Why is this lunacy tolerated?

First came suicide-bombers. Then, improvised explosive devices. Now, attacks against Westerners because cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed were published in a Danish newspaper. This climate of radical Islamic intimidation and intolerance is beyond frightening.

The current uproar is because of an editorial cartoon depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. A second one showed him in Heaven, pleading with newly arrived suicide terrorists: "Stop, stop! We have run out of virgins!" (Be honest now. That's funny!)

Militant Islam has no problem with beheadings, riots, death threats, kidnappings, flag-burnings. The jihadis who demand censorship of the Western press have no issue showing pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of video cameras.

The Muslim world seems to hold one standard of behavior for itself and quite another for the rest of the world. It asks nothing of its own people and everything of everyone else, while always expecting no serious repercussions.

Iran just published cartoons defaming the Holocaust in response to the Danish cartoons because, as Iran’s "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed, this controversy was a "conspiracy planned by the Zionists." Iranian "President" Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust combined with his incessant pursuit of nuclear weapons is beyond scary (Bush was only off by a single letter in his war to prevent WMDs).

The Islamic world's media, with full government sponsorship, slings "apes and pigs" slurs aimed at Jews and Christians. Those responsible for 9/11 are given safe harbor hiding in Pakistan along the Afghan border. Yet, when a recent American missile strike killed a few of them, the U.S. was roundly castigated for violating borders in pursuit of our deadly enemies who, while on Pakistani soil, boast of planning yet another mass murder of Americans.

The list of hypocrisies are endless. Millions of Muslims have emigrated to the United States and Europe. Yet Israel, the biblical home of the Jews, is deemed as "occupied by infidels."

Why is this lunacy tolerated?

Oil.

The billions of petrodollars the world sends to medieval regimes like Iran or Saudi Arabia has yielded tribal, patriarchal societies from which has emerged Wahhabis, Hezbollah, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, and Al-Qeada. Puritanical zealotry, autocratic corruption, dictatorship, theocracy -- this is not a world where democratization can take hold without a plan for establishing the rule of law and constitutional government. Unfortunately, President Bush seems to have no plans beyond the kind of naive elections that have already brought to power political parties like Hamas in Palestine or a Shi'ite theocracy in Iraq. Hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars are being spent prosecuting a war against the likes of Zarqawi. Thousands of American soldiers have already died with no end in sight and no clue where the next wave of recruits will be coming from. The debt being left to the next generation of Americans is beyond shameful. Why are we doing this? Oil.

Come next November, maybe the voters will realize that G.O.P. stands for the Gas and Oil Party.