Obama State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said on Tuesday that the planned protest by an obscure Florida Christian church in which Korans will be burned as "un-American" and "consistent" with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by the Muslim group known as al Qaeda that murdered nearly 3,000 Americans and foreign nationals that day. Crowley was commenting on plans by the fifty-member Dove World Outreach Center in Gainseville, Florida, to mark the ninth anniversary of 9/11 on Saturday by burning around 200 Korans on the church's property.
According to the State Department transcript of Tuesday's briefing, Crowley equated the protest burning of the Koran to the gruesome, fiery deaths of thousands of innocents at the hands of Muslim terrorists as he sought to bring public pressure on the church to cancel the protest:
"We hope that between now and Saturday, there’ll be a range of voices across America that make clear to this community that this is not the way for us to commemorate 9/11. In fact, it is consistent with the radicals and bigot – with those bigots who attacked us on 9/11."
The press corps at the briefing did not question Crowley about his equating burning the Koran with the 9/11 attacks. However, they did press him on the First Amendment rights of the church.
Crowley acknowledged those rights, but only as a formality before rhetorically bludgeoning the church and its pastor, Terry Jones, for the planned protest. In addition to equating the church with al Qaeda, Crowley called the protest "un-American", even as he acknowledged that he would not call burning the American flag un-American.
The Obama administration had no problems last year letting it be known that it appeased Muslims by burning Christian Bibles brought to Afghanistan by evangelicals. However, when it comes to the Koran being burned, the Obama administration has used its unique position to bring the weight of the government down on the church to defend Islam.
The White House, the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the State Department have all used the most harsh and menacing language in an effort to intimidate the church from going through with the protest.
Spokesmen for the church said Tuesday they still plan to burn the Koran on Saturday. Pastor Jones said he has taken to carrying a firearm after receiving more than one hundred death threats.
