Obama is learning now that the buck stops with him. The messy problem with Syria is his to fix.

I never understood why Syria wasn’t at the top of Obama’s concerns: it’s a close ally of Iran, a border state to Israel and the conduit for Iranian arms to Hezbollah.

Like other presidents, Obama faces an array of bad choices. Had he intervened a year ago, it might have been easier. To be fair, might is the operative word.

Dexter Filkins in the New Yorker:

A White House aide told me, “There is no question in our minds that the regime would be willing to use these weapons, is able to use these weapons, and is increasingly likely to use these weapons as things continue to go badly for them.” But, at a recent meeting at the State Department, according to a person who attended, “No one wanted to say that Assad had crossed the line, because no one wants to deal with it.” Assad’s chemical arsenal is spread across the country, much of it in populated areas; an effective military strike against it would need to be huge, and meticulously coördinated, to make sure that no toxins were released into the air or into enemy control. Samore told me, “It’s really a nightmare military scenario.’’ As the regime has traded ground with the rebels, some of Assad’s chemical weapons have been moved, and it is not clear where all of them are. “The intelligence people told us that their visibility is basically zero on some of these weapons, that we’re not going to know until after they have been used—if then,’’ the Senate aide told me.

In Syria, more than seventy thousand people have died, and three and a half million have been forced from their homes; the refugee camp across the border in Jordan is now that country’s fifth-largest city. The Administration has given the Syrian opposition more than six hundred and fifty million dollars in nonmilitary aid, but Obama has consistently opposed arming the rebels or intervening militarily on their behalf. The United States has taken a tenuous position: not deep enough to please the rebels or its allies in Europe, or to topple the regime, or to claim leadership in the war’s aftermath—but also, perhaps most important, not so deep that it can’t get out. “Here’s what we wrestle with: there are huge costs and unintended consequences that go with a military intervention that could last for many years,” Benjamin Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, told me. After the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is little appetite for a new conflict. In a recent poll by the Timesand CBS News, only a quarter of respondents felt that the U.S. should take responsibility for Syria. “The country is exhausted,” a senior White House official said.

Leadership requires seeing the big picture and moving the nation toward it. Most Americans didn’t want to enter WWII, but FDR knew we’d have to become involved.

Read the whole thing: aside from a couple of irritating misstatements (no, Clinton did not have a tough economy and no, Obama was not busy with the war in Iraq because Bush negotiated its end), the article is a good primer on what’s happening in Syria.

If you haven’t been paying attention and want to catch up, this is your chance.

Mitt Romney was derided (Gaffe!) by the media last summer for observing that culture in the Mideast has plenty to do with Arab poverty.

He was right. Hernando de Soto notes in the WSJ how property rights are virtually nonexistent in many Arab nations:

….Research in the region conducted by my organization, the Peruvian-based Institute for Liberty and Democracy, has found strong evidence that the Arab Spring revolution was rooted in a desire for what in the West would be called a market-based economy. Arabs and others may not always use that phrase, but their desire for the economic security that comes with property rights and other rights is a force that the foes of individual freedom will not easily overcome. The challenge is to harness that force by offering people of the region the legal protections and security that are the bedrock of all successful economies.

Recall the catalyst of what became the Arab Spring: the self-immolation in January 2011 of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit vendor protesting the expropriation of his merchandise. According to our estimates, more than 200 million people throughout the Middle East and North Africa depend on income from operating businesses or occupying property in the informal economy—without the protection of the rule of law.

That means the entrepreneurs who want a legal system with property rights like those in the West outnumber al Qaeda membership in the region, often estimated at up to 4,000 core activists, by a ratio of about 50,000 to one.

Some other research highlights:

Mohamed Bouazizi’s desperate protest wasn’t unique. We found that at least 63 more men and women—in Tunisia and also in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen—followed Bouazizi’s example within 60 days of his death. That was the critical period during which governments were toppled or dramatically shaken. Forty percent of these protesters survived, and some of them are contributing to our research on the difficulty of living in societies without property rights or other freedoms.

