Dispatches

Fox News reports that a protester in Pakistan died after inhaling smoke and fumes from burning American flags.

Egypt is looking more like post-1979 Iran every day.

Cairo has issued international arrest warrants for eight Americans—seven of them Coptic Christians from Egypt—who are allegedly involved with the anti-Mohammad video everyone’s rioting over. The prosecutor’s office also issued a warrant for Terry Jones, the Koran-burning nutjob in Florida, just because, and says if convicted the defendants may get the death penalty.

Mahmoud Salem (aka “Sandmonkey”) was interviewed on CNN yesterday. He says the new Muslim Brotherhood government is much more oppressive than the Mubarak regime. That should have been obvious to everyone in advance, though astonishingly it was not. And Mahmoud is hardly a Mubarak apologist. He was one of the most outspoken critics of the ancien régime in the world, and he was arrested and beaten for it.

He also says explicitly that Egypt’s government isn’t an ally and that “if the United States wants to cut the aid [money], please, do it…The majority of the aid goes to the military anyway. We don’t see it.”

Egypt's threat is most likely an empty one, but don't be so sure. Anti-Islamic blasphemers in the West have been hunted or even killed a number of times. Salman Rushdie and Theo Van Gogh are just the most famous cases. Just yesterday Iran upped the bounty on Rushdie's head to 3.3 million dollars.

Either way, how long is the United States going to pretend that Egypt is still friendly? The government just threatened individual American citizens by name with arrest and execution. Will the Muslim Brotherhood regime have to take hostile action against American citizens before something changes?

Perhaps. But even Barack Obama has figured out that Egypt is no longer an ally. He said so on television. He’s having a hard time standing by that statement because he’s Obama, but he knows. He knows. We’re bound to break off with Cairo at some point whether we like it or not.

Yesterday I posted a link to a video on YouTube showing a discussion between Representative Trent Franks and Thomas Perez from the Department of Justice.

Franks asked the following question four times: “Will you tell us here today that this administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?”

Perez wouldn’t answer the question.

You can watch the video and see how it played out for yourself.

I erred, however, when I wrote that Perez “refuse[d] to say that his department won’t attempt to criminalize blasphemy in the future.” He did refuse to say that in the video, but unbeknownst to me at the time he clarified his position and said the right thing later in the same hearing. 

Here’s a link to that clip.

The relevant portion begins at 49:24. Below is a transcript:

Representative Jerry Nadler: I assume the department would make a commitment that you’re not going to offer a proposal to criminalize protected speech, to criminalize criticism of religion or of anybody else, other than in the context of a direct threat.

Perez: Right. We will do this work, as we always have, in a way that is consistent with the Constitution.

Nadler: Which means you cannot criminalize, uh…

Perez: Hate speech.

Nadler: Hate speech.

Perez: Correct.

Franks was quite right that he didn’t ask a hard question. Criticism of a religion (or anything else) is a very different thing from a death threat or an incitement to murder and violence. I don’t know why Perez struggled with it. The simple and correct answer to Franks’ question is “no.”

Perez did later clarify his position, however, so I’m sorry that I wrote about this at all. I wouldn’t have had I known what Perez said later. But I’m happy to correct the record. And this is one of those cases where I’d rather be wrong than right anyway.

Photographs and video clips have been circulating on the Internet showing Libyan civilians dragging the body of Ambassador Chris Stevens through the streets of Benghazi.

It was hard to say at first what was happening. Were these people dragging him through the streets like a grim trophy, or were they trying to save him?

It turns out they were trying to save him.

The Washington Post has the story:

Fahd al-Bakoush, a freelance videographer, was among the Libyan civilians roaming freely through the consulate after gunmen and protesters rampaged through it last Tuesday night. Al-Bakoush said he heard someone call out that he had tripped over a dead body.

A group of people gathered as several men pulled the seemingly lifeless form from the room. They saw he was alive and a foreigner, though no one knew who he was, al-Bakoush said.

He was breathing and his eyelids flickered, he said. “He was alive,” he said. “No doubt. His face was blackened and he was like a paralyzed person.”

Video taken by al-Bakoush and posted on YouTube shows Stevens being carried out of a dark room through a window with a raised shutter by a crowd of men. “The man is alive. Move out of the way,” others shout. “Just bring him out, man.”

“Move, move, he is still alive!”

“Alive, Alive! God is great,” the crowd erupts, while someone calls to take Stevens to a car.

The next scene shows Stevens lying on a tile floor, with one man touching his neck to check his pulse.

