While Rome Burns

It continues to be a disturbing week. When we left off a couple of days ago, there was unrest in Egypt and violence in Libya. Romney spoke out against the Obama administration’s lack of response and apparent knee-jerk need to sympathize with the perpetrators. The Obama administration said Romney didn’t know what he was talking about and spoke too soon.

Since then, reports have come out that continue to puzzle. There was an obscure internet movie identified that offensively portrayed the prophet Mohammed. It was so obscure previously that it had essentially no notice and no notoriety. It played only once in a theater, to an almost empty house. The filmmaker is now in hiding, and the attention will cause much more viewing than would have occurred without this call to attention. (The movie was removed from online, but here is information about it.)

But it appears the movie-as-catalyst-to-violence is just an excuse. The attacks are more likely a retaliation for deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan some time ago, and the dates were coordinated to hit on 9/11 for the symbolism of the day. In addition, the administration may have had 48 hours warning prior to the attack on the Libyan embassy. Security was believed to be tight enough, but it turns out documents were stolen, and information leaked about a nearby safe house, which was directly attacked.

Additional unrest has occurred in Yemen, Tunisia, and Sudan—and a total of 20 countries. (Info here  and here.) Closer to home, an anonymous caller with a middle eastern accent, claiming ties to al Qaeda, said bombs had been placed around the University of Texas Austin campus this morning. The campus was evacuated, and the time passed for the explosions, and nothing happened or was found. But the sense of vulnerability that terrorism was spread as intended. A similar threat happened on the North Dakota State campus.

Meanwhile, it is reported that the president skipped his intel briefing—again. Also, the House Intelligence Committee requested a briefing from the State Department, which was refused, no reason given.[i] The president sort of said Egypt wasn’t an ally, apparently uncertain of the definition of the word, and then had that statement walked back by the state department. 

Hillary Clinton and others are “shocked, SHOCKED” that the US should be treated this way after all the mollifying we’ve done.

The thing about mollifying is, it lets a bully know your intention is not to stand up to them, and it validates their excuse for violence. Mollifying is not good foreign policy. Unwise people mistake mollifying for diplomacy, but they are quite different. Diplomacy shows respect to other parties while expressing your own party’s (in this case the US's) interests so that all interests can be addressed with respect while moving toward, hopefully, mutual agreement, or at least understanding.

It is difficult to know the president’s inscrutable reasoning. Does he see the situation as acceptable? Does he misread the situation as unimportant? Is he pleased for some anti-American reason? Is he simply incompetent, or is he evil? If there is some other explanation, we certainly ought to hear it—very soon.

 

 

ments, or half-answers or half-truths or outright lies from the Obama Administration.

We have to conclude that Obama is worried about what a briefing would show. I'm thinking they couldn't send a rep over from State this morning because they needed some time to get all their lies memorized and synchronized.

Very troubling. We have a shadow government within a rogue government who obviously, and continuously, disregards Congress' role as a legitimate oversight on behalf of the American people

 

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[i] From Kevin Jackson’s The Blacksphere Face book status, 9-13-2012: “On the John Batchelor radio program this evening, a little after 9p.m (eastern), Congressman Devin Nunes (California) was being interviewed by Batchelor. He said that the House Intelligence Committee (of which Nunes is a member) REQUESTED someone from the State Department come to brief them on the events in the Middle East, and not only were they refused that brief, but State didn’t give a reason why

                “Congressman Nunes said it was unprecedented and, as long as he could remember, it had never happened previously in our history. He made a point of saying there was a great deal of bi-partisan cooperation on the committee, so it couldn’t be blamed on election year partisanship; said that both parties on the committee were infuriated. Lastly, he said, ‘Tomorrow, I thinkthe CIA will come in and brief us.’”

 

Another Bad 9/11

Eleven years after 9/11/2001. It was another disturbing day. Attacks on two of our embassies, in Egypt and Libya. American lives were lost: Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other embassy personnel in Benghazi. While this attack looks planned and timed for the 9/11 anniversary, it is unclear who perpetrated it. The supposedly spontaneous mob attack in Egypt, combining Islamist radicals and teenage soccer fans, may or may not have been coordinated.

