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

  • Thread starter Thread starter jollyjacktar
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Nemo888 said:
It's not an alleged movie, just an incredibly bad one. It was deliberately made to be offensive and inaccurate. It's so poorly done that I feel sorry for the guy who supposedly spent millions making it. It does not even rise to the level of critique. It's ignorant trash not worth anyone's attention.

There will be no reform without rapprochement AND critique. Time to stand up for the right to criticize.


I agree with all aspects of your critique, but that does not alter, not even a tiny bit, why it is still protected as "fair comment" and needs to be defended as such.

"Hate speech" - no matter how it is spewed and no matter at whom it is directed - is a silly concept. This film does, indeed, aim to denigrate Islam but that is not an incitement to violence (which is one of the very, very few grounds on which we ought to restrict "free speech") at least it is no more an incitement to violence than is the anti-Israeli propaganda which is commonplace, usally as 'educational' material, in many parts of the world but which does not provoke murderous riots in Tel Aviv.

I'm with OZ on this ~ the film is just a convenient excuse for somewhat less that smart people to express their unreasoned, inchoate rage at a world which does not give them what they want. The film, unbelievably bad though it may be, is nothing about which anyone needs to apologize.

This is a North African/Arab/Persian/West Asian cultural problem, not a problem of "hate speech." The solution to that problem is a religious reformation followed by an enlightenment, both of which, based on our experience, will take generations and much, much bloodshed.
 
For anyone trying to place all this strum & drang into a longer historic, regional and contemporary perspective, this article is a good place to start.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-islam-s-ancient-sectarian-divide-fuels-conflict-in-the-middle-east-a-854106-2.html

The Middle East is a still a quagmire of competing interests and vendettas going back many, may centuries.

It isn't going to change any time soon.
 
Thucydides said:
The fact that this and the attack on the Cairo embassy happened on 9/11 was no coincidence either.

Sadly, the US political and chattering class seems clueless to what is happening, the NYT conveiniently buried the story on page A4 (doesn't seem to support the "Smart Diplomacy" or "Arab Spring" narratives), and Instapundit has an evolving page on the responses by various people to this (the Embassy in Cairo sent a string of tweets which seemed to have inflamed the situation, then deleted them, for example).

All in all a sad day for the families of those killed, and a disaster for US diplomacy in the region.

http://www.nytimes.com/images/2012/09/13/nytfrontpage/scan.jpg
 
Know who's responsible for all this?  Not someone who decided to make a film- the people who woke up and decided to go out and murder people.

The people who think this was somehow "caused" by a movie are out to lunch. Much the same way that a battered woman "causes" her beatings. "She should know better than to agitate her husband. She knows what a temper he has. She brought this on. She shouldn't have antagonized him"

Can you imagine saying something like that, even jokingly - in any Canadian or American workplace? I would be fired - that day.
 
muskrat89 said:
I would be fired - that day.
You're not talking about those Senatorial districts where " 'legitimate rape' rarely results in pregnancy" though, right?  :whistle:
 
An idiot politician stepping on his yoohoo while in front of a microphone is a bit different than a perspective that is repeated so often and by so many that it is practically a mantra - don't you think?
 
Certainly. I just get a feeling that some "common sense" beliefs may be less common in certain areas....or amongst certain people.
 
Journeyman said:
Certainly. I just get a feeling that some "common sense" beliefs may be less common in certain areas....or amongst certain people.

The Recruiting Forum on Milnet?
 
Thucydides said:
More on the coordination of the attacks, and the possibility that this is part of a larger pattern (again). Reaf the article, not just the headline:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/conservatives-rally-on-embassy-attacks/2012/09/12/c8344bec-fcfe-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_blog.html
Bunch of revisionist history hogwash.
(in ref your highlighted part)
The intelligence agencies that were piecing this together at the time were the same ones that  "failed to connect the dots" prior to 9/11
However, was the cruise missile attack in Khartoum and  Afghanistan a spur of the moment thing from Clinton?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_missile_strikes_on_Afghanistan_and_Sudan_%28August_1998%29

Just because  Obama is not foaming at mouth a la Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levine doesn't mean they are he is indifferent .
 
Any President should say coldly and delibrately; "We will find those responsible and they will pay dearly for what they did and those who protect them will pay as well. We will not stop hunting you and we will hunt you for the rest of your life."
 