The video has been authenticated since Stevens’ face is clearly visible and he is wearing the same white t-shirt seen in authenticated photos of him being carried away on another man’s shoulders, presumably moments later. Two colleagues of al-Bakoush who also witnessed the scene confirmed that he took the footage.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice says the assassination of her colleague, Ambassador Chris Stevens, in Benghazi, Libya, was a “spontaneous” event.

“The best information and the best assessment we have today,” she said, “is that this was not a pre-planned, pre-meditated attack. What happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo as a consequence of the video. People gathered outside the embassy and then it grew very violent. And those with extremist ties joined the fray and came with heavy weapons, which unfortunately are quite common in post-revolutionary Libya, and that then spun out of control.”

Libya’s President Mohammed el-Megarif begs to differ.

“The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous,” he said.

I wasn’t there and I don’t know what happened, exactly, but I have to say the Libyan government’s account is more credible than what the U.S. government is saying right now. I never thought I’d type that particular sentence—and I certainly would not have when Qaddafi was running the place—but this has been a hell of a week.

I don't know what the administration is trying to pull here, but there's no way this will hold up to scrutiny.

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice official Thomas Perez, who is the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, refuses to say that his department won’t attempt to criminalize blasphemy in the future.

I can’t imagine that the Department of Justice would ever actually try such a thing, and the Supreme Court would break it in half if it did, but that doesn’t make the spineless weaseliness from Perez any less appalling.

You can watch the video of the sordid incident here.

UPDATE: Later in the same hearing Perez clarified his position and said his department wouldn't criminalize criticism of any religion or of anything else. He didn't say that in the video, but he did say it later as someone pointed out in the comments section. I wrote a whole new post about the incident which you can find here.

Lee Smith:

Our leaders apparently believe that the way to protect Americans from extremists and terrorists abroad is to tell other Americans to shut up.

What’s next? Where does it go from here? There are more than 300 million ways in which Americans expressing themselves might give offense to those who make it their business to be offended. Maybe it’s some other film, maybe it’s a book or even just a tossed-off phrase that our enemies might seize on to galvanize support for their causes. Is the White House going to put every American crank on speed-dial so it can tell them to shut up whenever a mob gathers outside a U.S. embassy or consulate?

On Tuesday of this week, demonstrators waving al-Qaida flags stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, removed the American flag from its pole, and set it on fire. At roughly the same time, a terrorist cell attacked the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and assassinated U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three of his senior staff members. The embassy in Yemen was breached the next day. In the wake of all this, the biggest question isn’t what Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, and Barack Obama should say on TV. The most important question is: why weren’t our diplomats able to defend themselves and the overseas property of the United States?

U.S. embassies usually have Marines on hand for protection, but the only security at the Benghazi consulate was provided by Libyans. As for the security detail at the Cairo embassy, according to Nightwatch, several U.S. Marine Corps bloggers claim that Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, wouldn’t allow them to carry live ammunition. “She neutralized any U.S. military capability that was dedicated to preserve her life and protect the U.S. Embassy,” they wrote. “She neutered the Marines posted to defend the embassy, trusting the Egyptians over the Marines.”

I can’t verify the truth of these claims. I talked to two different staffers at the State Department’s press office and asked about the current rules of engagement when our embassies and staff are under attack, but no official, senior or otherwise, got back to me. Mark Thompson at Time magazine asked about Marine protection at the consulate in Benghazi, and he, too, reports that “senior U.S. officials decline to discuss it.” A Marine spokesman at the Pentagon reportedly denies the claim.

It’s frankly bizarre that these incidents were even possible. U.S. embassies in the Middle East look to me like they’re ready for war. Entering one can be an intimidating experience even for American citizens. The first time I approached the embassy in Lebanon I sensed that I’d have a gun pointed at me if I made a single move that looked even slightly threatening.

There’s a good reason for that. The embassy in Beirut was destroyed by a Hezbollah suicide bomber in 1983 and later rebuilt in the mountains outside the capital. The U.S. was keenly aware that something catastrophic might happen again, so the embassy was turned into a hard target guarded by America’s finest killers. It has been secure ever since. But by the end of this Tuesday, after the Cairo and Benghazi incidents, our diplomatic posts appeared no more impregnable than shopping malls, so it’s not remotely surprising that demonstrators breached the walls of the embassy in Yemen on Wednesday.

CNN quotes Yemeni human-rights activist Ala’a Jarban, who was startled by the compound’s vulnerability, especially after what had just happened in Egypt and Libya. “There were calls on social media to protest today in front of the embassy,” he said, “so I expected there might be some violence and clashes, but didn’t expect it would be that easy to break into the embassy. I’ve been there—it’s one of the most protected places in Yemen. To break in that easily was a shock to me.”

