Free Republic

Now that Barack Obama is well into his presidency, it's clear that he is keeping at least one promise he made. He is standing with the Muslims. In his chapter on "Race" in The Audacity of Hope, then-Senator Obama devoted a section to his post-9/11 concerns over the treatment of Muslim Americans. He makes special mention of meetings he had with Arab- and Pakistani-Americans, drawing attention to the "urgent quality" these meetings had taken after the 9/11 attacks on the WTC. "The stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their [Arab- and Pakistani-Americans'] sense...

Appeasement doesn't work. It doesn't work with dictators, and it doesn't work with terrorists. The attempted Times Square bombing was yet more proof. We've allowed Islamist extremists to dictate what we can say, print or portray. We don't want to offend them. The First Amendment bows before Islam. The Obama administration has ducked all unwelcome evidence that such appeasement doesn't work. Instead, it goes to absurd lengths to convince Muslim radicals that we respect their views. Our counterfactual assumption is that, if we're really, really nice, the fanatics will stop being grumpy and blowing us up. But Islamist extremists haven't...