippery and dangerous slope nobody should want to tread. If we roll over on this we may retain the moral high ground, we embolden our enemies and we gravely insult the memories of those innocent victims who perished in the horrific acts of September 11. I don't know what the solution is.
Also, given the tone of a lot of posts in this thread, we should probably be explicit about who our enemies are. There are something like 1,400,000,000 muslims on this world and certainly many of them are good, decent people. I'm equally certain that a lot of them (who knows how many?) are rotten, vile, barbarous thugs, miscreants and scumbags who would like nothing more than to humiliate the west in general, and the United States in particular. The latter are our enemies, and I submit that those who are in power and working behind the scenes to fund and construct this mosque are our enemies. Unfortunately, unlike the days of WWII, our enemies don't wear uniforms and many of them give the appearance of blending in with us and of being reasonable people. The one thing that drives them and unites them is their religion and their conviction that their heinous acts would meet the approval of their warrior prophet. Like it or not, Islam is not going away, nor are the muslims who practice it. Therefore, the only rationale long-term solution is to facilitate the reform of Islam from within. What better way to start this process than to encourage Islam's moderate elements to recognize the grave insult this mosque represents and to simply back down?