Read the rest in City Journal.

Why can't the President of the United States bring himself to defend free speech in front of a murderous mob? Because apparently he doesn't respect it. The Washington Post reports:

The White House has asked YouTube to review an anti-Muslim film posted to the site that has been blamed for igniting the violent protests this week in the Middle East.

Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council, said the White House has “reached out to YouTube to call the video to their attention and ask them to review whether it violates their terms of use.” 

However, the video remained on the site as of Friday afternoon, and it is posted many other places on the Internet.

Messages to YouTube, and Google, which owns the site, were not immediately returned Friday. On Wednesday, a YouTube spokesperson said the video “is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube.”

More of our embassies are under attack today by reactionary religious fanatics from Tunisia and Iraq to Sudan. Even the German Embassy in Sudan was breached and set on fire.

An American school was reportedly torched in Tunisia. Totalitarian Salafists have been attacking Tunisians on a regular basis now for a year. This week it’s our turn.

In Lebanon, rioters are attacking restaurants intead of the U.S. Embassy because our diplomatic outpost there is an impregnable armed compound on a winding mountain road. A Hezbollah suicide bomber destroyed our previous embassy in Beirut, so our new one was beefed up and relocated. It’s damn near impossible to hit that one.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just announced that she finds the anti-Muslim movie trailer that sparked violent and even murderous attacks on American embassies across the Middle East to be “disgusting and reprehensible” and that the United States government had nothing to do with it. I’d add that the trailer is idiotic and hilariously amateurish, but film criticism isn’t part of our chief diplomat’s job description.

It is of course true that the United States government has nothing to do with the film, and that’s an important point to make. Most Middle Easterners have spent their entire lives in an environment where the state owns and controls most or all of the media. State-run TV and newspapers are normal for them. Some honestly may not understand that we do things differently here.

Clinton also should have explained the First Amendment. We don’t punish blasphemy in the United States. Our government isn’t allowed to punish citizens for disrespecting a religion, a political party, the president, or anything or anyone else. This is not going to change. It’s certainly not going to change because violent reactionaries on the other side of the planet don’t like it.

And I have to say it’s a little unseemly for our government to officially take a position on a YouTube video, even one that sparked an international crisis. It’s even more unseemly that our government is taking the same position on that film as the people who just killed our ambassador in Benghazi.

The Bin Ladenists of the Middle East have reasons to hate just about everything on YouTube and American television; not only “blasphemous” videos like the one that inspired the current rage of the week, but also everything from South Park and Breaking Bad to Shalom in the Home and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

I don’t mean to pick on the Democrats here. President George W. Bush did the same thing in 2006. When Danish embassies were attacked in Beirut and Damascus over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad, the Republican president condemned the cartoons.

Violent mobs and terrorist organizations are not going to calm down just because Bush and Clinton go on TV and tell them they have a point. All that does is encourage them. As Matt Welch pointed out in Tablet, “Mohammad al-Zawahiri, the brother of Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, reportedly explained: The U.S. government’s statement condemning the producers of the video that insults the Prophet was not enough. Neither prophylactic apologies nor self-censorship, it turns out, seem to mollify religious fanatics.”

This should have been obvious by now even if al-Zawahiri hadn't said anything. The U.S. Embassy in Cairo condemned the film before it was attacked and repeated the condemnation afterward. Violent protests spread across the region the very next day. The Obama administration distanced itself from the embassy’s hostage-like response while it was under siege, but Clinton just went on TV and did it again. The result won't be any better this time than it was last time.

The West will not, cannot, change its laws to accommodate anybody’s emotions, especially not people on the other side of the planet who replace our flag with the Al-Qaeda flag and murder our diplomats.The Internet will always be offensive and our First Amendment will not be repealed. The longer it takes for Middle Easterners to understand this and adjust, the more people are going to die.

Egypt is not an ally of the United States.

Hey, I didn’t say it. The president of the United States just said it.

It is, I believe, one of the smartest things he has said yet about foreign policy. I mean, it’s obvious at this point that Egypt isn’t an ally. A four-year old could figure that out. But there’s a difference between recognizing that fact and announcing that fact. And there’s a difference between someone like me saying Egypt isn’t an ally and the President of the United States saying Egypt isn’t an ally.

Obama just put Morsi on notice.

While Libya’s people and government seem genuinely shocked and appalled by the murderous attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Egypt’s president Mohamed Morsi has instructed the Egyptian Embassy in Washington to use “all legal measures” to punish whoever it was who made the “blasphemous” film that sent the Arab world’s fanatics over the edge.

