Something tells me service members may be dealing with this kind of thing for a while yet:
Elsewhere, an international forces service member shot a protester who aimed his AK-47 toward a guard tower at a NATO military base in southern Afghanistan, military officials said Thursday.
The man was pulled away by fellow demonstrators before ISAF forces were able to determine his condition.
The protest of about 100 Afghans at Forward Operating Base Mirwais was reported to have been held in response to an alleged Quran burning inside the base Wednesday. But ISAF said the suspected burning was a routine burn-pit session in which military documents are destroyed.
Meanwhile, some folks objected to my criticism of Justice Stephen Breyer, who seemed to suggest the other day that it would be constitutional to prevent someone from burning the Quran, comparing it to yelling fire in a crowded theater. This is the full statement:
One is years ago, Justice Holmes said you cannot shout fire in a crowded theater because that could kill people. Very well. That sets limits to the freedom of speech. But the court also said where an American flag is being burned in protest, that the Constitution protects that because it is a purely symbolic action which is being done, despite how much people hate it, to express a point of view. So, we probably, were we to have such a case, we'd have to have a law in front of us, see what it says, see what the actions are. But I've given you an outline, which sort of sets boundaries.
In hindsight, I very much jumped the gun. Looking at the transcript this is obviously a lawyer evaluating both sides of an issue and deliberately not giving a definitive answer, rather than an endorsement of the idea that burning a Quran, because of the kind of harm it could ultimately cause, would be like yelling fire in a crowded theater. Josh Gerstein has transcripts of Breyer's other appearances evaluating this question, and it seems pretty clear that's what he's doing.
Obviously I don't think it should be illegal to burn the Quran any more than it should be illegal to burn the American flag. It's also clear the administration wasn't just scaremongering when they said public Quran burnings would have consequences -- but as I said before I think these are a symptom of a larger problem both here and abroad.
