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The pastor of a Florida church planning to burn Qu’rans told CNN Tuesday while the congregation plans to go through with the action to protest the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States by al Qaeda, the church is "weighing" its intentions.

Terry Jones, pastor of Dove World Outreach Church in Gainesville, Florida, who was interviewed on CNN's "American Morning, said the congregation is taking seriously the warning from the U.S. military that the act could cause problems for American troops.

"We have firmly made up our mind, but at the same time, we are definitely praying about it," said Jones said.

"We are definitely weighing the situation. We are weighing the thing that we're about to do. What it possibly could cause. What is our actual message. What are we trying to get across."

The planned action has drawn sharp criticism from Muslims around the world and U.S. officials.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Tuesday issued a statement saying the U.S. government "in no way condones such acts of disrespect against the religion of Islam, and is deeply concerned about deliberate attempts to offend members of religious or ethnic groups." It emphasized that it strongly condemned "the offensive messages, which are contrary to U.S. government policy and deeply offensive to Muslims especially during the month of Ramadan."

"Americans from all religious and ethnic backgrounds reject the offensive initiative by this small group in Florida. A great number of American voices are protesting the hurtful statements made by this organization," the embassy said.

Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Afghanistan, said the burning of Islam's holy books "could cause significant problems" for American troops overseas.

"It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan," Petraeus said in a statement issued Monday.

With about 120,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops still battling al Qaeda and its allies in the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement, Petraeus warned that burning Qu’rans "is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems -- not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community."

Petraeus said he was concerned by the political repercussions of the church's plan.

"Even the rumor that it might take place has sparked demonstrations such as the one that took place in Kabul yesterday," he said. "Were the actual burning to take place, the safety of our soldiers and civilians would be put in jeopardy and accomplishment of the mission would be made more difficult."

He said extremists would use images of burning Qu’rans to inflame public opinion and incite violence.

"And this would, again, put our troopers and civilians in jeopardy and undermine our efforts to accomplish the critical mission here in Afghanistan," he said.

One of Petraeus' deputies, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, told CNN's "The Situation Room" that the event "has already stirred up a lot of discussion and concern" among Afghans.

"We very much feel that this can jeopardize the safety of our men and women that are serving over here in the country," said Caldwell, the head of NATO efforts to train Afghan security forces.

Caldwell said American troops "are over here to defend the rights of American citizens, and we're not debating the First Amendment rights that people have." But he added, "What I will tell you is that their very actions will in fact jeopardize the safety of the young men and women who are serving in uniform over here and also undermine the very mission that we're trying to accomplish."

Thousands of Indonesians gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Sunday to protest the planned Qu’ran burning.

"Our message is very clear," Jones said. "It is not to the moderate Muslim. Our message is not a message of hate. Our message is a message of warning to the radical element of Islam, and I think what we see right now around the globe provides exactly what we're talking about," he said.

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Way out there on the wicked, broken fringes of society, those ugly and savage edges that always seem to be moving ever closer to the mainstream and appear more dangerous to the collective soul than ever, there live some masterful miscreants of the human drama, bizarre creatures so moldy and low they can't but help you see the world anew.

You can, for example, happily read about the latest wanderings of Fred Phelps' adorable "God Hates Fags" cluster of manure clumps from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., right now picketing everything from military funerals to high school musicals, Laramie Project lectures to various modest Christian churches that dare to promote tolerance and love. Phelps and his little bucket 'o bile are widely considered the finest freakshow in all of Nutball Godsville.

Then again, competition abounds. Perhaps you've read about that other amoral chunk of anti-spiritual razor wire named Terry Jones, a leathery little Florida pastor with his tiny flock of 50 whack-nut imbeciles who've decided to go forth with their T-shirt-ready "Burn a Quran" day on September 11th? Talk about your genius marketing. I predict a new reality show.

Jones' charmingly repulsive event has not only outraged the easily outraged fundamentalist fringes of Afghanistan (really, it doesn't take much) but also a very unhappy American general who thinks Jones' flagrant idiocy could endanger the lives of American soldiers. Not bad for a shriveled, pea-sized soul from Florida, eh Terry? Jesus would be so proud.

Don't stop just yet. What about that (now-ex) Tea Party slug named Tim Ravndal, suddenly infamous for posting a sweet little joke on Facebook about lynching gay people to death -- a thoughtful reference to Matthew Shepard -- because apparently Ravndal's God-given right to be a tiny-brained macho cockroach from Montana are threatened by the fact that some people are far more secure in their sexuality than he will ever be? Oh, Tea Party, will your nefarious gifts never cease?

