When Gen. David Petraeus first spoke out against Pastor Terry Jones' planned Quran burning in a Wall Street Journal article published Monday, the story exploded in the U.S. media, going from a sideshow to the dominant national media controversy of the week. As Yahoo News reported, it was on the front page of more than 50 newspapers Thursday -- more than the total number of members of Jones' fringe Florida church.

Critics of the American media's coverage of the Quran-burning saga are loud and plentiful, and they have a strong case. In short, the U.S. media has given a global platform to a fringe pastor with a tiny flock, elevating him to a level of significance that would make most members of Congress jealous (whether or not he actually executes his plan). But those media critics are also missing the point.

To grasp the real story here, one has to understand the context in which Petraeus decided to weigh in: At that time, the Quran burning had already been treated as a major story in the media in the Muslim world for several weeks. In other words, since at least late July, when it started to get attention in some Muslim-majority countries, the story has been doing untold damage to America's reputation.

"It was a big issue over in the Arab media before U.S. media picked it up," Marc Lynch, director of Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University, told Salon in an e-mail.

And as I've already pointed out and as Rachel Maddow has been reporting, this man would not have been elevated either if there wasn't the amount of Muslim bashing going on from the likes of those who are leading the drum beat with playing the hate card already like Gingrich and Beck and Palin.

It's really disgusting that on the anniversary of 9-11 a great deal of our country has apparently learned nothing from the fact that spreading hatred rather than peace just leads to death and destruction and that demonizing people you're afraid of rather than trying to understand each other solves nothing. That and that it's apparently alright now to openly use race baiting as a political tactic by the GOP. They've given up on even trying to hide it. The former dog whistles are sirens now that I guess they think no one is going to notice. Subtlety is apparently something they don't think is needed these days.