Libyan officials said Wednesday that Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other embassy employees were killed during the mob violence, but U.S. officials now say they are investigating whether the assault was a planned terrorist strike linked to Tuesday’s 11-year anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. [AP]
THE MAN behind the virulently anti-Muslim film that set Egypt aflame and Libya to explode has been identified by the Associated Press as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. The name previously given as the filmmaker of “Innocence of Muslims,” Sam Bacile, was traced to the same address as Nakoula, with the AP writing of the possible alias as well, making them one in the same man.
The important thing to note about the film inciting the violence is that where it continues to ignite tensions and troubles in Egypt, it might only have been a trigger point for Libya.
The 2012 al Qaeda 9/11 message is about ideology. Al-Zawahiri acknowledges that al Qaeda can not match the “material power” of the Zionist-Crusader “evil empire.” But, he argues, it is winning the ideological war. Every new martyr gives the “call of jihad new life.” Al Qaeda’s real mission, he claims, is to “incite the ummah” (the Islamic world) to fight the Crusaders. He points to the success of al Qaeda in establishing footholds in Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Mali, Egypt’s Sinai and elsewhere since the Arab Awakening began in 2011 as signs the movement is winning the ideological struggle. – Al Qaeda’s Libya Vengeance Plot, by Bruce Riedel
As I wrote earlier, it became clear late Wednesday that the anti-Muslim film was the tip, but Ayman al-Zawahiri may have been the spear, because reports are that he called for an attack to avenge the drone strike and kill earlier in 2012 of Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was seen as the number two man in Al Qaeda.
That the Benghazi attack was triggered on 9/11 is typical for Al Qaeda hitting so-called “anniversaries” of prior attacks. This was still developing at the time of this report.
President Obama speaking in the Rose Garden on Wednesday clearly telegraphed that the deaths of the four Americans would be avenged, sending a signal that it wasn’t your average film protester he was talking about hunting down.
No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.
But we also know that the lives these Americans led stand in stark contrast to those of their attackers. These four Americans stood up for freedom and human dignity. They should give every American great pride in the country that they served, and the hope that our flag represents to people around the globe who also yearn to live in freedom and with dignity.
It’s looking like that in the eleventh year since 9/11, Ayman al-Zawahiri called for an attack and the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens, along with anyone else that was around, but also included Libyans who came to the aid of the Americans who had helped free their country.
I’m about to be pure America First on this on. Advice from an ordinary guy to President Obama and Candidate Romney:
“We are not wanted in the Middle East.”
There is nothing that an American President can do to quell the Middle East. There is a mindset across those lands that is incompatible with American views. I know there are people in the Middle East that are just trying to get by. Working and taking care of families. Worshiping at mosques and calling it a day. But fairly or unfairly, they are lumped in due to the worldview of a sizable number of their fellow countryfolks.
We are not nation builders. We can not cause Democracy. We can not change people’s religious views. Our weapons may kill the terrorists but they are just reborn. We can only guard our borders and hope visionary leaders rise in the Arab World to kill the mindset. President Obama, a President Romney, or a President will never win in the Middle East.
‘Nuff said.
…And another point: for those that advocate increasing military presence in the Middle East, I ask – what is the endgame? Is our policy going to be if there is a U.S. Embassy attack, we send in our brave soldiers and attack… the city of the crime? The capital city? Their military capabilities? All the mid to large cities? Tough talk doesn’t mean a damn with folks that can match tough talk with even tougher talk (killing all Jews is part and parcel of terrorist rhetoric).
Do we just build a massive military complex somewhere where we just police all the countries in the Middle East? Or should we just cut off all aid, close down all embassies in the Middle East, and back off (while giving Israel more military aid/support)?
I’m tired of hearing tough talk from McCain, Palin, and others. Yapping about American weakness when the Middle East is just a maelstrom of discontent and violence that eats at itself as well.
Sadly, the Middle East has been a region that will never know peace and prosperity unless it gains responsible leaders who can eliminate the radical elements in its societies. The US has no options in the Middle East that would have a good outcome. We cannot force democracy down peoples’ throats.
I agree. Pull out and check back in about 5 or 10 years and maybe then deal with whomever is left.
Two things:
The US is, though, a nation building/nation restoring country. The US helped build democracies in Germany, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. It often wasn’t pretty but it undeniably worked out well. America occupied, yes occupied, those countries for a few generations helping rebuild their economies. The US set military forces and bases in those countries essentially sitting squat on their throats, to put it ungently, providing a “nest” for what otherwise would have withered: a functional, peaceful democratic nation. The US helped build democracies that were complete and coherent; built upon the rule of law and toleration. The problem with Iraq and Afghanistan is that from the get go, and in different ways, the Bush/Cheney Admin utterly blew. The US is (often not always) a nation building/restoring nation because it learned the lessons of history after the Second World War: The only way to secure the peace is to restore and then to transform the political economy of both the beaten enemy and the fallen friend.
The Middle East is not Africa. We can’t ignore it. We can’t leave it a weeping, bleeding misery and check back in on it later. Because of Israel and oil, and the more preeminent reason that the Middle East won’t allow the world to leave it alone we can’t ignore it. Barring some catastrophe, Israel isn’t going anywhere; barring some political epiphany on the part of world leaders with a concomitant miraculous scientific breakthrough, oil isn’t going anywhere either.
The existence and security of Israel remain a global moral imperative, an imperative not just to the West, but to the world. The human race perpetrated the Holocaust, not just Germany, not just Europe, not the West. Something in the fabric of the biological and psychical Human frame utterly wigged out.
Oil is a millstone necessity for the modern world. Without it there is only global collapse. Without it, the internet, food in shops, employment itself goes away. While the US doesn’t buy much of it’s oil from the Middle East, the pool of oil available on the international market effects oil’s availability and cost for the US and it’s citizens. Without Middle East oil in the markets, social ills from price gouging to economic starvation begin to disrupt, diminish, destroy livelihoods and lives. Wars over things like water rights are as ancient as human settlement. Here in the US we had range wars over access to water and to animal fodder. These wars happened not simply because people were “Greedy”, of course often the case, but because people were Needy. The lifeblood of an economy is literally the lifeblood of an economy, without them is hardship, turmoil or worse. War to protect access is ugly, it’s necessary, it’s tragic, it’s inevitable.
As for the Middle East, absent the existence of Israel, or the necessity of oil, “allowing” the rest of the world to ignore or leave it alone; I should think by now that all but the most tendentious would concede that as an impossibility at this point.
/here endith the word wall, ugh.