Today's cartoon in the Globe & Mail.....
 
Very interesting analysis on how and why the protests started. And it appears that Obama's so-called gaffe regarding Egypt not being an ally may not be a gaffe after all.

Egypt Fans the Flames
Why Morsi Exploited the Muhammad Film -- and Why that Was a Bad Move


http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138118/jytte-klausen/egypt-fans-the-flames?page=show

The storming of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday echoed events following the 2005 Danish publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that led to widespread protest in 2006 and assaults on Danish embassies around the world. Today, Egypt's president, Mohamed Morsi, and his government are playing the same role that his predecessor Hosni Mubarak did then: provoking protest to consolidate power.

The chaos on Tuesday in Benghazi that resulted in the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was set in motion the Sunday before when Ali Gomaa, the grand mufti of Egypt, spoke out against a film that he condemned as "offensive to all Muslims." He claimed that it was produced by "some extremist Copts" living in the United States. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood-led government followed Gomaa's lead and demanded a public apology and criminal prosecution of the filmmakers. On Tuesday, as events unfolded in Benghazi, 3,000 demonstrators besieged the U.S. embassy in Cairo. An armed mob attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and killed Stevens and three other U.S. officials. It remains unclear who exactly planned the Libya strike, but reports point to Ansar al-Sharia (Supporters of the Islamic Law), a group connected to al Qaeda.

The film in question, it turns out, is little more than an amateur production made up of sophomoric sacrilegious sketches of the Prophet Muhammad taken from the Internet. It remains unclear who produced the dubious film, but it appears not to have been Egyptian Copts living in the United States. A trailer for the production was posted on YouTube in July, but apparently came to the attention of Egyptian authorities only after a murky Twitter campaign promoted it, with backing from a pastor in Gainesville, Florida, Terry Jones, who got everyone's attention in 2010 for his plans to burn copies of the Koran in a bonfire.

This feels very much like a sequel to 2006, when 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that had been published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005 sparked a public uproar. Those cartoons, too, had gone relatively unnoticed when they were first published. But when mysterious text messages and posts in Internet chat rooms alerted Muslims to the insult they had suffered and the Egyptian government started publicizing the Danes' sacrilege, people started to pay attention. And even then, the streets remained calm until Gomaa condemned the cartoons and encouraged denunciations during Friday prayers across the Middle East. Over three weeks, mobs burned Danish embassies and consulates to the ground. Two years later, al Qaeda bombed the Danish embassy in Islamabad, leaving eight people dead.

In 2008, I traveled to Cairo to investigate why the Egyptian government had decided to spearhead an international campaign against the Danish cartoons. Some of those with whom I talked pointed their fingers in the air and said, vaguely, "This came from the top." Others were willing to be more specific. They explained that Hosni Mubarak, who was president at the time, must have been involved.

To my great puzzlement, Egyptian diplomats, starting with Amr Moussa, who was then the secretary-general of the Arab League, refused to speak to me about the Danes. Instead, Moussa and his colleagues in the Foreign Ministry began every sentence with "But the Americans must understand," after which they would go on to explain why U.S. pressure to allow the Muslim Brotherhood to compete in free elections would lead to chaos. Presumably, they meant to imply that the Muslim Brotherhood was behind the rioting.

In fact, those who suspected Mubarak were right. The objective of his regime's campaign against the Danish cartoons was twofold. First, the cartoons were a convenient way to illustrate the ills of an unfettered media. Buoyed by the cartoon riots, the Mubarak regime was able to push a new media charter through the Arab League in 2008. It restricted satellite television in general and al Jazeera in particular.

Second, the violent and apparently religious protest that followed the publication of the cartoons was a way to demonstrate to the Americans that the Muslim Brotherhood was dangerous. As Moussa told me, the Egyptian government wanted to teach the West a lesson. "We have to be treated equally," he complained, objecting to European and U.S. efforts to compel Egypt to sign a new charter for granting civil society groups freedom to operate outside of Mubarak's control.

The United States seemed to learn the lesson Mubarak intended. In 2008, the leader undid some reforms that had been introduced in 2005 in response to the "freedom agenda," U.S. President George W. Bush's ill-fated attempt to change the Middle East through elections. The move was met with only muted criticism from the United States.

