From Benghazi to Cairo to Jerusalem to Damascus, a question: Where does America stand? (Updated)
In March 2011, the U.S. and our allies intervened in Libya’s burgeoning civil war to prevent a massacre of civilians by forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi in the coastal city of Banghazi. Yesterday, militants in that city — including, perhaps, some of the more extremist elements of the rebels whose cause we took up last year — showed their gratitude by killing four Americans, including our ambassador to Libya.
“Lafayette, we are here,” it was not.
The murders in Benghazi followed a siege earlier in the day of the U.S. embassy in Cairo in neighboring Egypt. Both attacks were blamed on Islamic extremists angered by a film hardly anyone in America had heard of, made by someone hardly anyone in America had heard of or discussed, that purportedly insults the Muslim prophet Muhammad. (See screen grab below, a Google search for the name of the movie in question. Note: I stopped at Sept. 5 because results in the days after that date begin to include references to the attacks, which obviously were added as updates after the fact.)
Image: Google screen grab
The attacks came, of course, on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on American soil.
In Cairo, protesters scaled our embassy’s walls, lowered our flag — which was at half-staff in remembrance of the 9/11 attacks — and replaced it with a banner similar to the one used by al-Qaida, and chanted, “We are all Osama,” as in bin Laden. As they did so, some member(s) of the embassy’s staff wrote repeatedly on Twitter — the social media platform that was widely used by young Egyptians during their uprising against Hosni Mubarak’s government — that the U.S. government condemned … the movie. Those tweets were later deleted as the State Department distanced itself from those remarks, but do not believe that the reflexive sensibility on display in the messages came out of the blue: If nothing else, our diplomats, especially three and a half years into a presidency, are well-trained to reflect the prevailing beliefs and sensibilities of the administration in office. That is their job, after all.
The interim president of Libya has apologized for the deaths in his country. As of this writing, there has been no such regret expressed by Egyptian officials. On the contrary, the Muslim Brotherhood, one of whose members is the country’s new president, called for nationwide protests against the film on Friday. At least they said the protests are supposed to be peaceful, I guess.
For his part, the president this morning issued a statement that read, in part: “While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.” The moral equivalence on display here — this is bad, that is bad, and no one should do bad things — is astounding.
But what’s really astounding is that, 11 years to the day after 9/11, our embassies in two Arab countries could be attacked by Islamic terrorists, and our government’s response would include wagging its finger at the people whose non-violent actions allegedly triggered the terrorists’ violence. That, 11 years to the day after 9/11, we still have people who believe these extremists need a reason to be mad at us.
Folks: They don’t need a reason, just an excuse to hand to the useful idiots who will continue to excuse them as people with legitimate religious grievances. (UPDATED at 12:25 p.m.: CNN is now reporting, based on information from “U.S. sources,” that the attacks in Benghazi were planned in advance and used protests about the movie as a diversion.) They just hate us. Period.
Now, “they” does not mean “all Muslims” or “all Arabs” or any such thing. But it does mean a large segment of the populations in the Middle East and North Africa, a relative few of whom trade on the ignorance and pliability of many others to pursue their totalitarian political goals.
Yet, 11 years later, they storm our embassy buildings and kill our civilians, and, 11 years later, our president doesn’t betray an understanding of the cause and effect at play here.
Add to these events and responses the statement from the White House, also yesterday, that the president is not available to meet with the prime minister of Israel, our closest ally in the region and a country known to be mulling military action to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Add to it as well the continuing massacre of Syrians by their own government, in a war eerily similar to the one in which we intervened in Libya, except for the fact that this time even our weakest efforts to stop the government-sponsored killing have been blocked by our supposed friends in Moscow.
And for all the crowing from Democrats, and specifically Obama, at their convention last week about their supposed foreign-policy superiority, the question I keep coming back to is one uttered a week earlier, by Condoleezza Rice, at the GOP convention:
Where does America stand? You see when the friends or foes alike don’t know the answer to that question, unambiguously and clearly, the world is likely to be a more dangerous and chaotic place.
Evidently so.
– By Kyle Wingfield
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
575 comments Add your comment
@@
September 12th, 2012
2:36 pm
TBs:
The city and county kept changing regs and rules on the fly to keep them from building.
