Sept 2012: U.S. Ambassador in Libya and two others killed in attack of consulate

[Fishbone Jones]

Ah yes. Those American Values that Mitt Romney was quick to say he would never apologize for: :sarcasm:

Sarcasm or not, please leave this kind of crap in the Election 2012 thread so as not to turn this one, or any other, into the same sort of shitfest.

Milnet.ca Staff

 

[cupper]

Sarcasm or not, please leave this kind of crap in the Election 2012 thread so as not to turn this one, or any other, into the same sort of shitfest.

Milnet.ca Staff

My apologies.

 

[George Wallace]

A little, perhaps different, perspective:

http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/09/14/a-night-with-the-fanatics

A night with the fanatics

By Michael Coren,QMI Agency
First posted: Friday, September 14, 2012 07:56 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, September 14, 2012 08:17 PM EDT


On Tuesday evening, I covered a 9/11 vigil in Toronto, and a counter-protest across the street organized by Islamic and leftist groups calling for the return of Omar Khadr.

We didn’t know that as this was taking place, Muslim fascists in Libya and Egypt were murdering people who had in some way offended them.

One of the dead was the U.S. ambassador to Libya, representing a nation that had given so much to free the Libyan people from tyranny.

The ostensible reason for the slaughter was outrage over a fringe movie depicting the prophet Mohammed in a negative light.

So what? We are supposed to be free to speak our minds. The issue here is not the movie but the Islamic reaction to the movie.

Remember, the same week this tiny film was made public, the internationally celebrated Venice Film Festival gave an award to a movie showing a naked woman masturbating with a crucifix.

The Christian response was an e-mail.

I doubt any of this would have moved the crazies protesting Tuesday.

They described their demonstration as a hate-free zone, but told me and the other Sun News team to “f--- off” as soon as we arrived.

Not one of the many protesters could tell me the name of the medic who was killed by Omar Khadr, and some of them said it didn’t matter.

They were also indifferent to the stories I told them of Christians, gays, women and moderate Muslims being slaughtered by militant Islamists.

What was noticeable was how many non-Muslim, white student types were there, including one with a megaphone with OCAP — Ontario Coalition Against Poverty — written on it, as an ownership marker.

In that most of the crowd seemed to have the latest iPhones and iPads, I’m not sure where the poverty was.

As always, these extremist groups wheel out their token Jew or two, like the old South African apartheid regime always had a black traitor who would praise the system.

One of the Jewish ladies at this event explained how all of Israel was occupied territory.

The crowd screamed “fascist” and “hoodlum” at the peaceful crowd of mainly Jewish, Hindu and Chinese people across the road, and then ostentatiously sat down when the Canadian national anthem was played.

Suddenly Omar’s sister Zaynab Khadr was spotted and internal e-mails revealed she would be kindly providing refreshments — no joke.

The lovely Zaynab once said of Americans killed on 9/11, “They deserve it.

“They’ve been doing it for such a long time, why shouldn’t they feel it once in a while?”

We asked her politely for a comment, and the zoo erupted.

We were pushed and threatened, and a group of people surrounded us screaming “racist, racist” and tried to prevent us from moving.

One of them grabbed my arm and microphone, but his grip was as tenuous as his grasp of logic.

So, a night with the fanatics. Thank God they do not have the guns and bombs possessed by their friends in the Middle East.

But be aware, they live among us, and their hatred and anger knows few bounds.

http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/09/15/robson-muslims-arent-rioting-because-of-movie

Muslims aren’t rioting because of movie

By John Robson,Parliamentary Bureau
First posted: Saturday, September 15, 2012 08:50 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, September 15, 2012 09:10 PM EDT

Getting drawn into discussions of this supposed movie about Islam is a fool’s game. Who made it? Why? Is it the worst film ever? Does it even exist? None of that matters.

Journalists are obsessing over a movie no one seems to have seen by a filmmaker no one seems to have seen either. But what matters is murderous attacks by people who fly into a lethal fury if contradicted. They chant death to America and death to Bush and death to Carter and death to Jews and death to Obama and death to infidels and death to heretics and death to whatever and concoct excuses on a regular basis, from real cartoons to invented ones to the blood libel, that supposedly explain but certainly do not give rise to their obsession with killing other people and frequently themselves as well.

On Thursday, president Barack Obama told supporters in Colorado “I know that it’s difficult sometimes seeing these disturbing images on television because our world is filled with serious challenges.” Is that really how you describe the deliberate murder of an ambassador and attacks on embassies throughout the region? Your world is filled with violent idiots and you don’t even know it?

Apparently not.

Response to film

On Friday his White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, said “This is a fairly volatile situation, and it is in response not to United States policy, obviously not to the administration, not to the American people. It is in response to a video, a film, that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting — that in no way justifies any violent reaction to it.”

