A deplorable act on campus followed one of the U.S. most important victories in the War on Terror.

Hours after President Barack Obama announced Osama bin Laden had been shot and killed in a firefight during a U.S. Navy SEALs operation, the American flag hanging over the Parade Ground was cut down and burned.

ROTC students said they found the burned remains of the flag at about 5:45 a.m. The flag has since been replaced.

Burning the American flag while the rest of the nation is in celebration is despicable and embarrassing for our campus against a backdrop of patriotism. But the First Amendment protects all symbolic speech — including flag burning (Texas v. Johnson).

But even more cowardice and hatred exposed itself in the comments section of our online story Monday about the burning.

Soon after we published, anonymous commenters on lsureveille.com began blaming Muslims for the burning. We deleted one comment in particular for its inciteful nature:

“Some stupid Muslim student getting a free education probably did it… It’s sad we still choose to educate these people and all they want to do is kill or do harm to us! I wish some of the ROTC guys would have caught this or these cowards and burned them!”

The comment was submitted at 12:43 p.m. — far too early to know who the police were pursuing.

Who’s to say a non-Muslim deviant didn’t burn the set of colors to frame the campus’ Muslim population? Who’s to say it wasn’t some misguided form of patriotism?

It’s narrow, incendiary convictions like this that guide hateful terrorism in the first place, and directing stereotyped hatred at a religious group helps nothing.

Burning our own flag amid celebrations of strides against some of the world’s greatest hate doesn’t need compounding with bigotry of any sort.

We’ll deplore whoever did this with complete impartiality — whether or not they’re Muslim.