All 64 of the self-immolation protesters were engaged in extralegal businesses, and they made their dramatic statements for economic rather than political or other reasons. In filmed footage of real-estate owner Fadoua Laroui in Morocco, for instance, she declares that she is protesting “economic exclusion” just before setting herself on fire in front of a municipal building on Feb. 23, 2011. In an on-camera interview, Mohamed Bouazizi’s brother, Salem, told me that Mohamed set himself alight because he believed that “the poor also have the right to buy and sell.”

The principal reason that self-immolators gave for their acts was “expropriation”—governmental seizure of property. A common view of Bouazizi’s death is that he killed himself because a policewoman slapped him and robbed him of his dignity. No slap in the face drives five dozen people to try to burn themselves to death. Every survivor without exception has told us it was about desperation over property.

We calculated the value of Bouazizi’s confiscated assets to be $225. Yet when legal property rights don’t exist, the damage goes far beyond money. Because Bouazizi wasn’t protected by law, his ability to conduct business depended not on an enforceable right but on the goodwill of local authorities. Once these authorities withdrew their protection and seized his goods, Bouazizi was ruined. There was no legal system in place by which he could hope to recover from bankruptcy.

Under contract with the Egyptian government, and with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, my institute undertook a five-year study that involved 113 Egyptian professionals working with us to ascertain the size of the gap between recorded property—including factories, cars and land—and the actual amount of property in those and other sectors. We found that 82% of businesses and 92% of land holdings were unrecorded and thus unprotected by the rule of law…

This artificially condemns all business to be small business. Poverty can be a self-inflicted wound.

And what did the news media obsess over? Whether Mitt Romney violated some etiquette when he released a news release shortly after midnight.

Barry needed his sleep–he had a fundraiser in Vegas the next day.

Jim Geraghty in the Morning Jolt.

This column, by Roger Cohen of the New York Times and International Herald Tribune, has garnered a bit of attention in recent days:

The United States does not want to get dragged into another intractable Middle Eastern conflict. Americans are tired of war. My colleagues Michael Gordon and Mark Landler have revealed how Obama blocked an attempt last summer by Hillary Clinton to train and supply weapons to selected Syrian rebel groups.

Nor does Obama want to find himself in the business of helping Islamist extremists inherit a Syrian vacuum. The opposition coalition is divided and lacks credibility. But the net result of these concerns cannot be feckless drift as Syria burns. Senator John McCain was right to say here that, “We should be ashamed of our collective failure to come to the aid of the Syrian people” and to answer a question about how to break the impasse with two words: “American leadership.”

An inflection point has been reached. Inaction spurs the progressive radicalization of Syria, the further disintegration of the state, the intensification of Assad’s mass killings, and the chances of the conflict spilling out of Syria in sectarian mayhem. It squanders an opportunity to weaken Iran. This is not in the West’s interest. The agreement that Assad has to go is broad; a tacit understanding that it is inevitable exists in Moscow. The Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, spluttered in justified incredulity at the notion the opposition would sit down with a regime that has slaughtered its own.

It is time to alter the Syrian balance of power enough to give political compromise a chance and Assad no option but departure. That means an aggressive program to train and arm the Free Syrian Army. It also means McCain’s call to use U.S. cruise missiles to destroy Assad’s aircraft on the runway is daily more persuasive.

Everybody knows we’re not going to intervene in Syria, right?

Part of this is because we have Obama as president, part of this is because Americans consumed with our own domestic issues right now — a consistently floundering economy, immigration — but mostly it’s because of Iraq.

Dear world . . . do you remember how you greeted the invasion of Iraq?

The invasion of Iraq was treated as the greatest crime against humanity in the history of the world, denounced far more frequently and loudly than any act by Saddam Hussein, Bashar Assad, the Iranian regime, or North Korea.