Meanwhile, protesters outside our embassy in Cairo are demanding that President Barack Obama take action against the filmmaker.

There is no chance anything of the sort will ever happen. A lunatic religious studies professor named Anthea Butler thinks the filmmaker ought to be jailed, but she pretty much stands alone. We don’t punish people who blaspheme Christianity. We’re certainly not going to start punishing people who blaspheme other religions, especially not when we’re ordered to do so by terrorists.

Morsi is shaping up to be Egypt’s own Ayatollah Khomeini. Followers of the Iranian tyrant also attacked our embassy and its staff. And Khomeini himself tried to enforce his reactionary blasphemy code beyond Iran’s borders by sending death squads to hunt down Salman Rushdie to punish him for his novel, The Satanic Verses.

David Frum at the Daily Beast thinks Morsi is “fabricating an international incident to mobilize religious passions as a weapon for his political grouping against more secular blocs in Egyptian society.” It’s hard to say for sure, but that’s probably right.

Morsi might stop framing the United States when he needs to mobilize his authoritarian shock troops if President Obama threatens to cut off his funding (which, at this point, we might want to consider doing regardless). Otherwise, Morsi will have no incentive whatsoever to stop. It would then be just a matter of time before more people get killed and Egyptian-American relations deteriorate anyway.

Yesterday we learned that an American official was killed when a terrorist militia stormed the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. And today we find out that the person killed was the American ambassador. Three others also were killed.

UPDATE: A new CNN report suggests that the attack in Benghazi may have had nothing to do with the now-infamous Internet video.

Meanwhile, a London think tank with strong ties to Libya speculated Wednesday that Stevens was actually the victim of a targeted al Qaeda revenge attack. The assault "came to avenge the death of Abu Yaya al-Libi, al Qaeda's second in command killed a few months ago," the think tank Quilliam said Wednesday.

It was "the work of roughly 20 militants, prepared for a military assault," the think tank said, noting that rocket-propelled grenade launchers do not normally appear at peaceful protests, and that there were no other protests against the film elsewhere in Libya.

The planned attack came in two waves, one which prompted U.S. officials to leave the consulate for a secure location. The second wave was directed at the place of retreat, Quilliam said, citing unnamed sources on the ground in Benghazi and abroad.

A mob of Salafists attacked the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to “protest” a “blasphemous” Internet video made by some yahoos in Florida who decided to put the Prophet Mohamed on trial. The Salafists scaled the embassy walls, took down the American flag, set it on fire, and replaced it with their black flag.

Even though no one was (apparently) hurt, attacking an embassy is technically an act of war. Yet our embassy responded in part with the following statement: “We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

Look: free speech doesn't mean anything unless offensive speech is protected. Say what you will about blasphemy, but it isn't a crime in the United States. It can't be.

It doesn't matter how offensive the Internet video in question may be. The U.S. Embassy, by suggesting its attackers had a “point,” just made itself look like it's staffed with cringing apologists.

You know what the Salafists want? They want the United States government to throw every American in jail who insults their religion. Obviously that's not going to happen, so let's not pretend that they're just overreacting to a reasonable grievance and that there's room for common ground. They aren't and there isn't.

Salafists find just about everything offensive, not only “blasphemous” videos made by Islam-haters in Florida, but even mainstream Islam as practiced in Egypt. The only way to make such people happy is by shutting off the entire Internet. And that's just for starters.

Our diplomats in Cairo need to stop making excuses for violent reactionaries and figure out what changes they need to make to secure their buildings and their employees. If that isn't possible, and if the Egyptian authorities can't keep our embassy safe, then it's time for our two countries to re-evaluate our relationship.

UPDATE: It's getting less press, but our consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi was also attacked, this time by a militia. And this time a U.S. official was killed.

We aren't going to cancel our First Amendment because fanatics on the other side of the planet get bent out of shape over what happens in free countries. And they won't stop getting bent out of shape. So we should brace for a lot more of this sort of thing in the future.

UPDATE: The Obama administration doesn't care for the U.S. Embassy's response to the attack on itself any more than I do. An administration official told Politico, "The statement by Embassy Cairo was not cleared by Washington and does not reflect the views of the United States government."

The problem with diplomats is that sometimes they're too diplomatic. They're also dishonest. Earlier today the embassy tweeted that it stood by its initial reaction, but that tweet has since been deleted.

Click over to the Politico story and look at the photograph of "protestors" atop the embassy walls. They're flying the flag of Al Qaeda. It's not just an Islamist flag. It's the Al Qaeda flag. If Egypt's new government think it's a good idea to have a modus vivendi with such people, interesting times are ahead for all of us.