For its part, the Muslim Brotherhood was eager to make sure that I understood that it was not responsible for the protests. Essam el-Erian, then a member of the Brotherhood's Guidance Bureau known to belong to its moderate wing, had just been released from prison when I met with him in his downtown Cairo office. He looked pale and was wearing ill-fitting glasses and teeth. He did not know much about the history of the cartoons but impressed upon me that, although the Brotherhood was offended by Islamophobic portrayals of the Prophet, it also understood that different countries have different traditions. He regarded protests against cartoons as a distraction from the real task of reform. He was suspicious that Mubarak was using the Danish cartoons to suppress the Brotherhood. Today, el-Erian is a Morsi adviser and the acting chairman of the new Muslim Brotherhood party, the Freedom and Justice Party, which controls Egypt's parliament.

My meeting with Khaled Hamza, who was then the editor of the Brotherhood's recently launched English-language Web site, was even more interesting. We met after secretly coordinating an appointment at the Starbucks in a suburban Egyptian mall. Throughout the meeting, Hamza prodded me to explain this "freedom of speech" thing that was so important to those defending the Danish newspaper. That started a discussion of how to establish the legal meaning of blasphemy in multi-religious open societies.

The day after our meeting, the security services came for Hamza. He remained in prison for eight months. Joining a chorus of liberals in Europe and the United States who had decided that working with the Muslim Brotherhood was the only way forward, in February 2008 Marc Lynch wrote on his blog: "Khaled, aside from being a wonderful person, has been a leading voice for moderation and engagement." Eventually, of course, Hamza was freed and the Muslim Brotherhood got what it had long advocated: real elections and the freedom to practice Islam as the conservatives desired. The Brothers did not spearhead the revolution but were its beneficiaries. In June, Brotherhood officials moved into Mubarak's old offices.

But in the past week, ironically, the Brotherhood has continued to follow the old Mubarak playbook. Hours after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, the Muslim Brotherhood posted that it "strongly condemn(s) the deadly attack ... and the tragic loss of life. We urge restraint as people peacefully protest and express their anger." Even while condemning the attacks, however, the Brotherhood called for mass protests at mosques across Egypt on Friday, virtually guaranteeing that the unrest will spread.

The Muslim Brotherhood's sponsorship of the film protests might be an ill-advised attempt at the diversionary politics Mubarak was a master of, but the costs are high. If Egypt's ultra-Salafists take a harder line on the film or manage to co-opt the protests, Morsi could easily lose ground to them. It is a gamble. The ultra-conservative salafist Nour Party, the second-largest in the new parliament, has stepped up their campaign to turn Egypt's religious authorities into a new Supreme Court and derailed the work of the constituent assembly writing a new constitution.

In Egypt, the film is now being portrayed as the work of Jews and extremist Christians, but no one really knows. It hardly matters. Not everything on the Internet is what it appears to be. The Internet grants people the freedom to say silly things, including things that are insulting to Muslims, and can be exploited for political gain. But that goes both ways. It was not so long ago, after all, that YouTube postings of Mubarak's thugs shooting young demonstrators in the back helped to bring down a regime that Morsi and the Brotherhood had fought for decades to end. If only to set himself apart from the old regime, Morsi should take responsibility for rousing misplaced public anger and turning a non-event on the Internet into a real-world catastrophe.

Morsi should take responsibility for rousing misplaced public anger and turning a non-event on the Internet into a real-world catastrophe.
 
Libya rescue squad ran into fierce, accurate ambush

By Hadeel Al Shalchi

BENGHAZI, Libya, Sept 12 (Reuters) - A squad of U.S. troops despatched by helicopter across the Libyan desert to rescue besieged diplomats from Benghazi on Wednesday ran into a fierce overnight ambush that left a further two Americans dead, Libyan officials told Reuters.

Accounts of the mayhem at the U.S. consulate, where the ambassador and a fourth American died after a chaotic protest over a film insulting to Islam, remain patchy. But two Libyan officials, including the commander of a security force which escorted the U.S. rescuers, said a later assault on a supposedly safe refuge for the diplomats appeared professionally executed.

Miscommunication which understated the number of American survivors awaiting rescue - there were 37, nearly four times as many as the Libyan commander expected - also meant survivors and rescuers found themselves short of transport to escape this second battle, delaying an eventual dawn break for the airport.