That same thing is going on in my county right now. The congregation had to let the property go as a result.
That’s in Clayton County, GA…a Democratic stronghold.
Bruno
September 12th, 2012
2:37 pm
vary familiar with hate……semi-literate red neck ….racism, bigotry or homophobia….I hope you get fired….some obscure wing nut publication …..loses big……scared and sheltered nimrods ……Tea Bag Fest …..all aging too….the brown nose ……
Too bad we all can’t live up to the loving example set by Gravy Train above.
H.E. Pennypacker
September 12th, 2012
2:38 pm
I just want to state that I don’t think your column is very good. I don’t have any ideas on how it could be better and I certainly could not write anything better, but I want to be on the record.
……My shorter version of a Kyle like retort.
Gravy Train
September 12th, 2012
2:39 pm
Go get a job Bruno. Maybe read a non-fiction book sometime. That is assuming you can tell the difference.
They BOTH suck
September 12th, 2012
2:40 pm
@@
The D or R in itself doesn’t mean anything to me to the extent that both can be tyrants at times.
Sorry to hear about the situation with your church. Hopefully they have found a place that is more welcoming and accepting.
InAtl
September 12th, 2012
2:40 pm
Gravy Train, ever heard of projection? You accuse the GOP of hate, then you proceed to show us what hate really is as you use words and phrases like: semi-literate red neck, racism, bigotry, homophobia, obscure wing nut, tea bag fest, plutocrats, brown nose, shilling for Willard. And that’s all in ONE post. Just for your edification, here’s the definition of projection: Psychology.
The attribution of one’s own attitudes, feelings, or suppositions to others: The attribution of one’s own attitudes, feelings, or desires to someone or something as a naive or unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/projection#ixzz26HYoSosK
@@
September 12th, 2012
2:41 pm
TBs:
It’s the incrementalism that concerns me. The creep into MY rights.
It’s happened in other countries. No reason to believe it can’t happen here.
@@
September 12th, 2012
2:41 pm
TBs:
It’s not my church.
InAtl
September 12th, 2012
2:43 pm
Kyle, just like yesterday, my posts aren’t showing up. I don’t want duplicates, but here was my post a minute ago:
Gravy Train, ever heard of projection? You accuse the GOP of hate, then you proceed to show us what hate really is as you use words and phrases like: semi-literate red neck, racism, bigotry, homophobia, obscure wing nut, tea bag fest, plutocrats, brown nose, shilling for Willard. And that’s all in ONE post. Just for your edification, here’s the definition of projection: Psychology.
The attribution of one’s own attitudes, feelings, or suppositions to others: The attribution of one’s own attitudes, feelings, or desires to someone or something as a naive or unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/projection#ixzz26HYoSosK
fair and balanced
September 12th, 2012
2:43 pm
Hey Obozo haters:
Please tell me one successful war or covert operation that other presidents conducted where not one single American was killed or injured?????
And tell me how W’s policy of bringing democracy to the middle east is going with the pro Iranian Shiites in control in Iraq, Hamas in Gaza, , Hezbollah in Lebanon, Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and fundamentalists in Turkey all as a result of American inspired free elections??
Or did the left wing commies in this country rig those elections?
iggy
September 12th, 2012
2:44 pm
“No reason to believe it can’t happen here.”
Its already happening here. Thats why such a DC gridlock. Compromise with the leftwing socialist party is no longer an option and off the table.
At some point one must make a stand.
Centrist
September 12th, 2012
2:44 pm
@ Hillbilly D – Try some other stores or the internet if you want Christmas cards that have the word “Christmas” in them. My wife gets and sends them, we receive hundreds and they are not all coming from Christian stores. I am a secular humanist who celebrates the holiday period as a social event, put up a tree and lights, exchange gifts and have no problem with anyone who wants to display the Creche scene, etc. Governments or schools acknowledging the most popular holiday in the USA is not a problem for me, as long as they don’t endorse it. Actually, being a non-believer, I prefer the true believers over the greedy commercialists who start decorating and marketing in October and November.
iggy
September 12th, 2012
2:45 pm
“Please tell me one successful war or covert operation that other presidents conducted where not one single American was killed or injured?????”
Laughable at best.
