Dear Mr Qandil: Please work on your own country and leave mine out of it.

I have been watching the current protests and violence over a really crappy piece of amature film making for several days.  I keep noticing that what is purported to be a peaceful religion is constantly burning down buildings, threatening to kill people and actually killing people.  Normally, I am ambivalent to their issues because generally they burn down their own cities in other countries.  And generally, their death threats are just that, unless someone is stupid enough to visit one of those countries, at which point I site Darwin and call it a day. 

However, when our embassy is violated, I become irate.  When our ambassador and citizens are killed, I go beyond into flat out pissed off.  And when our commander in chief doesn't park a carrier off that coast post haste, I am just beside myself.  This is the reason that I wish we still had battleships in fleet service.  No, they are not practical for modern warfare.  However, when you park a ship in the harbor capable of throwing sixteen inch shells so far that the gunners must take the curvature of the earth into account while aiming, it sends a message.  The Tomahawk Missiles were just added benefit.

Still, I realize that the attack in Benghazi was likely to happen no matter what, since they were well prepared on short notice.  Timing of the attack was just waiting for the opportunity.  I am more disappointed with the lack of security in a country that "lost" almost the entire armoury of the previous standing army.  Overall, I blame our government, from the top down, and will hold them responsible when it comes time to vote in November.

So as I am reading further on the BBC World News website, I see an interview by BBC Arabic's Khaled Ezz El-Arab with the Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil regarding the unhappiness over the film.

"KEA: When you say a balance between freedom of expression and not insulting other people you know there been a lot of calls recently, not from official corners in the Egyptian government but from other public figures, calling for the US to put laws in action that would prevent such a movie, a similar movie taking place in the future. Do you think this is reasonable to ask the US to do this?
HQ: I think we need to work out something around this because we cannot wait and see this happen again. This is a small group number of people doing irresponsible work and everybody's paying the price for these peoples' work and we have to do all it takes to stop this happening again.
KEA: Just so I've got this right are you calling for the US and other countries to take another look into their existing laws and...?

HQ: I'm calling on them to take the necessary measures to ensure insulting billions of people, one-and-a-half billion people and their beliefs, does not happen and people pay for what they do and at the same time make sure that the reflections of the true Egyptian and Muslims is well in the Western media."

While I will be the first to admit that my country is not perfect, do not suggest that my countrymen and I should change our laws or behaviour just because it might offend the followers of islam in your country.  Do not preach to me that islam as practiced around the world is "peaceful" when its followers are putting people to death for saying something bad about your prophet or depict him in any way.  It has just as much blood on its hands as does all other major religions.  You want to stop the violence?  Try taking all of those islamic leaders calling for the protests and violence and put them in jail for inciting their followers to violence.  That will likely cut down on the violence.  Might bring up property values as well. 

While you may not like it, we have free speech guaranteed in the document that frames our government, in the same entry that guarantees freedom of religion. I do notice that the followers of islam in the US have managed to avoid buring down any buildings or killing anyone.  Amazingly enough, if you want to look for peaceful followers of islam, you apparently can look to America.  Funny, ain't it?