Global ignorance

The Boston Globe today ran a story similar to this one out of Pakistan:

Tens of thousands of people massed Sunday in Pakistan and Turkey to protest cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad that first appeared in a newspaper in Denmark and were reprinted in several other European countries.

A day after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, welcomed President Bush to Pakistan, about 50,000 people - many of them chanting "Hang those who insulted the prophet" - burned the Danish flag, hit an effigy of Bush with a stick and chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Musharraf."

Because clearly America's president and Pakistan's president do some artwork in their spare time. Unless the protest was supposed to be overly broad or the AP mischaracterized the protest, we seem to have found the Muslim versions of the Americans who believe Iraq caused 9-11 or who believe Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

There's only one real answer to debacles like this, both at home and abroad. It's education, because, as one wise philosopher once said, "We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world." The alternative, as the same man told us, is awful to contemplate:

What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.