Should the private conduct of Americans be considered at fault?

From Mario Loyola at The Corner:

Let’s leave aside the even greater shame of apologizing for a 14-minute spoof in order to spare the tender feelings of people who attack churches, burn Bibles, propagate incitements and blood libels like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, degrade women and homosexuals and virtually every ethnic minority they come in contact with, and celebrate when Americans are killed. Let’s leave all that aside, because the practical implications of the administration’s response are even worse than the shame of it.

The essential task of diplomacy is to preserve the security and stability of the international system. By affirming that the “trigger” for the violence in Muslim countries was the conduct of private people in the United States, what the administration has done is to make its international relations officially subject to private conduct. But few principles could be more dangerous for the international system.

A main reason we maintain diplomatic practice is precisely to immunize international relations from popular disruptions. The wall between the U.S. government and protected speech here at home must be as inviolable as the wall between U.S. embassies and the Arab street. Indeed, they are the same wall, meant to accomplish the same separation. 

For the U.S. government to try to manage the social psychology of perpetually aggrieved Arabs by interfering in constitutionally protected private conduct is not just a fool’s errand. It is an evil errand, for it makes our government the tool of enemies who seek our submission. And it ignores the very dangerous development we are witnessing, which is the apparent breakdown of our ability to maintain safe embassies in the Muslim world.