A Jones keeps up with the goons of August

Hillary Clinton is spot on here: That now-canceled Koran bonfire in Gainesville, Fla., pop. 126,000, would have been a “disrespectful, disgraceful act.” So was the U.S. Senate’s majority vote in October 2002 to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq.

Sure, the Rev. Terry Jones probably would have provoked Muslims around the world had he burned a pile of Korans on the his church’s property on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy. As provocations go, the catastrophic invasion of a Muslim nation trumps a stunning Koran-burning any day.

Clinton, whose vote as New York’s junior senator helped make Bush’s provocation possible, must share the blame for the creation of this new monster. After all, Jones joins a long line of Americans and others from supposedly civilized nations who have incited the Muslim world in recent years. They were especially active during their summer vacation in a drive, so it seems, to trigger World War III.

A bit ironic that World War I hostilities opened in August 96 years ago and Hitler invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939.

Our government is no less responsible for inciting Muslim violence than Jones and the other goons of August. The Afghanistan operation might have been necessary, but Bush and Congress were repeatedly warned that the Iraq invasion could produce a bloody quagmire. It sure did, and despite President Obama’s pronouncement that we have turned the page, it is far from over. Congress had its chance nearly eight years ago to assess the risks of entering Iraq, but in quick order majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate voted to give Bush authorization.

While Clinton was not alone in voting for this measure, her condemnation of Jones - in her present position as Secretary of State - was both contemptible and laughable at the same time.

I try not to throw up a person’s past mistakes at them, but I nearly lost it as I learned how so many people who helped make Jones denounced him. Sarah Palin’s gross hypocrisy was expected, but Clinton is a far more accomplished person. General David Petraeus never publicly warned of the prospect of Iraq’s chaotic aftermath, yet here he is alerting us that the burning might jeopardize our troops.

Even the Vatican weighed in against Jones, a few years after Pope Benedict XVI spent part of a speech to quote a passage that denigrated Islam. He was not worried about provoking the Muslim world at that time. We will not count the Crusades and the Inquisition against the modern-day church.

Jones could especially draw inspiration from the assorted goons of August who abrasively assailed the proposed mosque two blocks from Ground Zero; a taxi passenger who charged in the stabbing of his driver in Manhattan after asking if he is a Muslim; a suspected arsonist who set fire to construction equipment on the planned site for expansion of a Murfreesboro, Tenn., mosque; and opponents to mosque proposals in small towns never stung by Islamic violence.

Across the Atlantic, a right-wing mob threw rocks, bottles and a smoke bomb at police in Bradley, England, which contains a large Muslim community; a bank official in Berlin accused Turkish immigrants of exploiting Germany’s social welfare system; and an ultra-Orthodox rabbi sermonized that God should strike “these Ishmaelites and Palestinians with a plague, these evil haters of Israel.”

For the record, many lovers of Israel like myself never heard of this rabbi; many opponents of the Manhattan mosque are genuinely concerned solely about its location; and the hoodlums in England and the Berlin banker are in the minority in their countries.

We were all as relieved as Hillary Clinton when Jones called off his bonfire, but Jones did not emerge in isolation. All this hypocrisy should, well, burn us up.