Hillbilly D
September 12th, 2012
2:45 pm
I think some folks are missing one important point here. That group of folks who do hate us, don’t really care if Bush was President, or that Obama is now or that Romney might be. The people who did these things in Libya and Egypt just flat out hate us and they couldn’t care less who our President is. They’ll hate us if Romney is elected and they’ll hate us if Obama is re-elected. Our election won’t make one bit of difference to them.
iggy
September 12th, 2012
2:46 pm
In Iran, I believe the have “free” elections, however, the Presidential power ie ajahpeterhead, is controlled by the mulluhs. Its a farce.
Gravy Train
September 12th, 2012
2:49 pm
I am not projecting anything other than fact. Spreading hate and lies only encourages psychopaths to act on it. Fact: Georgia, despite modern times, is filled with a (thankfully) dying breed of red necks, racists, bigots and homophobic brainless wonders. I guess you don’t get outside of Atlanta too often. Their xenophobia gave us this wonderful new policy at the DMV. If the truth hurts, then I suggest you make some changes to what kind of image your party is projecting.
iggy
September 12th, 2012
2:53 pm
“Spreading hate and lies only encourages psychopaths to act on it.”
Then stop spreading the hate and lies. Also learn to distinguish fact from “hate, lies” etc. Also “hate” is so 90’s. Could you knuckle draggers please give us some new buzz words.
Scooter
September 12th, 2012
2:54 pm
We support free speech but condemn it if it might harm someone’s sensibilities. So we don’t really support free speech, or do we?
iggy
September 12th, 2012
2:57 pm
“So we don’t really support free speech, or do we?”
As long as it isnt “hate speech” or a “hate crime”…whatever that is or supposed to be. Although, I think its a form of Jesse/Al mind control.
Kyle Wingfield
September 12th, 2012
3:01 pm
Gravy Train @ 2:18: “How dare you try to label all Muslims as ‘they hate us.’ ”
You mean when I wrote, “Now, ‘they’ does not mean ‘all Muslims’ or ‘all Arabs’ or any such thing”?
And then you call me semi-literate??
old timer
September 12th, 2012
3:01 pm
Good article Kyle….
Archibald Leach
September 12th, 2012
3:03 pm
Kyle, i’m guessing you agree with the reactionary, idiotic statements from Romney and Sarah Palin released about this. I’m not surprised at you republicans first reaction to the killing of 4 Americans. Immediately blame Obama and lie about him sympathizing with muslim extremists.
Tom(Independent Viet Vet,USAF)
September 12th, 2012
3:04 pm
This is not about some stupid movie, it will be discovered that this was a pre-planned attack to discredit Americans on 9-11 day. Furthermore, I just saw on news that the 4 Americans were taken to a safe house. Next the Libyan authorities revealed location of safe house to mob. The 4 Americans were murdered there and were then dragged through the streets in a sign of disrepect. I do not think ALL news stations will report this, as it may look bad for Obama’s apologetic administration?
Gravy Train
September 12th, 2012
3:05 pm
No Kyle, I know that you are educated and literate. I was talking about the majority of your base audience.
Kyle Wingfield
September 12th, 2012
3:06 pm
Gravy Train @ 2:30: That’s where you’re dead wrong. As much as you’d like to believe the contrary, there’s no difference between you and me in their eyes. Or do you think Ambassador Stevens was a Bush/Romney supporter?
Kyle Wingfield
September 12th, 2012
3:07 pm
InAtl @ 2:43: As far as I can tell, that comment did post earlier.
cc
September 12th, 2012
3:08 pm
Kyle Wingfield @ 2:01 pm:
Maybe the AJC would not have been forced to limit their distribution if it had adopted a conservative stance. In a situation where the majority of their readers were decidedly conservative, the AJC pursued a policy of writing for the minority of liberals. It just makes no sense to me . . .
joe
September 12th, 2012
3:08 pm
I can tell you where America stands on them, but I cannot tell you where our marxist-in-chief stands. He’s such an embarrassment to our country that those who support him should be ashamed.
Ivan
September 12th, 2012
3:08 pm
” ..there’s no difference between you and me in their eyes”
You mean they don’t ask if you’re a Democrat or Republican before deciding to kill you?? 0.o
Kyle Wingfield
September 12th, 2012
3:11 pm
Archibald @ 3:03: At what point did I “blame Obama” or say he “sympathiz[es] with Muslim extremists”?
