The war of Ideas! Freedom of speech around the world . On the day 150 years ago in small town in the Maryland country side we flight to free on Bloodiest single-day battle in America history ANTIETAM,Also right of free speech and expression was the adopted 225 years ago Constitution was .
remember what we flight for .

http://www.wrmea.org/component/content/article/494-congress-a-us-aid-to-israel/10539-pro-israel-pac-contributions-to-us-senators-as-of-123110.html

Our Middle East Policy revolves around Israel and its problems and that
is a problem. Because America's ME Foreign Policy is not in America's
best interest, but in what Israel wants.

We have to have people whose sole interest
in what is good for the USA,not any other country.

Just as they can't legislate to us about what is legally permissable speech-we can't legislate to them about what is offensive.["east is east and west is west"?]They have the right to be offended and to protest what they find offensive.The good news is that they can now do so without being killed for it by our puppet dictators!I hope that continues and their governments don't cave in to our pressure for them to "crack down" on their rights.[Such attitudes by colonialists gave rise to the muslim brotherhood-as defenders of their people]Violent protests are a different matter of course[libya] but burning flags is a time honored right of free people.Setting fire to private property is not.

The War of Ideas needs to be articulated more clearly by leaders on both sides. The violent extremists use material (like the video in question) to inflame their populations --to play into fear that the West is engaged in a War Against Islam. The overwhelming majority of the West is against violent extremism, not Islam. The vast majority of Muslims across the world are also against violent extremism. Leaders on both sides of the cultural divide have much to gain by turning up the volume on moderation, and much to lose by allowing violent extremism to win more converts. How can the leaders on both sides message moderation more successfully?

It's too bad your call screener didn't accept my comment on the most visible direct cause of the mass protest across the Arab world...

In the simplest terms, it's the western style growth economies (including China now) that are at the limits of using all the world's resources, as we all know. So that is driving up resource prices for everyone else who can less afford them.

What it does is starve their subsistence economies, by shifting the entire "playing field" causing what is called "the food crisis". In the Arab world that growing pressure from our economies and many others, are perceived as part of our general and actually very literal "intrusion".

Even though they, also, don't quite understand yet how that's happening, just as we also don't, they are responding. It happens to be the Arab countries that are particularly sensitive to the cultural intrusion that goes with it, and socially inclined to militantly organize to respond to it. So, "the math" is clear in saying without swift study and action this can only get much much worse.

What will be the first to go? (1) USA's free speech absolutism, (2) free access of information internationally over the internet, (3) third world's sensitivity to attacks of the class of, say, The Onion. I don't see a reason why (3) should necessarily change, except for USA's want of it, not much of a reason.

Obama was right to say the video was hurtful, and right to say that Egypt isn't an ally or an enemy, when they didn't try to stop the invasion of our Cairo embassy. He might have clarified that the American government had nothing to do with that video. I highly dislike Romney's "My country right or wrong" a cry by opponents to protesters to the Vietnam War, *where are War protesters now, they exist but aren't covered), or worse, we're never wrong. We obviously are. The entire Iraq war was an unjustified debacle. Re Netanyahu, I agree with the NT Times that he is interfering in our election, no matter what he said. No wonder Obama's annoyed with him, if he is. We found out when someone left the mike on, that N calls him four times a day. A Times/CBS poll shows a huge percent does not want us to attack Iran, or support israel if it does. I've been thrown off Muslim Brotherhood sites for using the words "antisemitism" and "holocaust". Someone should mention Al Quada, anti semitic, and Christian sites from the Arab world in the blogosphere. They also hate us for our bases in their countries. We took over the British Kings and dictators. Someone should cover anti Americanism.

It's curious that there has not been any reaction (that we know of) in the pakistan about the framing of the christian girl who fundamentalist muslims were ready to kill for blasphemy. One would think that the would-be killers would now react with a sudden self-awareness, shocked that "we were going to kill an innocent girl because of our outrage," and asking themselves, "what does this say about our inability to control our reactions?"

I bring this up because from what I gather in the coverage, apparently the offensive video began as an innocent (and bad) movie called "Arabian Adventure" or something like that, and apparently had nothing to do with Islam or Mohammed, but was subsequently dubbed over with the new script that caused the offense.

It makes me wonder if anyone is capable of inspiring self-reflection in these rioters all over the arab world, and if not, then why? I think this is a very important thing for them to consider, because it is making them very easy to manipulate. Being very easy to manipulate by the first person or group who needs to stir them up for their own political ends is not a useful or dignified trait for a people to have.