Quran Burning ...

So there's this one florida pastor who has a congregation of fifty people in a small church that more resembles a barn in Florida who has announced plans to burn the Quran on September 11, 2010, and no one else in the country agrees with his actions, but for some reason this is the biggest news story of the day. 

Obama called for Americans to  unify as "one nation under God" (man, who knew he knew the pledge of allegiance?), and said there would be increased violence in the Middle East toward our troops if this occurs. 

Mayor Bloomberg of New York said that he had the right to do it, but that it was "distasteful," which is exactly the response people wanted regarding the ground zero mosque.   

Hillary Clinton said that it would inflame tensions in the middle east and endanger muslims abroad. 

Robert Gates said pretty much the same thing. 

General Petreus said that it would put US troops at increased risk. 

The FBI got involved, visiting the church and collecting information relating to his plan (if only they'd done the same for the Ft. Hood shooter ... )

The response wasn't even limited to the governments of the US, state and federal.  Nato even chimed in, its secretary general condemning the act, calling it "disrespectful," and saying it would have a "negative impact" on the security of troops in Afghanistan. 

So did the Vatican!  They called the plans "outrageous and grave."  They also said that “Each religion, with its respective sacred books, places of worship and symbols, has the right to respect and protection."  This prompted some to call them hypocritical in light of history, something which seems to be a recurring theme in this post.   

Then, after a discrepancy in which it was briefly believed that both the Ground Zero mosque and the quran burning were going to be called off, neither was and the mosque's imam said that moving the mosque now would send the wrong message and cause violence in the muslim world (as if he was going to move it before, or didn't realize that it was not a good idea when he announced plans to put it there). 

Finally, muslims from around the world threatened violence if this one man went through with his plan. 

Let's put this in perspective.  This is one man who no one had ever heard of before.  Not only does virtually no one else agree with his plans, and not only do the plans pose no direct threat to anybody, but it is not even a widespread occurrance (which really doesn't matter, as the government is not there to tell citizens what to do as long as it doesn't hurt other people directly), and yet it has made international news and the highest authorities in the world have gotten involved?     

Pastor Jones, himself, said there was a double standard for burning Bibles and American Flags and Qurans, and he said some other stuff but I couldn't find it just now, but essentially the world is trying very hard to prove him right. 

I guess the difference is that radical Christians burn Qurans and radical Muslims burn people. 

Lastly, I would like to make it perfectly clear that, if there are violent protests and innocent people, including our troops, are killed or put in harms way because of this incident, it will absolutely not be the fault of the pastor or the country.  I came to the conclusion a long time ago while reading about the nazi occupation of Poland in WWII, in which the preferred way of keeping order was to kill innocent people when crimes were committed in order to keep the country in line (to the extent that when the Warsaw Uprising occurred, rather than fighting the fighters, the nazis spent most of their time emptying hospitals and churches and killing their occupants), that threats and intimidation do not in any way put the blame for an action on the person being threatened and intimidated.  The fault for killing somebody lies with the killer, and submitting to threats and intimidation is unacceptable.