.

Jones is neither a great man nor the leader of a great cause. But what he wanted to do was both permissible under our system and, in a sense, valued. He was attempting to make a statement. It was chaotic and bigoted, but it was a political statement nonetheless, and he had every right to make it. Still, President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Afghanistan War commander Gen. David Petraeus urged him to stand down — the lives of American soldiers were at stake. Jones stood down…

Barack Obama did as he had to. His first obligation is to protect American lives — especially troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet, somehow in the back of his mind he must have acknowledged a competing obligation to protect American values and not, as too many people did with Rushdie and Westergaard, consent to ones antithetical to our own. Jones is a jerk, a Warholian concoction who used his allotted 15 minutes of fame to trigger concern at home and riots abroad. He is ugly in aspect and message, yet if a line were drawn and I had to choose a side, I would have no choice. I stand with him.