Likewise on Thursday Secretary of State Clinton called the film “disgusting and reprehensible.” She did cite America’s “long tradition of free expression which is enshrined in our Constitution and our law” and said “there should be no debate about the simple proposition that violence in response to speech is not acceptable.” But if that’s the case, why criticize the movie?

She should have said it is not the business of the United States government whether films are good or bad, aesthetically or morally, and anyone who doesn’t like it is free to walk out of the theatre. Open societies are rambunctious places with something to offend everyone every day and if many people in the Middle East go berserk over hurt feelings it’s their problem, not ours. Instead U.S. federal authorities are now investigating the alleged filmmaker and the White House has apparently asked YouTube to take the trailer down.

If we were going to get into the subject of who insults whom, imagine the offense we could take at the ravings of preachers in mosques from Gaza to Mecca, the diet of hate in Middle Eastern media or the Koranic verses in the Dome of the Rock mosque pointedly denying Christianity. But as the Bible says, answer not a fool according to his folly.

There may be no movie, only a trailer. It may be a provocation by Christians or perhaps Islamists. I don’t know and I don’t care. Even if it was a Hollywood blockbuster with sparkling production values that reflected mainstream Western views on Islam, we still should not be drawn into debating it while mobs rampage because doing so implies that views distasteful to Muslim radicals should be squashed so they won’t have to kill us.

In a free society anyone can criticize a film for bad acting, clumsy editing or perverted morals. But to assail this movie now is to accept the premise that its quality is somehow relevant to the violence and it’s not.

What happened in Benghazi, Cairo and Yemen is not part of an exercise in art criticism. It’s about jihad and that is what we should be discussing.

john.robson@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @thejohnrobson

http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/09/14/islamist-jihad-against-west-rages

Islamist jihad against West rages

By Salim Mansur,QMI Agency
First posted: Friday, September 14, 2012 07:53 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, September 14, 2012 08:12 PM EDT

As Americans stopped to mark the 11th anniversary of 9/11, and ponder how much the world has changed during these years, an ocean away more terrorist attacks were mounted on American interests in the Middle East.

The attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya resulting in the murder of Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador, with three members of his staff and several Libyans, was an act of war by men indoctrinated with the same ideology of those who carried out the 9/11 attacks.

Osama bin Laden is dead and so is Ayatollah Khomeini, but the war they declared against the “satanic” West continues. The West, on the other hand, has opted to be an ostrich.

The result is more than a decade after hijacked jetliners plowed into tall buildings in New York, Islamists are ascendant across the Middle East and hoisting their Shariah-based totalitarian ideology. The U.S. under the Obama administration stands instead as having reverted back to the pre-9/11 mentality. The American election is barely seven weeks away and the Islamist jihad against the “Crusaders,” in the language of al-Qaida’s founder, will very likely get obscured in the fog of political debates and recriminations in the U.S.

But there is no mistaking that an apologetic West, as represented by President Obama, emboldened the Islamists, resulting in the manner in which the so-called Arab Spring unfolded.

The abandonment of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt accompanied by the embrace of Muslim Brotherhood is turning out to be a repeat of Iran in 1979 when Khomeini swept into power.

It is extraordinary that an apologetic America, as President Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo symbolized, and Europe with its appeasement mind-

set cannot get their act together in compelling a third world rogue state, Iran, to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons capability or face dire military consequences.

This failure to disarm Iran while embracing Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — the political grandfather of all the various Islamist offsprings in the greater Middle East and beyond — makes the present situation eerily similar to the 1930s.

What needs to be done, and should have been done by the previous Bush administration, is to take a page from George Kennan — the architect of President Truman’s policy against the Soviet Union — and update his strategy of containment for the Arab-Muslim world.

The Arab-Muslim world deserves to be isolated and contained, as was the former Soviet Union. An Iron Curtain, in Winston Churchill’s memorable words, should descend separating the West and its allies from the Arab-Muslim world until the latter has exhausted itself of its own demons.

The situation America, and by its default the West, finds itself in relation to the Arab-Muslim world is to a large extent, ironically, the result of its own guilt-ridden attitude and political correctness. This state of mind, or multiculturalism, gravely inhibits a realistic assessment of 9/11 and what has followed.

The explanation on offer that this new wave of Muslim rage was ignited by a crudely amateurish docu-drama about Islam’s prophet, and the individual responsible must be severely punished, is pathetic in describing a guilt-ridden West seeking to placate the Arab-Muslim world.

Islamists are at war, and the West needs to respond accordingly.

 

[Journeyman]

A night with the fanatics
By Michael Coren,QMI Agency

One of them grabbed my arm and microphone, but his grip was as tenuous as his grasp of logic.

  :rofl:  awesome

 

[GAP]

Stop appeasing jihadists
By Monte Solberg ,QMI Agency Sunday, September 16, 2012
Article Link

I know it’s still popular in some circles to say different cultures have different values, but all cultures are equal. I also know why people say this and it’s not because it’s obviously true, quite the contrary. They say it to avoid conflict.

