Not PC, pragmatism. You don't piss on your allies boots and tell them it's raining. No matter what you think of the Koran, there are plenty of Muslims who are ralleying to the cause of freedom, and against the terrorists, the criminals and the Iranian and Syrian thugs.
Shooting the Koran was a stupid act. Doing it in an Iraqi police range was imbecilic.
If as a private citizen want to buy a dozen Korans, take them to the range or some field somewhere, more power to you, it's a free country. But if you are a member of the US Armed Forces in a country where the vast majority are Muslim, (even Kurds are Muslims), then desecrating their holy book is not exactly an optimum way to win friends and influence people, which is after all part of the mission.
The guy should have his ass kicked every klick of the way to the airplane, and then every step of the way from the airplane to his barracks... hopefully in Greenland if we still have installations there.
You would fit in at the State Department well.
Oh? Oops, my mistake [thwacks forehead]. Allies! How could I have been so dense? All this time I thought we were discussing middle eastern Islamic culture!
True, but in the grand scheme of things, it's likely a least-violent/best-compromise, definitely less bloody than "we behead fifty of your men for each American that you wound" -- which would arguably be more effective toward reaching that goal.
But, at the end of the day, we either do NOT want their respect, or, we are so over-our-heads STUPID that we have NO business meddling in that festering stink-hole.
A few years back, the Soviets, in one of those atavistic “cultures” in that region, had a bit of a problem. The KGB had one of their people abducted and killed by the local jihadis.
To make a long story short, after a short flurry of correspondence, the matter was settled once and for all, and the KGB was left alone from that point forth.
Had the local postal service refused to accept body parts for delivery to local jihadi addresses, things might have gotten a bit more complicated, but somehow I suspect the KGB would have managed. They did not have the PC constraints that we have insisted on inflicting upon ourselves, and, they understood that there is only ONE thing that is respected in that culture — and they had no compunctions about serving it up upon request.
You don’t piss on your allies boots and tell them it’s raining
They are sucking our billions and our BLOOD and still not giving up anything. They still want to be 7th century islamic IDIOTS.
They still hate israel and consider Americans infidels.
They mandate in their constitution NO LAW SHALL CONTRADICT ISLAM
They have stated that they will not permit the U.S. attacking Iran from Iraqi soil. That is not a friend.