On it devolves. How low do you want to go? Nazi skinheads? Black Tea Party inverto-racists? The 57 percent of Republicans who think Obama is a Muslim? Feverish Glenn Beck sycophants loading up the pickup truck with shotguns and Coors Light, on their way to take out an abortion clinic or maybe a Gay Pride parade, but who take the wrong exit and/or drive into a wall because they can't read the GPS?

Comedic horrors thrive, moronism seems to inbreed and fester, and most of it manifests under the banner of a mutant Christian God, or extreme conservatism, or some form of fundamentalist moral outrage that can't exactly be explained but which often makes its most devout adherents appear to be nothing more than frenetic fleas sucking blood from the Great Hound of life. The beast merely scratches and sighs, and keeps right on gnawing the bone of eternity.

Perhaps you stop to ponder, as I occasionally do, the curious fact that you never read about, say, a die-hard Richard Dawkins fanatic going off hinge and orchestrating a marvelous "Burn A Bible, Save A Kitten" protest event. Or perhaps a Unitarian Church minister commanding her flock to load up their Priuses with Ecstasy and rum to go spike the punch at the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing-along. Wouldn't that be fun? Wouldn't that make a powerful counter-statement? Damn right it would.

Where is the liberal outrage? Where are the extreme acts of radical love? Where is the crazed "Daily Show" fan secretly planning to dump 10,000 gallons of Astroglide on Fox News HQ because Jon Stewart appeared in a pot-induced fever dream and ordered them to?

I still await the hippie liberal apocalypse. I still await my fellow progressives gathering at the Lincoln Memorial in calmly organized outrage, armed with Sigg bottles full of Cabernet and copies of the New Yorker, demanding free iPads for the poor and more compound sentences on CNN. Hell, I just came back from that infamous neo-pagan antichrist orgy known as Burning Man, and all I got was this lousy glow stick.

Oh, the hardcore lefty fringe has its violent cretins, to be sure, natty Earth Firsters to slavering PETA blood hurlers, eco-terrorists and freako off-grid cults, but those groups never claim to be a vital part of the Democratic Party. Liberalism does not depend on terrible education rates to survive.

The GOP, on the other hand, sucks hard from the teat of ignorant extremism, splashes gleefully in the shallow mud puddles of Sarah Palin's battered grammar, draws much of its power from the worst the human spectacle has to offer. Simply put, the modern Republican Party would not exist without its army of high school dropouts drunk on Rush Limbaugh and sexual dread. It's not difficult to imagine "Burn a Quran Day" becoming a new Texas state holiday.

What to make of it? After all, the world has always been speckled with rabid clowns, an endless parade of spittle-flecked sociopaths that make us shudder and sigh, many with "Reverend" before their names or "Show" just after it. American culture is rife with worldviews so narrow and poorly educated, you can be quickly convinced we are but an inch from permanent insanity.

Or maybe not. I prefer to think of these fine denizens of dumb as the darker, skankier parts of our individual consciousness, the red flags of the soul. Should we not be grateful they exist? That they are here to remind us to be ever vigilant and wary? Hell yes we should.

After all, the Fred Phelps, the Glenn Becks, the Terry Jones of the world are but our basest natures made manifest, the bleakest, most paranoid, lazily ignorant parts of each and every one of us. Deny it at your peril. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, "the bitterest contradictions and the deadliest conflicts of the world are carried on in every individual breast capable of feeling and passion." He should know.

These wretched little demons, they are eternal. They have always been here. And they exist to deliver but one message: If you're not conscious, if you don't pay attention, if you don't fill your cup to brimming every single day with laughter and paradox, love and possibility, if you don't deeply appreciate the madhouse irony of this completely gorgeous, impossibly ruthless human experiment, well, they will but fester like a sore on your big toe, and you'll no longer be able to dance.

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Worse is that their stupid-ass religion pervades our government to the point where they can use it to bend politicians to their whim in open defiance of the law - American Taliban, baby, you know it.

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we have Americans fussing over an event which has yet to take place (the proposed community center), and still may not. But I have to laugh at the childish tantrum some Americans display.

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they see the U.S. as homogeneously Christian

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Here, before a single stone has been laid, everyone from the Pope, President Obama (don't think he didn't, saying he wouldn't comment on "how wise" it was is pretty clear), our political leaders to average citizens have come out against the community center. Which is funny, because building on your own property IS an expression of property rights, no one would deny that, but so many agree that it's just stupid.

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