It's a damn book burning. Get some fucking perspective.
My perspective isn't nearly as important as the perspective of people in the Muslim world, particularly Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan where coalition forces are fighting a war while simultaneously trying to forge a relationship with local communities, build infrastructure, and build a friendly regime to the occupying nation(s), that will remain friendly long after the majority of those countries' military forces have left the area-- do you have any idea how fucking difficult that sort of thing is? The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have now exceeded the length of WWII for a few years now-- think about that for a minute-- longer than WWII-- in Afghanistan's case almost 3 years longer than WWII lasted.
The project the coalition forces are undertaking in these two countries is extremely, extremely difficult, and may very well prove to be impossible (which is what I've suspected from the beginning). Now some backwoods asshole Bible thumper with a video camera and YouTube account is creating an international controversy causing a new round of outrage and anger against the US in the Muslim world, and you don't see how that makes an already damn-near-impossible task even harder to accomplish? You can't see why military and political leaders in the US are denouncing it out of legitimate concerns it will undermine our military-political operations in the Muslim world, not because they are "liberal pansies"
Perspective is needed indeed, by the Muslims getting violently angry over it, and by you, who can't (or, more likely, refuses to) understand the very practical reasons why this is being denounced by US political and military leaders, and the primary motivation behind such denunciations is neither fear nor ideology as you suggest. My perspective, on this issue at least, is just fuckin fine.
And don't pull the friends and family card and expect it to pass muster. My boyfriend is military.
And where is he deployed, hm? And is he front-line personnel or an REMF?
Furthermore, if you'll re-read what I wrote, I wasn't just talking about friends and family in the military, but those here, who have to deal with the economic fallout of this country's massive deficit spending on the wars and nation-building/reconstruction efforts.