see "Muhammad cartoons 'global crisis'" (BBC News, 2/7/06)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4690338.stm

The worldwide furor by Muslims about the harmless cartoons in a Danish newspaper (5 months ago!) gives the civilized world the opportunity to confront the peril of radical Islam (which apparently is most of the active part of Islam as the "moderates" are deafeningly silent) before they get the technological ability to inflict massive damage on the rest of us.

Like starting the Manhattan Project to try to get nukes before the Germans, or the Israelis taking out Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, these insanely violent outbursts against some silly cartoons show today's Islam for what it is...an intensely intolerant religion dominated by those who want to dominate us.

And don't think these protests are spontaneous outbursts. They are being orchestrated, much like the riots in France but on a larger scale, with SMS and text messages to radical organizers around the world. They were apparently made all the worse by radicals who added a bunch of more "offensive" cartoons to the ones actually published in Denmark and claiming they were all published.

These riots are no accident. They are the first wide-scale planned and organized battle in World War IV, of which 9/11 was the most major attack.

It is time for the West to fight back. Muslims have probably miscalculated by attacking people known in the West as being as peaceful and harmless as the Danes. That choice has pushed the generally conciliatory Europeans far closer to the American view on Islam.

When Arab governments find the entire West mobilized against them, rather than the US unable to effectively oppose them because we're too busy debating the EU, they may be forced to take actions themselves to restrain the radicals. This will only be a temporary fix, because the Arab governments' actions will be half-hearted and insincere. It may, however, give the West a bit of time to come up with a more permanent solution. The key will be not to let Europe or the US (at the urging of Democrats) lose our sense of urgency.

This is a true clash of civilizations. Almost all the offense up to now has been against us by our self-proclaimed mortal enemy, radical Islam. Afghanistan was a reaction to an attack; I do not consider that offense. Iraq is somewhere in between offense and defense depending on your point of view. But at the end of the day, we MUST go on the offensive. Otherwise, as President Bush (whom I'm not particularly fond of in general) correctly says, we will be fighting them here instead of there.

So once again, I thank the radical Muslims who have taken actions which make it impossible for Europe to ignore the true threat. More years of Muslim infiltration into Europe is now thankfully unlikely.

As far as the lost sales of Danish products in Europe, we should all go out of our way to buy Danish products in support of the little country who showed the rest of Europe that they were staring death in the face.

[For some suggestions on buying Danish products, see these sites:
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/21097.html
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004420.htm