Giant protests in lots of American cities. Giant protests in every foreign capital. The 2004 Guinness Book of Records described the anti-war movement around the globe as the largest mass protest movement in history — eclipsing any popular opposition to any act of the Soviet Union or any other totalitarian regime around the globe, ever. Among the elites in Paris, Berlin, and most corners of London, the Iraq War was the single-most important issue, and denouncing the evil of George W. Bush was the most important goal, not building a stable and peaceful Iraq. You recall Kofi Annan denouncing it, and the United Nations delegates scoffing when Hugo Chavez called our president the devil.

You recall the cries of “Bushitler,” the ubiquitous Code Pink interrupting every event in Washington, as if some ninny shouting during a press conference ever spurred sudden reversals in U.S. national security policy. You recall Hollywood’s relentless cavalcade of movies demonizing the war and those fighting it: In the Valley of Elah, Stop Loss, Green Zone, Redacted, Grace is Gone, Fahrenheit 9/11.

Hey, my Turkish friends so upset by a bloody civil war across the border and a flood of refugees, remember Valley of the Wolves: Iraq? Remember when that film suggested that Jewish U.S. army (more…)

Hillary Clinton decided that the best defense was to be offensive. First, the clip:

What difference does it make at this point, you ask?

1. If you truly want to prevent further deaths, Hillary, you must first understand what went wrong in Benghazi.
2. The American people deserve straight answers from their government. You work for us, lady. Don’t get all huffy when pressed to explain the blatant BS you spewed to protect Obama before the election.
3. Choke up all you want about the four dead Americans, but we know your State Department denied requests to secure the consulate. You have blood on your hands. Tears, sincere or fake, won’t wash it away.

The Clintons both have brass balls and an excess of gall. It would nice if the GOP stopped bringing a water pistol to a knife fight.

Jim Geraghty sums up the gloomy meaning of it all:

When we look at how our government has responded to the night of September 11 in Benghazi, Libya, we see there are truly no standards any more.
If the decision making before, during, and after the Benghazi attack is insufficient to get anyone fired, what decision in government will ever warrant that consequence?

If Democrats on Capitol Hill can’t take off their partisan blinders for one day to attempt to hold people accountable for decision-making that resulted in American deaths at the hands of extremists, and then lying to the public about it, then when will they ever?

If Hillary Clinton can exclaim that it doesn’t matter that the administration spent five days talking about a video when the video had nothing to do with it, and everyone on her side applauds, why should she or anyone else ever respond to an accusation with anything but audacious defiance?

This is it, folks. This is the government we have, and the lack of a public outcry about Benghazi ensures this is the government we will have for the foreseeable future.

Jennifer Rubin on what should be a scandal:

The bipartisan Senate report (“Flashing Red: A Special Report On The Terrorist Attack At Benghazi“)  released on Monday by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the Benghazi debacle certainly adds to our understanding of the events leading up to the murder of four Americans and the confusion that followed. For that its chairman, Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), and ranking member, Susan Collins (R-Maine), should be commended.

While it is less than specific in explaining senior officials’ particular roles and why certain events occurred (e.g., the false cover story about the anti-Muslim film), it moves the ball forward despite blatant stonewalling by the White House. (“To provide a full account of the changes made to the talking points, by whom they were made and why, DNI [James] Clapper offered to provide the Committee with a detailed timeline regarding the development of the talking points. At the time of writing this report, despite repeated requests, the Committee had yet to receive this timeline. According to a senior IC official, the timeline has not been delivered as promised because the Administration has spent weeks debating internally whether or not it should turn over information considered ‘deliberative’ to the Congress.”) Moreover, the president, his national security adviser and other top White House officials have not been queried as to their actions.

That said, the report is a stern and broad rebuke of the entire administration:

In the months leading up to the attack on the Temporary Mission Facility in Benghazi, there was a large amount of evidence gathered by the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) and from open sources that Benghazi was increasingly dangerous and unstable, and that a significant attack against American personnel there was becoming much more likely. While this intelligence was effectively shared within the Intelligence Community (IC) and with key officials at the Department of State, it did not lead to a commensurate increase in security at Benghazi nor to a decision to close the American mission there, either of which would have been more than justified by the intelligence presented.