What I did point out is that he, like a lot of the commenters here, has failed to identify what’s happening here. Namely, that terrorists who hate America want to kill Americans, regardless of any obscure, D-grade movie about Islam that someone, somewhere makes.
Gravy Train
September 12th, 2012
3:15 pm
Bush left enough crap to fuel the Islamic extremist faction’s hate machine for the rest of our lifetimes. It’s terrible that four more Americans had to die because of it. If there were no oil there, would we be there? If a group of people shows up at your house tomorrow and demands that you leave because they lived there before your house was built, would you not be angry and want to fight? If a foreign nation set up a puppet government in our country for the sole purpose of raiding our natural resources, would you be angry then? What if that puppet government kept our capital tied up in ways to arm itself against us? Angry yet? The extremists use the anger as a recruitment tool.
cc
September 12th, 2012
3:17 pm
The muslims needed no reason to attack and kill. They were simply celebrating their victory of 9/11/01. The actions yesterday did not “coincidentally” occur on 9/11 . . .
@@
September 12th, 2012
3:17 pm
Hillbilly:
The people who did these things in Libya and Egypt just flat out hate us and they couldn’t care less who our President is.
ABSOLUTELY!!!!
@@
September 12th, 2012
3:20 pm
One thing’s for sure. Killing OBL didn’t accomplish much.
Another martyr to be celebrated.
InAtl
September 12th, 2012
3:24 pm
Thanks, Kyle. I had gotten a message “server error” and then couldn’t find my post anywhere. Then it showed up.
What I don’t understand, and maybe I missed it, was why our embassies in the Middle East didn’t have extra marines guarding them on 9-11. They should do that every year around that date, in my opinion. This probably won’t be the last time something like this happens. I don’t blame the current president for that kind of security decision, but I do blame him for being an appeaser to the extremist factions over there. I seriously doubt that his “condemning in the strongest terms” really has them shaking in their shoes. I fervently believe that Romney, much like Reagan, will get a different mindset from them in that regard.
@@
September 12th, 2012
3:25 pm
DANG! That cheesy little film is everywhere now. I was just at “The Atlantic” where it’s on full display. Can’t activate it though.
Not to worry. I wasn’t going to kill someone had I been able to.
It’s gone from obscure to renowned.
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
September 12th, 2012
3:27 pm
that terrorists who hate America want to kill Americans,
So what. You can’t please all the people all of the time.
Tom(Independent Viet Vet,USAF)
September 12th, 2012
3:28 pm
I’m hearing now that the 4 Americans were the Ambassordor, a civilian aide and 2 Marines! That sucks, it had nothing to do with some stupid movie. It was a planned attack on Americans on 9-11 day. They want to kill and disgrace us. Nothing but animals, I say what mercs used to say “Kill them all and let God sort them out”.
BW
September 12th, 2012
3:28 pm
Kyle
Terrorists want to harm America…acceptable conclusion. The question is do we go militarily after all these groups which according to some include countries? A second question is do the American people have the stomach for the fiscal impact of such a policy? Perhaps this is why Romney wants to double defense spending while lowering tax rates and entitlement and discretionary spending. Of course he’ll never come out and just say so.
Bruno
September 12th, 2012
3:29 pm
Tell me what we gained besides some oil contracts????????
fair and balanced–Not sure about you, but my car burns gasoline to get around. Without petroleum, our whole economy collapses. Exactly what is your car burning??
For whatever reason, a lot of Libs seem to display an elitist attitude about the necessity of an abundant fuel supply. A few days without gas, and we’re all sunk.
Kyle Wingfield
September 12th, 2012
3:30 pm
BW @ 2:28: For starters, I’d like to think the knee-jerk reaction of our embassy staff overseas — the ones who are supposed to be explaining and promoting our values — would be a defense of freedom of speech rather than a condemnation of the speaker.
I’d like to think that, if we’re going to spend billions of dollars a year on foreign aid to these countries, that the people in those countries would have a little bit better understanding of our system of government than to think the proper response to one person’s comments/beliefs in this country is not to take over our embassy or to kill our ambassador. Which, in turn, means I’d like to think the few terrorists would stop receiving the support of the many people who blindly follow them. And I’d like to think it means we’d have the good sense to cut off or reduce foreign aid to those countries where our message apparently is not being received.