It might even make sense in a sad way to dismiss the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans as a “cultural difference” if we knew it would appease our enemies. “No, I’m sorry dear, daddy won’t ever come home again because a different but equal culture killed him. But in their equally valid culture he had it coming so put on your burka and be quiet.”

Yes, asserting that some cultures are superior to others can lead to conflict, but appeasing is not the way out. The jihadists don’t care if we suck up to them. If you’re not one of them, they’ll dispose of you the moment you quit being useful to them.

In the case of the murders in Libya, the murderers would argue they were following orders. Given that the orders were issued in the year 632, you would think there might be some question as to whether they are still relevant.

After all, most of the world has moved on from then. There’s been a little reflection and critical thinking over the last millennium and things have changed.

In the West it took a while, but we finally figured out that it is self-evident we should all have equal rights. That’s why we oppose stoning women to death, even if they do show off an ankle.

The problem here isn’t freedom of expression in the West. In fact, the only alternative to violence is to debate ideas, which requires free expression and an open mind.

Unfortunately, jihadist minds closed 1,400 years ago and show no signs of reopening. They are still partying like it’s 999.

There are several lessons here.

First, if the Arab Spring ever actually existed, it has now yielded to jihadist winter. Let’s also not equate casting a ballot with real democracy. Permitting the vote without a commitment to universal human rights only legitimizes the tyranny of the majority. It’s democracy but it’s not liberal democracy.

Second, too many people in the West think the correct response to Muslim violence is to tiptoe around extreme Islam. Yes, some people have set out to inflame the Muslim street, but better a few free-speech provocateurs than a nation of sheep, afraid to call baloney on a way of thinking that is based on hate, repression and violence.

Third, let’s recognize that Israel is the only country the West can count on in the Middle East, precisely because it shares our values. How many times do we need to learn this lesson?

The U.S. embassy’s initial grovelling response to the violence in Cairo actually blamed American free expression for causing the violence. It was a futile and embarrassing attempt to appease the jihadists, an attitude I fear runs up the chain of command.

Forget the apologies. What U.S. foreign policy needs is tough talk and more Marines.
end

 

[Old Sweat]

While there is an apparent disagreement between the Libyan and American governments over the cause of the attack, it seems to me that the latter is peddling very softly and has not ruled out a terrorist plot. The evidence possibility that this was more than a random protest gone wrong does seem overwhelming and makes me wonder if this attitude may not get them in more trouble farther down the road. The story from the Global Security Org site is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act.

Libya, U.S. Give Conflicting Accounts Of Benghazi Attack

September 16, 2012
by RFE/RL

The United States and Libya have offered conflicting accounts about the attack in Benghazi, Libya, last week in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

On Septembe 16, Libya's parliament chief Muhammad al-Magariaf announced the arrest of 50 suspects in the case, saying the assault was pre-planned by extremists, mostly foreigners, backed by a few local Al-Qaeda "affiliates and sympathizers."

"It was planned, definitely. It was planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago, and they were planning this criminal act since their arrival," Magariaf said.

When asked where the foreign extremists came from, Magariaf responded that "they entered Libya from different directions" -- with "some of them definitely coming from Mali and Algeria," which are both to the west of Libya.

"The way these perpetrators acted and moved and their choosing the specific date for this so-called demonstration -- this leaves us with no doubt that this was preplanned and predetermined," he said.

But Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told U.S. television interview programs on September 16 that the attack did not appear to be premeditated to coincide with the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

Rice said evidence gathered so far suggests "some individual clusters of extremists" hijacked a protest that began "spontaneously in Benghazi" as a reaction to a protest organized by the Muslim Brotherhood a few hours earlier at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

The Cairo protest reportedly was sparked by a low-budget video -- produced privately in the United States and posted on YouTube -- that ridicules Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.

Rice told the CBS interview program "Face the Nation" that Washington wants to see the results of an FBI investigation before drawing any definitive conclusions about events in Benghazi. But she gave an assessment based on what she called "the best information" to date.

"Soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution, and that it spun from there into something much, much more violent," she said.

Rice said it has yet to be determined whether the extremists who fired rocket-propelled grenades at the U.S. Consulate building in Benghazi had ties to Al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Stop appeasing jihadists
By Monte Solberg ,QMI Agency Sunday, September 16, 2012
Article Link

I know it’s still popular in some circles to say different cultures have different values, but all cultures are equal. I also know why people say this and it’s not because it’s obviously true, quite the contrary. They say it to avoid conflict.

It might even make sense in a sad way to dismiss the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans as a “cultural difference” if we knew it would appease our enemies. “No, I’m sorry dear, daddy won’t ever come home again because a different but equal culture killed him. But in their equally valid culture he had it coming so put on your burka and be quiet.”

Yes, asserting that some cultures are superior to others can lead to conflict, but appeasing is not the way out. The jihadists don’t care if we suck up to them. If you’re not one of them, they’ll dispose of you the moment you quit being useful to them.