The report confirms that the administration had available information about the rising Al-Qaeda threat in Libya but did not take appropriate action to protect its personnel, reply to security requests, rethink entrusting security to unreliable local forces or pull our people out, as a number of other countries and international groups had done. The question as tohow officials missed the thundering stampede of elephants in the room ( i.e. the degeneration of Libya into a haven for terrorists) has yet to be answered. Plain incompetence? Pre-election nervousness? Refusal to give up on the “we put Al-Qaeda back on its heels” group think? We simply don’t know. One former national security official described the problem this way: “Susan Rice said what they all wanted to believe, which was that AQ was dying, and that the mayhem in the Middle East was merely the result of people getting temperamental about a video at a time when basically good things were happening around them. They cling to that narrative, in many ways, and it is an acute form of strategic blindness.”

A British woman who was allegedly kidnapped and gang raped by three men in Dubai has been prosecuted for drinking without a licence, throwing a spotlight on the United Arab Emirates’ archaic legal system, which rights groups say does not do enough to protect victims of sexual assault.

What about the rights of drinkers?

…The woman in this latest case had been drinking for six hours at the Rock Bottom Cafe, a local bar known for its cheap drinks, with its own kebab kiosk for exiting revellers. A Pakistani taxi driver who picked the woman up at 3am testified that she was “totally drunk” and fell asleep on the back seat. The woman, who works in a managerial position, asked to stop at a cash point, but after failing to withdraw money she was unable to pay the fare when she reached her building in the upscale waterfront community of Jumeirah Beach Residence.

Riots in Egypt as Morsi declares himself above the law.

…Morsi’s decree exempting all his decisions from legal challenge until a new parliament was elected caused fury amongst his opponents on Friday who accused him of being the new Hosni Mubarak and hijacking the revolution.

Morsi’s aides said the decree was to speed up a protracted transition that has been hindered by legal obstacles but Morsi’s rivals were quick to condemn him as a new autocratic pharaoh who wanted to impose his Islamist vision on Egypt.

“Morsi a ‘temporary’ dictator,” was the headline in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm and hundreds of protesters in Tahrir Square, the heart of the 2011 anti-Mubarak uprising, demanded Morsi quit, accusing him of launching a “coup”.

Buoyed by accolades from around the world for mediating a truce between Hamas and Israel, Morsi on Thursday ordered that an Islamist-dominated assembly writing the new constitution could not be dissolved by legal challenges.

Gawd, accolades for that? Just wait…

Reuters:

Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.

The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a “terrorist” attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.

Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.

Bryan Preston

As the security situation deteriorated in Benghazi, Ambassador Christopher Stevens did an extraordinary thing: He stayed.

Al Qaeda attacked the Red Cross mission in Benghazi in May, and they soon abandoned their post in the city. British Ambassador Sir Dominic Asquith was attacked as he drove through Benghazi on June 11. The British would soon abandon their mission. Islamists staged a show of force in June, and by August it was apparent that al Qaeda-affiliated groups were on the rise and could take over the government. Ambassador Stevens even warned Washington that he had seen the flag of al Qaeda flying on government buildings.

And yet, he stayed. He pleaded for more security, he warned that the situation was getting worse, but Chris Stevens kept the American flag flying above the West’s last outpost in Benghazi.

Why?

I was asked that question on the Lincoln Brown radio show this morning, and here’s my answer.

Ambassador Stevens understood the messages that his exit would send. For the American ambassador to pull down the Stars and Stripes and shutter the Benghazi consulate would have told the people of that city that America is an unreliable ally. His exit would have signaled that the forces of freedom had lost the cradle of the Libyan revolution to the forces of terror and tyranny. His exit would have sent a louder political message to the voters back home in America. That message would have been, that the Obama-led “responsibility to protect” driven war in Libya had failed. Gaddafi was gone and dead, but the absence of American leadership in the war’s aftermath had led to an Islamist summer. America’s lack of leadership was a choice. Obama’s decisions to “lead from behind” and his promise to never put boots on the ground in Libya had led directly to Libya’s turn from bad to worse. Stevens, a friend of Secretary of State Clinton, did not want to send either of those messages. He understood how explosive they would be in a close election. So he stayed, out of a mix of patriotism and political loyalty.