I’d like to think that, when we intervene in a country’s civil war to prevent a massacre of civilians, it would have the effect of either ingratiating us with the people of that country or making dictators in other countries (read: Assad in Syria) think twice before commencing to massacre their own civilians.
I think there are reasons these things are not happening. I think there’s a certain inconsistency on our part, one that didn’t necessarily begin with Obama but has not gotten better the past 3.5 years, and a belief on the part of others that we don’t mean what we say. How many times, for instance, has Obama said Assad must stop killing civilians, or “must go”? I’m not necessarily saying we should intervene militarily in Syria, but these kinds of empty threats do not improve our credibility in that region. And we have seen repeatedly that al-Qaida, in particular, seizes on what it perceives to be our weakness. Announcing our plans for withdrawing from Afghanistan waaaaay in advance comes to mind, too.
All these things relate to where “we stand” — what are our principles, what actions are we not willing to tolerate, why should our word be considered credible, etc.
Bruno
September 12th, 2012
3:32 pm
Go get a job Bruno. Maybe read a non-fiction book sometime. That is assuming you can tell the difference.
Let’s see, I’m already a doctor, and I read quantum physics books and advanced math texts for fun. How about you, hater??
@@
September 12th, 2012
3:33 pm
Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri had recently released a video calling on militants to attack Americans in revenge for the killing of an operative in Pakistan. The message said his “blood is calling on you, inciting you to fight and kill the crusaders.”
I always thought al-Zawahiri was more dangerous than OBL. He’s the mastermind, OBL was just a figurehead on a very tall body.
Why haven’t we caught al-Zawahiri?
Hillbilly D
September 12th, 2012
3:34 pm
Bruno @ 3:29
I felt sure you were driving an electric car.
fair and balanced
September 12th, 2012
3:39 pm
Bruno – I take Marta; try it some time. No coincidence that both Afghanistan and Iraq have locations where oil companies want American controlled pipelines for oil and gas. One in Iraq that was closed goes from Kirkuk to Jordan to Haifa. Want to bet its being reopened now that Cheney did the evil deed?
Bruno
September 12th, 2012
3:40 pm
That group of folks who do hate us, don’t really care if Bush was President, or that Obama is now or that Romney might be. The people who did these things in Libya and Egypt just flat out hate us and they couldn’t care less who our President is.
For whatever reason, HD, the Libs have convinced themselves that all we need to do is talk nice, and the whole Muslim terrorism problem would disappear overnight.
The bottom line is that economics lies at the heart of virtually every armed conflict in human history. We need oil, and must do whatever is necessary to keep the oil flowing.
independent thinker
September 12th, 2012
3:42 pm
@@ – yeah lets blame Obama for not catching him – must be a distant relative of Obama.
You ar right about him being a mastermind. He and the blind sheikh masterminded the ‘93 WTC bombing ; probably will show up as Egyptian foreign minister.
They BOTH suck
September 12th, 2012
3:42 pm
@@
what creep exactly?
John Birch
September 12th, 2012
3:43 pm
Those that prefer Democratic foreign policy have a very infantile understanding of the world we live in. Simply stated almost all of the rest of the world views us with some combi nation of fear, hatred, and envy. Singing Kumbaya to Islamic militants isn’t likely to deter them from their convert or die beliefs. But here’s what the Dems have done.
Carter – boycott the Olympics and screw up the rescue mission
Clinton – shot off a few cruise missiles
Obama – send 50,000 troops into Afghanistan to die for nothing after campaiging on sending 5,000, ignore Iran threat, weak support for Israel, and condemn the movie
Why do the liberals hate America?
Bruno
September 12th, 2012
3:43 pm
I felt sure you were driving an electric car.
Nope, but only have a 1 mile commute to work every day, so a tank of gas lasts me a while now. I have to brag about my tires, also. I have nearly 100,000 on the original set, with plenty of tread left.
take Marta; try it some time.
When I lived in Atlanta, I used MARTA on occasion. Most of the time, it was far more convenient to drive, however.