In the case of the murders in Libya, the murderers would argue they were following orders. Given that the orders were issued in the year 632, you would think there might be some question as to whether they are still relevant.

After all, most of the world has moved on from then. There’s been a little reflection and critical thinking over the last millennium and things have changed.

In the West it took a while, but we finally figured out that it is self-evident we should all have equal rights. That’s why we oppose stoning women to death, even if they do show off an ankle.

The problem here isn’t freedom of expression in the West. In fact, the only alternative to violence is to debate ideas, which requires free expression and an open mind.

Unfortunately, jihadist minds closed 1,400 years ago and show no signs of reopening. They are still partying like it’s 999.

There are several lessons here.

First, if the Arab Spring ever actually existed, it has now yielded to jihadist winter. Let’s also not equate casting a ballot with real democracy. Permitting the vote without a commitment to universal human rights only legitimizes the tyranny of the majority. It’s democracy but it’s not liberal democracy.

Second, too many people in the West think the correct response to Muslim violence is to tiptoe around extreme Islam. Yes, some people have set out to inflame the Muslim street, but better a few free-speech provocateurs than a nation of sheep, afraid to call baloney on a way of thinking that is based on hate, repression and violence.

Third, let’s recognize that Israel is the only country the West can count on in the Middle East, precisely because it shares our values. How many times do we need to learn this lesson?

The U.S. embassy’s initial grovelling response to the violence in Cairo actually blamed American free expression for causing the violence. It was a futile and embarrassing attempt to appease the jihadists, an attitude I fear runs up the chain of command.

Forget the apologies. What U.S. foreign policy needs is tough talk and more Marines.
end

Solberg is 100% right in his opening sentence ~ he recognizes that the root cause of Muslim rage is cultural, not strategic. His three "lessons" are, also, pretty much correct but I part ways with him on what I suspect is the unwritten part of his conclusion:

  + Forget the apologies  ✔ Agreed
  + What U.S. foreign policy needs is ~
      ~ tough talk and        ? But it seems to me that "tough talk" is about all there is to US foreign policy
      ~ more Marines        ✘ What is needed is a more focused, better managed US military that provides muscle to a coherent strategy.

So what is a 'coherent strategy?'

1. Identify and publicize your vital interests: those issues for which you will fight without further discussion. (For Canada there are probably, only a couple: self defence, defence of one of a small handful of traditional allies, etc. For the USA the list might be larger, including, for example, "freedom of the seas." For China, for example, it is Taiwan - we all know that China will fight to ensure Taiwan eventually rejoins China but it is highly unlikely to fight over some little islands.)

2. Identify your allies, friends, trade partners and all other and try to avoid making enemies. To some degree I think Obama has been right in this policy direction; one of his (stumbling) goals has been to stop talking about enemies and suggest (hope?) that they will, magically, morph, into competitors.

3. Recognize that Solberg is right and some countries/peoples are too different to be friends or even trusted trade partners in anything like the medium term (25+ years). One can, generally, our 20th century experiences with Germany notwithstanding, understand and cooperate with countries/peoples who are "like" us. The German are more "like" us than are the Russians, even when the Germans were our bitterest, deadly enemies and the Russians were our staunch, brave allies, we "knew" the Germans far more than we ever "knew" the "riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma," and we might have never really understood its vital interests, either. Even today Asian China is more "like" us than is European Russia, because: Asia is more culturally sophisticated than Russia, Asia's vital interests are more clear than are Russia's, and we, in the 21st century, have so many Asians as "us" that we now have better insights into it. For America and the American led West North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia are so "different" in so many ways that we constantly misjudge them. It is better to ignore and even isolate them than it is to engage in ways (almost any way) that almost always go sour.

4. Consequently: stand, firmly, bravely, with your friends, defend and promote your own vital interests and let the world unfold as it will, even when innocent civilians suffer.


Edit: typo

 

[tomahawk6]

If you are looking for coherence you wont find it. Susan Rice didnt want to admit that the attack in Libya was premeditated. A bunch of guys with RPG's just showed up at a "protest". Really ?

 

[Edward Campbell]

IIf you are looking for coherence you wont find it. Susan Rice didnt want to admit that the attack in Libya was premeditated. A bunch of guys with RPG's just showed up at a "protest". Really ?

I agree, T6, but the lack of coherence is neither all President Obama's fault nor even new. I would argue that the last time US foreign policy was wholly coherent awas when Truman was President and Acheson was Secretary of State; it was still fairly, but, especially with regard to the Middle East, less coherent under Reagan/Shultz. Neither Albright nor Clinton have any strategic vision at all. State just flounders like a beached whale.

 

[Maxadia]

I agree with that.  It appears that they are simply reacting, without any foresight.

On the other hand, it's always easy to play armchair diplomatics when we don't have access to what information they have been fed beforehand, and what sources it may have come from.