Captain Fathi al-Obeidi, whose special operations unit was ordered by Libya's authorities to meet an eight-man force at Benghazi airport, said that after his men and the U.S. squad had found the American survivors who had evacuated the blazing consulate, the ostensibly secret location in an isolated villa came under an intense and highly accurate mortar barrage.

"I really believe that this attack was planned," he said, adding to suggestions by other Libyan officials that at least some of the hostility towards the Americans was the work of experienced combatants. "The accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any regular revolutionaries."

http://af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFL5E8KCMYB20120912

 
muskrat89 said:
The people who think this was somehow "caused" by a movie are out to lunch. Much the same way that a battered woman "causes" her beatings. "She should know better than to agitate her husband. She knows what a temper he has. She brought this on. She shouldn't have antagonized him"

Can you imagine saying something like that, even jokingly - in any Canadian or American workplace? I would be fired - that day.

Yep you're absolutely right.  I'm currently reading through the Qur'an to try to understand what on earth could incite such violent reactions to nothing but an unoriginal troll.

That being said.  If the battered woman knows something will trigger her husband to harm her, she would be wise to do her best to avoid it.  Just like we advise women not to walk alone at night in the streets or in the middle of a public park.  They certainly do not cause the problem by any means, however, faced with reality, their decision will be an unfortunate factor in what may happen to them, especially if it was a decision made knowing the risks.

We are very well aware of the violence we can create in the Middle East by offending their beliefs.   The producer stated they "knew what they were getting into" when producing this film.  The publisher warned him that he would become the new "something Van Gogh" (can't remember exactly, it was an article in theblazer), which basically means that he will be the target of many islamists who will want to kill him.  Fact is, he and his team knew his movie would cause violence, but guess what, he did not pay with HIS life.  Instead, 4 americans lost their lives.  To me, that is an irresponsible use of freedom of speech.

Reality is reality.  You don't go to a bar and start flirting with a big guy's girlfriend.  Most people who see you knocked out on the sidewalk would blame you for instigating what is easy to predict.  I see no difference here.  It was easy to predict a violent outcome, and unnecessary to make such an ignorant production.
 
We, in the western world, are very very good at recognizing and exploiting our freedoms. This is a good thing. A very good thing by and large...

We fail utterly at teaching responsibility.

Are you really doing something for the greater good, when you KNOW that your "free speech" is going to cause violence?

Frankly, publish anything, any picture, any movie you want. But, if there is a corner of the planet you know that there will be violence as a response to your published work, THAT corner is the first place you should go with your work to show it. Cowardly people, hiding behind the veil of free speech to incite violence and hatred from thousands of kilometres away, makes me just a little ill (but at the same time, those idiots keep giving a reason to keep us all employed).
 
Let's not forget that both in Canada and the US the right of free speech is not absolute.

And as such, the person responsible for this crap could well be held liable for the shit storm he created, particularly if the intent was to stir up unrest in the first place.
 
There’s a disquieting report in Thursday morning’s NightWatch blog that claims the Marines 700 miles away in Cairo were barred from carrying live ammunition as the U.S. Embassy in Egypt came under attack:


Read more: http://nation.time.com/2012/09/13/whats-worse-no-marines-or-possibly-unarmed-marines/#ixzz26Tkb4xfW

 
cupper said:
Let's not forget that both in Canada and the US the right of free speech is not absolute.

And as such, the person responsible for this crap could well be held liable for the shit storm he created, particularly if the intent was to stir up unrest in the first place.


I have heard/read somewhere that the producer/director (whatever) said that he made the film as political expression - a polemic, of sorts. If that's true then, it seems to me, that we must protect it, the "speech," per se, and him, the "speaker," no matter how we might feel about what he or his film says.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
I have heard/read somewhere that the producer/director (whatever) said that he made the film as political expression - a polemic, of sorts. If that's true then, it seems to me, that we must protect it, the "speech," per se, and him, the "speaker," no matter how we might feel about what he or his film says.
I disagree, anyone who intentionally acts in a manner which they expect to inflame masses of uneducated peasants to actions as this past week has lost my vote for sympathy or my willing to put my ass on the line for.  Especially when it costs the lives of my fellow countrymen and other innocents.

That would be my take on this asswit were he Canadian.
 
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