The Best P.R.: Straight Talk - New York Times

The Best P.R.: Straight Talk - New York Times: "The fact that the White House spokesman Scott McClellan spent part of his briefing on Tuesday excoriating Newsweek - and telling its editors that they had a responsibility to 'help repair the damage' to America's standing in the Arab-Muslim world - while not offering a single word of condemnation for those who went out and killed 16 people in Afghanistan in riots linked to a Newsweek report, pretty much explains why we're struggling to win the war of ideas in the Muslim world today. We are spending way too much time debating with ourselves, or playing defense, and way too little time actually looking Arab Muslims in the eye and telling them the truth as we see it."

I might as well point these out while the opinion columns in the New York Times are still free. Thomas Friedman makes an excellent point: The rioting over the Newsweek story last week isn't a natural outcome of Islam. Killing fellow Muslims isn't Islamic. The other side has some issues to deal with too.