 

[Infanteer]

Meh, I lived in a city that set itself ablaze when its hockey team lost in the finals, so I'm not as fussed about the protests of the masses.

 

[pthebeau]

Meh, I lived in a city that set itself ablaze when its hockey team lost in the finals, so I'm not as fussed about the protests of the masses.

LOL...this will haunt Canadians for years to come.

Popular factors in rioting:
- Religion
- Monarchies
- Governments
- The 1%
- Hockey????? (maybe its just included in "Canadian Religion")

 

[Edward Campbell]

An interesting read ~ interesting to me, anyway, because it says what I've been saying for years now ~ reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/world/middleeast/muslims-rage-over-film-fueled-by-culture-divide.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

Cultural Clash Fuels Muslims Raging at Film

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: September 16, 2012

CAIRO — Stepping from the cloud of tear gas in front of the American Embassy here, Khaled Ali repeated the urgent question that he said justified last week’s violent protests at United States outposts around the Muslim world.

“We never insult any prophet — not Moses, not Jesus — so why can’t we demand that Muhammad be respected?” Mr. Ali, a 39-year-old textile worker said, holding up a handwritten sign in English that read “Shut Up America.” “Obama is the president, so he should have to apologize!”

When the protests against an American-made online video mocking the Prophet Muhammad exploded in about 20 countries, the source of the rage was more than just religious sensitivity, political demagogy or resentment of Washington, protesters and their sympathizers here said. It was also a demand that many of them described with the word “freedom,” although in a context very different from the term’s use in the individualistic West: the right of a community, whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish, to be free from grave insult to its identity and values.

That demand, in turn, was swept up in the colliding crosscurrents of regional politics. From one side came the gale of anger at America’s decade-old war against terrorism, which in the eyes of many Muslims in the region often looks like a war against them. And from the other, the new winds blowing through the region in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, which to many here means most of all a right to demand respect for the popular will.

“We want these countries to understand that they need to take into consideration the people, and not just the governments,” said Ismail Mohamed, 42, a religious scholar who once was an imam in Germany. “We don’t think that depictions of the prophets are freedom of expression. We think it is an offense against our rights,” he said, adding, “The West has to understand the ideology of the people.”

Even during the protests, some stone throwers stressed that the clash was not Muslim against Christian. Instead, they suggested that the traditionalism of people of both faiths in the region conflicted with Western individualism and secularism.

Youssef Sidhom, the editor of the Coptic Christian newspaper Watani, said he objected only to the violence of the protests.

Mr. Sidhom approvingly recalled the uproar among Egyptian Christians that greeted the 2006 film “The Da Vinci Code,” which was seen as an affront to aspects of traditional Christianity and the persona of Jesus. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and other Arab countries banned both the film and the book on which it was based. And in Egypt, where insulting any of the three Abrahamic religions is a crime, the police even arrested the head of a local film company for importing 2,000 copies of the DVD, according to news reports.

“This reaction is expected,” Mr. Sidhom said of last week’s protests, “and if it had stayed peaceful I would have said I supported it and understood.”

In a context where insults to religion are crimes and the state has tightly controlled almost all media, many in Egypt, like other Arab countries, sometimes find it hard to understand that the American government feels limited by its free speech rules from silencing even the most noxious religious bigot.

In his statement after protesters breached the walls of the United States Embassy last Tuesday, the spiritual leader of the Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, declared that “the West” had imposed laws against “those who deny or express dissident views on the Holocaust or question the number of Jews killed by Hitler, a topic which is purely historical, not a sacred doctrine.”

In fact, denying the Holocaust is also protected as free speech in the United States, although it is prohibited in Germany and a few other European countries. But the belief that it is illegal in the United States is widespread in Egypt, and the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Mohamed Badie, called for the “criminalizing of assaults on the sanctities of all heavenly religions.”

“Otherwise, such acts will continue to cause devout Muslims across the world to suspect and even loathe the West, especially the U.S.A., for allowing their citizens to violate the sanctity of what they hold dear and holy,” he said. “Certainly, such attacks against sanctities do not fall under the freedom of opinion or thought.”

Several protesters said during the heat of last week’s battles here that they were astonished that the United States had not punished the filmmakers. “Everyone across all these countries has the same anger, they are rising up for the same reason and with the same demands, and still no action is taken against the people who made that film,” said Zakaria Magdy, 23, a printer.

In the West, many may express astonishment that the murder of Muslims in hate crimes does not provoke the same level of global outrage as the video did. But even a day after the clashes in Cairo had subsided, many Egyptians argued that a slur against their faith was a greater offense than any attack on a living person.

“When you hurt someone, you are just hurting one person,” said Ahmed Shobaky, 42, a jeweler. “But when you insult a faith like that, you are insulting a whole nation that feels the pain.”

Mr. Mohamed, the religious scholar, justified it this way: “Our prophet is more dear to us than our family and our nation.”

