Today's Islamophobic news story

The Washington Times has picked up a story from a Lebanese news agency:

According to the Lebanese news organization Tayyar.org, citing AFP [Agence France Presse?] news sources, U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, who was killed by gunmen that stormed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday, was reportedly raped before being murdered. 

Also,

A news report made by the Libyan Free Press is also reporting that Ambassador Stevens was sodomized before he was killed: "Libya - USA Ambassador in Bengazi sodomized and killed by his own al-Qaeda puppets."

Very likely these Libyan sources are the Middle Eastern equivalent of the National Enquirer -- although it's surprising if the original story actually was from Agence France Presse, the French equivalent of AP or Reuters.

I suppose getting murdered is inconvenient enough that being buggered doesn't really change the score that much for the victim. Regardless, the attacks on American diplomatic compounds are barbaric. Since the Middle Ages, it's been axiomatic that diplomatic personnel are guaranteed safe conduct. In World War II, diplomats of the Allies and the Axis were interned by their respective enemies -- put under house arrest, more or less. All through the Cold War, we had an embassy in Moscow and the worst the Soviets did was hide microphones and try to catch Americans with access to secrets in honey traps.

But the United States, and the whole anemic Western world, can't fathom that they are dealing with a politico-religious system that knows no rules of fair play, for whom infidels are simply dogs. The dogs have had their day. Now it's payback time.

Our politicians, even supposed experts on Islam and Middle Eastern ways, seem to have an impermeable filter in their brains that blocks the discomfiting reality. No matter what, they're ready to try one more time to show the world's Muslims that we're really nice people when they get to know us, that we'll overlook a few extremists, keep the aid money flowing through the pipeline, welcome more Muslim immigrants. There's no problem with Islam, just "violence" -- a disembodied kind, unconnected with Islam itself, that attacks like the flu.

And maybe that isn't a bad metaphor. The blogosphere has lots of talk at the moment about retaliation, teaching lessons &c. But we don't have to send drones over Libya or lob missiles into camel-parking lots; we need to quarantine Islam. No Muslim immigrants; no visas for Muslim visitors. I don't care if they just want to see the Grand Canyon. Let them get the message that their co-religionists have made them pariahs in the civilized world.

Does that sound extreme? Not half as extreme as what befell Christopher Stevens. If we don't practice separation from Islam, there will be more such atrocities, and more, until finally we run out of goodwill and the lid blows off. Then you'll see extreme.

The solution isn't "Islamophobia," whatever that means to you. It's containment. Close our embassies and consulates in Muslim-majority countries. Let the Shiites and Sunnis pronounce curses on each other and wring one another's necks. Let sad sack mullahs impose their medieval laws until Iran's next revolution. Unfortunate, but not our problem. And let's see that the fanatics understand that if they insist on their caliphate becoming our business, they won't like the way we do business.

Secretary of Appeasement Clinton reaches out to the Religion of Peace.

"But, we oh what good people we are, we will apologize for having an embassy and for having free speech and for getting our embassy in the way of their mob and our free speech in the way of our religious sensibilities. And we will see about getting all of the above out of their way. After Muslims killed thousands of Americans we did everything we could to learn about their religion, to celebrate it and soothe their ruffled feathers. Like an anxious host, we are still rushing around to see that our Muslim guest has enough coffee and egg rolls while promising to do something about that free speech that offends him."

-- Daniel Greenfield