Misplaced Priorities

BAGHDAD — A soldier used a Koran, the Islamic holy book, for target practice in a predominantly Sunni area west of Baghdad, prompting an apology from the military, a spokesman said Sunday.

Separately, mortar shells slammed into a residential area north of Baghdad, killing at least four people and wounding 30, most of them children playing outside, officials said Sunday.

The shelling occurred as clashes broke out in Shiite areas late Saturday despite a truce reached last week by Shiite politicians and followers of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Iraqi police found the bullet-riddled Koran with graffiti inside the cover on a small-arms range near a police station in Radwaniyah, a former insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, U.S. military spokesman Col. Bill Buckner said.

American commanders then launched an inquiry that led to disciplinary action against the soldier, who has been removed from Iraq, Buckner said.

The action, which happened May 9 and was discovered two days later, threatened to further strain relations between the Americans and Sunni allies who have joined forces with them against Al Qaeda in Iraq in Radwaniyah and other areas.

So let me get this straight: A Kuffar using a Koran for target practice threatens to strain relations, but a bunch of Muslims dumping mortar rounds into a group of civilians (mostly children) is okey dokey? Holy crap is that an effed up excuse for a society! Should the soldier have shot up the Koran? Probably not a good move in Muslim-ville… but to place more value on the desecration of a book than the lives of your citizens is almost farcically bizarre.

Get the picture people, when a society values a book containing fables written about a pedophile, his violent xenophobic tendencies, and his misogynistic mantras more than it values the lives of its own children there’s a real problem with that society. Furthermore, the propagation of that societal philosophy constitutes a clear and present danger to western civilization and the rights and freedoms for which we and our forebears have so desperately fought for and won.

Okay, I’m off my soap box now.