But why, you may ask, did this stir so little murderous outrage at the purported mischaracterization of jihadi nutballery back in the fall of 2005 but seems so very important to the assorted nuballs now?
Well, you'd have to remember that the civil war of Islam is taking place within Saudi Arabia. The Saudis fight the jihadis on the one hand but others love them to pieces:
The issue of the cartoons provided the Saudi royal family with an unprecedented opportunity to reinforce their Muslim leadership role and warn the West of Saudi willingness and ability to mobilize Muslims – violently if necessary - against the "enemies of Islam." Knowing that Muslims will rise against anyone who defames their Prophet or religion, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called an urgent summit meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in Mecca on December 7, 2005, ostensibly to discuss religious extremism and the image of Islam, with the leaders of the world's 57 Muslim nations.
Playing its hand cleverly and stealthily, the Saudis used the Mecca conference to spark violent reactions to the four-month-old cartoons and eclipse other significant events the Saudis wanted to cover up (see Hassan M. Fattah's report in the New York Times, "At Mecca Meeting, Cartoon Outrage Crystallized," February 9, 2006). "It was no big deal [the cartoons] until the Islamic Conference, when the OIC took a stance against it," said Muhammad el-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.
And the Saudis know we will not stand for this longer than we need to. They are sucking up to the Chinese to get a fallback protector. As the Saudis did 20-30 years ago when it looked like we might not be up to standing up to the Soviets, if I recall (the Saudis bought 18 or so Chinese intermediate range ballistic missiles back then).
I still say that if we play our cards right in Iraq and Iran, one day Shia Arabia may solve this dilemma for us.
