We know that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian successor to
Usama bin Laden, called for such attacks throughout the Muslim nation (the umma)
in a pre-recorded tape, and his brother was spotted and photographed at the
Cairo demonstration. At last word, the new Muslim Brotherhood President
of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, has still not apologized for the attack, though we
now have word that he has at least condemned them and promised to protect
foreign embassies. That would certainly be an improvement over the
initial attacks, when Egyptian security forces simply stood aside and watched
the demonstrators scale the walls of the compound, where they tore down the US
flag, shredding it after failing to burn it, and replaced it with a black
Salafi flag bearing the shahada, the declaration of the Islamic faith –
the flag used by al Qaeda.
The attack in Benghazi was just that, far more than a
demonstration that got out of hand. It was an armed assault, using
assault rifles, RPGs and mortars, and the small compound was quickly
overrun. It seems amazing that only four
Americans were murdered.
The rioters claim that they are enraged by the trailer of
an anti-Islamic film, produced in a mysterious manner in a story that is taking
on a life of itself. The purported
producer of the film is a fraud and felon, and more information about him and
the film is being developed as time goes on.
I have seen the trailer, and it is of ludicrously poor quality by any
measurement – I won’t link to it here, but it can be easily Googled if you want
to waste precious moments of your time.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration is taking the rioters at their
word, ignoring the clear symbolic value of the launch of this series of attacks
across the Middle East.
The Cairo embassy quickly broadcast a press release which
empathized with the rioters about the film.
This is a story that has also taken on a separate story thread, with its
quick condemnation by Mitt Romney in a press conference that allowed questions,
as opposed to Obama’s which did not, and he had to react to questions about
whether he regretted making the statement (in a move orchestrated by the supposedly objective press). I still
fail to see anything that Romney said that was wrong, but the MSM story is
concentrating on how early Romney made his observation. The administration repudiated the embassy’s
announcement and it disappeared shortly thereafter, but it is preserved here (click to enlarge):
In order to make its point, the main comment was sent out in a Twitter feed:
The US embassy in Sana’a has been attacked in the same
way as our one in Cairo, and we now have reports of large demonstrations in
Gaza, Tunis, Islamabad, and Khartoum, as well as others in Teheran, Dacca,
Casablanca, and Baghdad.
It would be well to remember that the ‘Arab Spring’, with
this administration’s delight about the spread of ‘democracy’, showed the Arab
world how they could overthrow entrenched autocratic regimes. It has surely occurred to the jihadis,
particularly al Qaeda and the like, that that same movement can be used against
the interests of the United States too.
We may be seeing the beginning of a whirlwind that we have sown with our
benign neglect of capabilities of the enemy, courted instead of stalked. The warnings of the Russian government in the
case of Syria, about unleashing and supporting forces against even regimes as despicable
as Assad without a means to control them to an end result of our benefit, are becoming
true.
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