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I don't see Muslims as monolithic (and I know I will be skewered for that statement). While there are many who are monsters, and their religion is violent if followed as many follow it, I do not believe that all Muslims are evil and not worth the bother.

At the heart of my view is my faith in God, and who He is as loving Creator, and that people in the ME were created by Him with a need for Jesus as Savior, just as we were.

No disagreement from me. Maybe we shouldn't be so hesitant to offer our faith as an answer vs. running scared from offending generations who were raised to accept "Islam", which in the wrong hands, IS evil.

I am not saying the winning hearts and minds strategy has no place in our struggles in the ME, I question at what price to our military, or to the principles of freedom?

Afghanistan is a far more backwards country than Iraq (or so I've read, since I've never been in either country). Operating on that premise, they are more easiily manipulated by powerful figures. In comes Terry Jones with his little incident, what does Karzai do? Make sure everyone knows about some little yosimite sam's stunt and how outrageous it was to the WHOLE MUSLIM NATION.....nobody over there could have known about his action until Karzai issued his statements of "outrage".

.....then the imams, Talibans, crazy Muslims with a chip on their shoulder used it as an excuse for their outrage and killed "infidels".

Now, given all the tragedy, evil, whatever you want to call it has occurred to this point, Gen. Petraeus has the opportunity to react to the events that have occurred. What does he do? He calls Yosimite Sam's incident enormously intolerable, and says the inflamed "passions" were maybe understandable. I'm sorry, that is appeasment, excuse-making, and will not improve the dialogue in Afghanistan. And what about Karzai? Where was the condemnation for his little power play?

btw, what do you think about Beck's thoughts on the subject and the Soros/Obama/Jones inflammation of the ME?

I do not agree. Terry Jones did what he did for his reasons - prove a point about Muslim's reaction to burning pieces of paper? ....get attention? increase his membership? I don't know exactly what was in his mind, but he acted in his own interests. (IMO)

Thank you to your son for his service and to you for your support of his mission.

I will tell my son, Girlene. Thank you for your kind words.

You make some good points here, most of which I don't disagree with. Karzai is, at best, a conflicted, questionable ally, so I'm not in support of his riling up the Afghan people. Afghanistan is so messed up and historically bizarre that I'm not sure there is even a glimmer of hope for its future. It is definitely far more backwards than Iraq, so your points about the difference between the two countries are accurate.

My reason for coming on this thread was to draw attention to Jones' lack of character, and to perhaps make people think that, just because we don't support Islam, we shouldn't necessarily support what this guy did. IS the enemy of my enemy my friend? Do we support a jerk just because he hates Islam? Do we castigate Petraeus for calling him on the boneheadedness of his behavior? Is it his place to attack Karzai in his position? All questions that might be answered differently by each person here.

No person, no matter how noble, says every word we want nor do we agree with everything he does. That obviously is true of Petraeus. But go back and look at the hostility, anger, and idiocy aimed in his direction because of this incident. It's outrageous and extreme and has no place in rational discourse.

I personally find Beck's observation a very valid one. There is clearly a Soros/Obama effort to agitate and foment problems in the ME. I'm not saying that this Jones jerk is in cahoots with them in a serious way, but asking if perhaps, he is anti-American enough (being a Phelps follower), and anti-military enough to have done this at this time deliberately to cause further problems in Afghanistan is, IMO a valid question.

We will likely never know the answer, but it's a question worth asking.

(Sorry for rambling!)