I read this article by Ralph Peters in the New York Post with utter amazement. Let’s start with this:

“The Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons last September was not standing up courageously for freedom of expression. The editors and cartoonists were so oblivious to any reality beyond their Copenhagen coffee bars that they just thought they were pulling an attention-getting prank.”

Did Lt-Col. Peters even read, what they were saying back at the time?

And then there’s this: “They could’ve run cartoons about al-Zarqawi’s savagery, al-Jazeera’s hypocrisy or the oppression of women. Instead, they attacked a religion’s heart.”

Well, Ralph, actually asking difficult (and, yes, to some, offensive) questions about “savagery” was what the most controversial cartoon was about. And, yes, another of the cartoons specifically concerned the oppression of women.

And, Ralph, before you throw any more invective in the direction of the Danes, perhaps you might want to have a word with their troops now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, or perhaps, if you prefer, with the family of Danish Corporal Preben Pedersen, a Danish soldier killed in Iraq three years ago.

He won’t be going to any more coffee bars.