But the two attacks are supposedly the result of anger over a YouTube video. Not something the US has sanctioned. Not something the diplomatic corps did wrong. Not even something many Americans are aware of. (No stories I’ve seen have named or linked any video, nor is any such video likely to still exist online, if it was real.)

An embassy, let’s be sure we understand, is the same as the embassy’s home country soil. An attack on an embassy is an attack on the US itself. Any country so attacked is understood to be authorized to retaliate. Civilization requires that we keep sacred our respect for one another’s diplomatic spaces.

To put it another way, if two armies were on the field of battle and one sent out a white flag, an indicator of a desire to speak and consider terms, the enemy would allow safe passage for the ambassador, the messenger with the white flag. What happened yesterday was surrounding the messenger and attacking him, and then cheering that they’d succeeded in killing off a particularly stupid enemy who’d allowed himself to get close enough for attack. Savage jackals behave this way; civilized humans do not.

So what will be the retaliation for this attack upon our sovereign soil? Not sure yet, but the US Embassy in Cairo (a representative of this administration and its policies) responded with this apology:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others. [Emphasis mine.]

The actions of errant videographers are firmly rejected, but there’s not even a weak rejection of the embassy attackers, who were guilty of violating basic laws of civilization. Instead there’s something like, “Oh, we totally understand where you’re coming from. Who wouldn’t savagely attack an embassy when there are offensive things on the internet?” And that last line seems to miss the irony that free speech was much more abused by the attackers, who want to control the speech of everyone around the world, than by some puny individual who may have stepped over a line of good taste. Maybe the video actually is so egregious that a person could be prosecuted for slander, but that hardly qualifies as an excuse for declaring war, which these attacks do.

For good summaries of the attacks, I suggest this Newsmax piece, as well as this commentary by BryanPreston of PJMedia.

What has been happening over the next day or so is telling. Following Tuesday’s administration apology to Egypt and promise to support Libya in bringing perpetrators to justice, Mitt Romney said this:

America will not tolerate attacks against our citizens and our embassies. We will defend, also, our Constitutional rights of speech, assembly, and religion. We have confidence in our cause, and in America. We respect our Constitution. We stand for the principles our Constitution protects. We encourage other nations to understand and respect the principles of our Constitution, because we recognize that these principles are the ultimate source of freedom for individuals around the world.

He also condemned Obama and the administration for their apology and non-response. You probably should view his comments in their entirety, here, because the mainstream media has taken it upon themselves to support the Obama administration in condemning Romney for jumping in before all the facts are known, and you might not get the full context from them.

Romney responded to media outrage (with no apology) that it’s never too soon to stand up for our principles. You have to have principles to know how to respond based on principles, which explains something about Romney’s need to school the administration.

In the meantime, Obama is tinkering with military nearby and trying to quell the obvious assumption that he’s as effective as Carter was the last time we had an ambassador killed (1979). But he didn’t want to interrupt his campaign fundraising schedule, so while dead Americans are still being prepared to be shipped home for funerals, he jetted off to speak to wealthy donors in Las Vegas.

And did we mention that there was one more irritant for Obama on 9/11? Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu asked to speak with him later this month, probably related to Israel’s intentions to protect itself from Iran’s growing nuclear threat. But what with campaign season on, Obama told him he couldn’t fit him in the schedule.

I am not making this up.

We’ve seen 3 ½ years of Obama’s often puzzling other-than-pro-American policies. We don’t know why these are his policies. Dinesh D’Souza’s movie 2016 is an attempt to explain, often using Obama’s own words, which we may need to start believing: “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction” (The Audacity of Hope, p. 161). Maybe he simply means he would stand up against anti-Muslim bigots. But since most Americans are with him on that, why would he need to stand up against America to do it? And when there’s hugely offensive anti-American bigotry—acted out with death and mayhem by people who call themselves Muslims—why can’t we count on our elected president to use at least a little pro-American backbone at a moment such as this? If he could lead, wouldn’t this be an opportunity, rather than an inconvenience during the campaign?