You are somewhat on the money about the Holocaust. By most accounts, German Jews simply couldn’t believe that they had to flee or be annihilated for being Jewish by a populace generally deemed to be well educated. I suspect, however, that Polish Jews had a much more cynical understanding about their place in society, presumably because of the pogroms.

Heather:

Iraq is a complete failure primarily in the minds of people who:
have never been there;
believe that all the violence is the direct and sole responsibility of the Coalition forces and not the various parties supporting the insurgency; and
were always opposed to toppling Saddam because only Islamists and Marxists are allowed to use violence to pursue a political end.

Otherwise, in Iraq as in Afghanistan, the violence is localized to certain areas where the “resisters to foreign occupiers of the infidel-sort” are most numerous and active and,while the inhabitants don’t particularly like to have western armies on their soil, don’t want the western armies to leave any too soon lest they be slaughtered by those forces of “resistance”.

For the same reason that we have the worst economy since Hoover and the most intrusive federal government since Coolidge… election season.

Wait, the Democrats don’t tend to mention Coolidge.

I hear this from Jewish Americans, too. Now I understand why and how people were sucked into the Holocaust. On the way to our present comfort Jews and Christians and Secularists… we forgot to bring along a sense of self preservation.

Also: will someone please tell me why – suddenly – Iraq is a complete failure? The last I heard there was no massive outflow of refugees, and the violence is limited to a few defined places, and of course, it is Ramadan, which means the Religion of Peace goes amuck during the day, and eats candy all night.

Well i’d give us a bit longer than that, but i’ll grant you things are looking pretty bleak. The bbc story there tells you pretty much all you need to know about the climate of *musn’t say anything awful about islam* that many in the msm over here try to propagate–and with some considerable success too. But i’m not sure it’s just fear of consequences that has given rise to this state of affairs; many in the middle classes actually do think that you’re an extremist if you criticize muslims.

I think there are a couple different issues here.

First and foremost, there does appear a very real threat of violence if Muslims are ‘offended’. The question becomes, do we place ‘freedom of speech’ over the safety of random civillians that might die in riots? (Personally I say Yes, but I understand it can be a difficult question). Is it worth the lives of three women and two kids, in order to throw the Koran into a metaphorical trash bin?

The second issue is one of defending bad behavior. I won’t label all ‘progressives’ or ‘liberals’ here. But, there are a distinct minority of people on the left that are able to percieve bad behavior in some instances (intolerance of gays among some Christian fundamentalists, for example) and completely miss the same intolerance coming from the Muslim world. At this point, there are very few Christians that would actually harm the physical well being of a gay person (though this is not true throughout the history of the religion). However, throughout history and now, there does appear a significant number (probably still a minority) of Muslims that would kill a gay person. I think its a good example of cognative dissonance.