Others said that the outpouring of outrage against the video had built up over a long period of perceived denigrations of Muslims and their faith by the United States or its military, which are detailed extensively in the Arab news media: the invasion of Iraq on a discredited pretext; the images of abuse from the Abu Ghraib prison; the burning or desecrations of the Koran by troops in Afghanistan and a pastor in Florida; detentions without trial at Guantánamo Bay; the denials of visas to prominent Muslim intellectuals; the deaths of Muslim civilians as collateral damage in drone strikes; even political campaigns against the specter of Islamic law inside the United States.

“This is not the first time that Muslim beliefs are being insulted or Muslims humiliated,” said Emad Shahin, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo.

While he stressed that no one should ever condone violence against diplomats or embassies because of even the most offensive film, Mr. Shahin said it was easy to see why the protesters focused on the United States government’s outposts. “There is a war going on here,” he said. “This was a straw, if you will, that broke the camel’s back.

“The message here is we don’t care about your beliefs — that because of our freedom of expression we can demean them and degrade them any time, and we do not care about your feelings.”

There are also purely local dynamics that can fan the flames. In Tunis, an American school was set on fire by protesters angry over the video — but then looted of computers and musical instruments by people in the neighborhood.

Here in Cairo, ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis initially helped drum up outrage against the video and rally their supporters to protest outside the embassy. But by the time darkness fell and a handful of young men climbed the embassy wall, the Salafis were nowhere to be found, and they stayed away the rest of the week.

Egyptian officials said that some non-Salafis involved in the embassy attacks confessed to receiving payments, although no payer had been identified. But after the first afternoon, the next three days of protests were dominated by a relatively small number of teenagers and young men — including die-hard soccer fans known as ultras. They appeared to have been motivated mainly by the opportunity to attack the police, whom they revile.

Some commentators said they regretted that the violence here and around the region had overshadowed the underlying argument against the offensive video. “Our performance came out like that of a failed lawyer in a no-lose case,” Wael Kandil, an editor of the newspaper Sharouq, wrote in a column on Sunday. “We served our opponents something that made them drop the main issue and take us to the margins — this is what we accomplished with our bad performance.”

Mohamed Sabry, 29, a sculptor and art teacher at a downtown cafe, said he saw a darker picture. “To see the Islamic world in this condition of underdevelopment,” he said, “this is a bigger insult to the prophet.”

Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.

Sam Huntington's Clash of Civilizations theory, proposed in a lecture in 1992 and in a Foreign Affairs article a year later, is much reviled by those who, erroneously in my opinion, believe in cultural equivalency, but it is a good theory ~ like it or nor ~ because it explains what we see around us.

The fact that so very many Muslims, including those living in e.g. Sydney, Australia, appear to believe that Islam, as a religion, has a right to be protected from perceived insult tells us that so many Muslims have a very, very shallow grasp of the Western World, in which many of them live.

Why?

Because many, far too many Muslims appear to believe that all one needs for education and for political understanding is a thorough knowledge of the Quran. That belief, more than anything else, explains why we have the Taliban. Talib means student and the original Taliban, with their backward, medieval social and political ideas were graduates of Saudi funded madrasahs who turned into violent revolutionaries in pursuit of what they believe (not just "appear to believe") is their god's will.

They, everyone is free to believe what they wish; what they are not free to do is to try to impose their beliefs on me. (Nor, of course, are fundamentalist Christians who e.g. oppose abortion or gay marriage, entitled to try to impose their beliefs on me.) We, in the West, pay police forces and armies to protect our freedom of conscience against all comers ~ including 1.5 billion Muslims.

 

[Old Sweat]

This column from the Full Comment section of today's National Post website exposes the reality of the US position in the Middle East/North Africa as opposed to what both presidential candidates (and probably a very large number of their colleagues) would like it to be. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act.

Political honesty would help offset limits on U.S. power

Kelly McParland | Sep 17, 2012 11:28 AM ET

The etiquette of U.S. presidential candidacy requires that both candidates react to the latest violence in the Middle East by pretending there’s more they could do about it.

Mitt Romney contends that, if he’d been president, it never would have happened. How would he have avoided it? Stronger leadership.  You can fill in for yourself what that’s supposed to mean.

Barack Obama pretends he can somehow bring those guilty of the murders in Libya to justice. True, he has the power to send more drones over the desert to target suspected enemies, but the president has been prosecuting the drone war with considerable enthusiasm through much of his first term, and it did nothing to prevent the violence in Benghazi.

The reality is that having the biggest arsenal in the world, the biggest military budget and the most advanced weaponry doesn’t buy the U.S. protection from a crazed mob in some distant country. It doesn’t even purchase Washington the ability to channel events in Libya, even though it helped rid the country of Muammar Gaddafi. All it brings is the right to watch from afar, exert what limited pressure it has, and hope for the best.

