Yet your post at its foundation echoes my husband's take on the issue: Islam would rather see us dead than to tolerate our presence. Period. This holds true whether we burn Korans nor not.
Perhaps it is better to burn Korans now and keep the war and warning symbolic and bloodless, to state clearly our resolve to preserve our way of life, than to gratify our own vanity by remaining proper and polite; that path IS vanity and will lead beyond symbolic war to concrete war. Perhaps Korans burned now will save bloodshed later.
After all, a "No Trespassing" sign on a fence is not what prevents a person from hopping over that fence. It's the symbolism of the sign that does it -- or not, and when the symbolism of the sign is ignored, there are consequences.
Certainly, refraining from burning Korans will do nothing to prevent Islam from trying to fulfill its goal of forcing worldwide domination.
So I'm thinking you may be right -- that Palin, Mark Levin, Petreus, and all the other folks I normally agree with have it wrong this time, and "The pastor of that little church down in Gainesville has it right."
Thanks for taking the time to write that post and helping to remind us that war is indeed neither polite nor proper, and that symbolic acts that offend can be powerful preventative weapons to minimize future bloodshed, counterintuitive as they may seem.