The Innocence of Muslims. Anyone who is even the least bit informed knows what it is all about: a poorly designed stick used to poke a horribly angry hornet's nest. 

If the makers of that film, a certain "Jimmy Israel" and Nakoula Basseley Nakoula,  should be congratulated for anything, it is their ability to cause a global crisis on a shoestring budget. 

Even Salman Rushdie and the Jyllands-Posten editorial staff, real artists in their own right, failed to set off such an unnerving geopolitical firestorm. 

But why? Why did a film worthy of a record number of Razzies provoke such seething outrage?

The answer is as simple as it is complex: the Muslim world has become outraged at America's cheap disregard for both their lives and their way of life; who they hold dear and what they hold dear; those who they love and that which they love. 

That day of horror, on the eleventh anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, started with what increasingly looks like a coordinated attack by terrorist elements on the American consulate in Benghazi. This was merely the match that ignited the fire. 

After all, the film was dubbed into Arabic on September 8th, three days before the Muslim world erupted into outrage. But the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi served as both a stark wake up call and a reminder to those Muslims fed up with the US: they have the ability to fight back. And boy did they fight back to avenge the humiliation of their people, their land, and their Prophet.

While speech of any kind, no matter how hateful or incendiary, is not worthy of retaliatory murder, a sense of empathy should be wielded. 

How would you react to the news of a lynched American ambassador in Benghazi if that very same government had been killing your friends and relatives? You would probably feel like a Yemeni, Pakistani, Afghani or Iraqi. 

How would you react to the news of a lynched American ambassador in Benghazi if that very same government had supported a ruthless dictator only two years ago, before throwing their 'support' behind the Arab Spring? You would probably feel like an Egyptian or Tunisian. 

Thankfully, a vast majority of the Arab and Muslim world disapproved of the vicious murder of American consulate personnel in Benghazi. Who could forget the pictures of the Benghazi counter protest that soon went viral on the internet?

Today we learn President Obama is ramping up clandestine support to train and assist the Syrian rebels in their endeavor to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad. No one seems to care that this coalition has long been infiltrated by Al Qaeda and other groups who don't actually share the Western vision of a constitutional, liberal democracy.

Do we need a reminder that similar efforts in the past when the U.S. armed and financed the bin Laden and the mujahideen in their war against the Soviet Union sowed the seeds for the blowback on 9/11 and other violent consequences we see today? As George Santayana rightfully observed, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

A much better option would be to listen to Congressman Ron Paul's stern warning and pass his bill to "prohibit the [Obama] Administration, absent a declaration of war by Congress, from supporting -- directly or indirectly -- any military or paramilitary operations in Syria." 

Rep. Ron Paul's Audit the Fed bill received overwhelming, bipartisan support last month. The evening of the vote, Senator Rand Paul announced to a crowd at YAL's National Convention: "If we win on [Audit the Fed], we should next audit the Pentagon."

Well, the efforts to make this happen are not waiting for Sen. Harry Reid to bring Audit the Fed to the Senate floor. About a week later, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) introduced, S.3487, the Audit the Pentagon Act of 2012. If enacted, this bill would create incentives and enforcement mechanisms to force the Pentagon to pass an audit. By law -- the Chief Financial Officer Act of 1990, to be exact -- the Department of Defense is required to pass an audit, but Congress has yet to act in enforcing this requirement.

Why the sudden push? After the Budget Control Act (BCA) had been signed into law, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction failed in their task to find $1.5 trillion in spending cuts and/or revenue increases over the next ten years. This forces sequestration, which, in part, mandates the Department of Defense cut $500 billion in projected spending over the next ten years.

More depressing news out of Afghanistan as Afghans continue to kill each other with American weapons. In the same weekend, an Afghan police officer guns down 10 of his fellow officers and 6 civilians died in a roadside bomb attack, including women and children:

 "Women and children were among the victims," Helmand police spokesman Farid Ahmad Farhang said, adding that they had been travelling in the Musa Qala district of the restive province.

Roadside bombs are a favourite weapon of Taliban fighting government forces and their NATO backers, but often miss their targets and kill civilians.

The latest deaths come two days after a report by the United Nations said 1,145 civilians had been killed and 1,954 wounded in the war in the first six months of this year.

Of course, it is not just brown-skinned Muslims that are needlessly dying in that unnecessary, purposeless war. In news reports that are sure to pull heartstrings, American lives have been been lost in Afghanistan as well. As reported by Antiwar.com's John Glaser, there have been two separate incidents in the past two days where Afghan soldiers have turned their U.S.-funded military training and weapons against American soldiers:

Three more US soldiers were shot and killed on Saturday by an Afghan trainee at a base in Helmand province, raising to six the number of American troops killed by their Afghan partners in just 24 hours.