Mr. Obama probably knows the limits of U.S. power better than Mr. Romney,  because he’s had to deal with it for the past four years. He understands that countries are eager for U.S. financial aid, and keen on military assistance as long as suits their needs, but aren’t about to take orders from Washington just because they accepted its money and weapons. At the moment Mr. Obama can’t even get the prime minister of Israel to quit criticizing him on U.S. television, even though the U.S. commitment to Israel is about as clear cut as you can get. He’s a hardly going to have the inside track with a mob that’s lost its head because of some amateurish film by some twit in California.

If Mr. Romney has a similar understanding he’s disguised it well. His record on the international front is shaky at best. His trip to Israel, the UK and Poland was marked by gaffes. His prescription for dealing with Syria and Iran is to either drops bombs, or threaten to drop bombs, and send weapons to insurgents. What happens after that is unclear. George W. Bush didn’t worry much about what would happen once Iraq and Afghanistan had been militarily defeated– he figured it would just work itself out — and the results haven’t been pretty. But Mr. Romney seems to be of the same school.

Americans would be better off if their leaders quit feeding them the notion that they have some secret ability to dictate results, and only need the wit to use it. Mr. Romney’s first reaction to the attack in Libya was to accuse the administration of apologizing for American values, charging that the administration’s “first response” had been to “sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

It turned out to be ill-c0nsidered and badly timed. A president can’t just shoot off his mouth at the first report of an incident, regardless of whether all the facts are in, and a candidate shouldn’t either if he wants to be taken seriously. But the thinking behind the statement is standard in the U.S., where politicians continue to feed the fantasy that if Washington was just nimble enough, or more aggressive in utilizing its power, it could control this sort of thing and make the world a more peaceful and respectful place. When Obama was running to succeed George Bush he insisted a more sophisticated and respectful approach, especially with regard to the Muslim world, could produce relations more in keeping with American needs and values. That hasn’t worked out so well, as events have made clear. Now Romney echoes the Republican contention that Obama must be a weak and vacillating leader because Iran hasn’t stop chasing nuclear weapons and Syria hasn’t stop killing innocent Syrians. A “strong” president would quickly put Iran in its place by rattling U.S. sabres and reminding the mullahs what they’d be in for if they were foolish enough to attack Israel, he argues.

The U.S. military is powerful enough to defeat most opponents in short order. It took less than three weeks after the launch of the war on Iraq to overwhelm Iraqi forces. Kabul fell within a month of the launch of U.S. operations in Afghanistan. It’s what comes after the initial victory that gets out of hand; eight years after Iraq and 10 after Afghanistan, neither is secure, peaceful or particularly friendly. The U.S. helped oust Gaddafi without a single lost American life; but that chaos that followed ended with the four U.S. deaths in Benghazi.

The notion that a smarter foreign policy would preclude such tragedies may be comforting but doesn’t withstand close inspection. What was the magic formula for handling the fall of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak? Stand by a corrupt autocrat because he’d help keep the country in line for 30 years, even while he was busy mowing down protesters seeking a more democratic government? Side with the protesters despite the instability they represented? Similarly, Obama was criticized for failing to get enthusiastic about the Libyan mission, precisely because the fall of Muammar Gaddafi – as desirable as that was – portended exactly the kind of uncertainty and battle for power now taking place. The enthusiasm in some camps for a greater U.S. role in Syria – Sen. John McCain insists the U.S. should be doing much more to help the rebels – means wedding itself to the same unpredictable forces that are now roiling Egypt and Libya.

The fact is that in many parts of the world, there’s very little the U.S. or anyone else can do to control events. Only inside the U.S. do they still seem to believe otherwise. Lesser powers are able to play a more nimble diplomatic game because they don’t fool themselves into holding outsized expectations. Other western countries confide in voters that the world is a dangerous and unpredictable place, and outsiders can only hope to offer advice and assistance, and protect their own. Only an American leader could author a treatise with a title like “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness” — as Romney did, and offer the statement: ”I am one of those who believes America is destined to remain, as it has been since the birth of the republic, the brightest hope of the world.”

If he believes that, he’s not equipped to deal with the reality, which is very different. If he doesn’t, he and other leaders should be more honest in discussing with Americans the world that faces them, and what they might be able to do about it within the limits that exist.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>His trip to Israel, the UK and Poland was marked by gaffes.

The magic words, which tend to eliminate any possibility that the speaker/author is worth heeding.  You'd think he did nothing but beak off non-stop to the locals about the inadequacy of everything around him.

 

[a_majoor]

More results of "Smart diplomacy":

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/09/500000-hezbollah-fanatics-chant-death-to-america-at-anti-us-protest-obama-says-protests-not-directed-at-america/

In Lebanon 500,000 Hezbollah Fanatics Chant “Death to America” at Anti-US Protest (Video)
Posted by Jim Hoft on Monday, September 17, 2012, 8:37 PM

 
Tens of thousands of Hezbollah fanatics marched in Beirut today.
They chanted “Death to America!”


500,000 Hezbollah supporters attended an anti-US protest today in Beirut.
The Guardian reported:

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement, has called for new demonstrations to express outrage at a film that denigrates Islam and the prophet Muhammad, as unrest triggered by it continues from Tunisia to Indonesia.

“Prophet of God, we offer ourselves, our blood and our kin for the sake of your dignity and honour,” Nasrallah told supporters chanting “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” at a rally in the southern Shia suburbs of Beirut. “The US should understand that if it broadcasts the film in full it will face very dangerous repercussions around the world.”

The White House says the violent Middle East protests are not directed at the US.

And the Administration's story unravels even more:

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/17/u-s-intel-cable-warned-cairo-embassy-but-not-benghazi-consulate-of-possible-violence-on-september-10-update-susan-rice-caught-lying/

U.S. intel cable warned Cairo embassy — but not Benghazi consulate — of possible violence on September 10; Update: Susan Rice caught lying?
POSTED AT 9:47 PM ON SEPTEMBER 17, 2012 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
   
Just a little something to break up the monotony of “ROMNEY SAID WHAT?” concern-troll coverage that you’ll be submerged in tomorrow.

I take it this cable is what the Independent had in mind in its blockbuster last week about a 48-hour warning for U.S. intelligence.

The cable, dispatched from Washington on September 10, the day before protests erupted, advised the embassy the broadcasts [of the Mohammed movie] could provoke violence. It did not direct specific measures to upgrade security, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

However, under standard diplomatic procedures, Egyptian government officials and security forces were notified of U.S. concerns, since host governments are responsible for ensuring the security of foreign diplomatic missions on their soil, the sources said.

Copies of the cable were not sent to other U.S. outposts in the region, including the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where violence took the life of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The ties between the Benghazi violence and the crude anti-Muslim film are still unclear.

The reason they didn’t send the cable to other American missions across the region was, supposedly, because clips from the movie were broadcast on a cleric’s show in Egypt and therefore the possibility of violence was somehow “specific to Egypt.” I sure hope that’s a government lie, because if they seriously believed after the international demagoguery of the Danish Mohammed cartoons that this would be contained to a single country — on the anniversary of 9/11 — we’re in deeper trouble than I thought.

But maybe the State Department had reason to know about a threat to the Benghazi consulate beforehand after all:

Three days before the deadly assault on the United States consulate in Libya, a local security official says he met with American diplomats in the city and warned them about deteriorating security.

Jamal Mabrouk, a member of the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he and a battalion commander had a meeting about the economy and security…

“The situation is frightening, it scares us,” Mabrouk said they told the U.S. officials. He did not say how they responded.

Mabrouk said it was not the first time he has warned foreigners about the worsening security situation in the face of the growing presence of armed jihadist groups in the Benghazi area.

It’s no surprise that security would be dodgy in Benghazi. NBC has a nifty piece today revisiting the area’s recent past as an incubator for international jihadis, from rank-and-file mujahedeen in Iraq to numbers two, three, and four in the Al Qaeda food chain. If there’s any consulate in the world where you’d want a little extra security, it’s Benghazi, especially with the new Libyan government pitifully weak right now. Instead, Chris Stevens had next to nothing. Why? Exit question: Was the protest of the Mohammed movie outside the consulate a diversion for the attack on the building? Or was there actually … no protest at all? Because if it’s the latter, that puts a big hole in Susan Rice’s claim yesterday that Benghazi was all about local demonstrations over a movie that got out of hand.

Update: A commendable bit of reporting here from NBC Nightly News. Yesterday Rice cited the two American contractors killed in the Benghazi attack as proof that Stevens and his staff did have some security. But NBC says she was wrong: The contractors weren’t part of the consulate’s regulate security detail. Apparently Stevens had nothing except a security supervisor and a local militia. Why?

It seems increasingly clear that radicals like the Muslim Brotherhood have moved into the power vacuum left by the overthrow of previous regimes in the "Arab Spring", and equally obvious that no one in the US State Department seems to have seriously considered that this might happen in the chaotic aftermath of regime change. The radicals are seizing an opportunity to humiliate the United States on the international stage and looking for the reaction. This also plays well to their domestic audience and demoralizes any domestic opposition; local democrats see that the US is unable or unwilling to stand for them while any support base in the region evaporates, heading for the "strong horse".

 

[Rifleman62]

I would like to see the transcripts of any of the cell phone calls the Ambassador or the other three made that day. You can be sure calls were made.

 

[Haletown]

Well this might just pour gas on their fire. . . .  A French satirical magazine plans to publish Mohamed pictures tomorrow.




http://abcnews.go.com/news/t/blogEntry?id=17265007

 

[Jarnhamar]

Kinda seems like people are getting fed of with tip toeing around these psychos.

 

[OldSolduer]

Kinda seems like people are getting fed of with tip toeing around these psychos.

I was fed up with terrorists in the 70s, never mind in 2012.

Badder- Meinhof, Red Brigades, Carlos The Jackal.....IRA etc