How was he repaid for this loyalty? According to Bing West, the United States could have had F-18s overhead within an hour of the battle’s beginning. The United States could have had special forces on the ground to assist the besieged American defenders within another hour or two. The United States could have responded decisively during the six-hour battle, a battle Washington was watching and monitoring in real time.

But though his administration knew that Ambassador Stevens had gone missing in the early course of the assault, President Obama took no action at all. He never scrambled the F-18s from Sicily. He never ordered special forces in to rescue him or defend the American soil and image that the consulate represented. Obama went to bed that night, and after a few brief and deceptive remarks on the assault, he went to a campaign fundraiser in Vegas.

This segment from “60 Minutes” helps flesh out the post below.

Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans are doing their best to portray the assault on the U.S. mission in Libya and its aftermath as a signal foreign policy disaster for Barack Obama. But my bet is that when historians look back on Obama’s mistakes in the last four years, they will focus on something entirely different: his catastrophic mishandling of the revolution in Syria.

The deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi were a calamity — but those losses were mainly the result of poor security decisions by mid-level State Department officials, not policy choices by Obama. The president’s handling of Syria, on the other hand, exemplifies every weakness in his foreign policy — from his excessive faith in “engaging” troublesome foreign leaders to his insistence on multilateralism as an end in itself to his self-defeating caution in asserting American power.

The result is not a painful but isolated setback, but an emerging strategic disaster: a war in the heart of the Middle East that is steadily spilling over to vital U.S. allies, such as Turkey and Jordan, and to volatile neighbors, such as Iraq and Lebanon. Al-Qaeda is far more active in Syria than it is in Libya — while more liberal and secular forces are turning against the United States because of its failure to help them. More than 30,000 people — most of them civilians — have been killed, and the toll mounts by the hundreds every day.

Of course, Obama is not solely responsible for this mess. But his serial miscalculations have had the consistent if unintended effect of enabling Syria’s Bashar al-Assad — first to avoid international isolation, then to go on slaughtering his own population with impunity.

Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post

Obama’s Syria policy began in 2009 with the misguided idea of reaching out to the dictator. Within a month of his inauguration, Obama reversed the Bush administration’s approach of isolating Assad. He later reopened the U.S. Embassy and dispatched senior envoys, such as George Mitchell.

The problem with this policy was not just the distasteful courting of a rogue regime but the willful disregard of the lessons absorbed by George W. Bush, who also tried reaching out to Assad, only to learn the hard way that he was an irredeemable thug. Yet Obama insisted on reversing Bush’s policy of distancing the United States from strongmen like Assad and Hosni Mubarak — a monumental miscalculation.

When the uprising against Assad began in March of last year, the administration’s first reaction was to predict that he could be induced to coopt it. “Many . . . believe he’s a reformer,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That illusion caused the administration to stand by for months while Assad’s security forces gunned down what were then peaceful pro-democracy marchers; not until August 2011 did Obama say that Assad should “step aside.”

By then Syria was already tipping into civil war. The State Department’s Syria experts recognized the peril: If Assad were not overthrown quickly, they warned in congressional testimony, the country could tip into a devastating sectarian war that would empower jihadists and spread to neighboring countries. But Obama rejected suggestions by several senators that he lead an intervention. Instead he committed a second major error, by adopting a policy of seeking to broker a Syrian solution through the United Nations. “The best thing we can do,” he said last March, “is to unify the international community.”

As countless observers correctly predicted, the subsequent U.N. mission of Kofi Annan was doomed from the beginning. When the White House could no longer deny that reality, it turned to an equally fantastical gambit: Vladi­mir Putin, it argued, could be persuaded to abandon his support of Assad and force him to step down. The nadir of this diplomacy may have been reached on June 30, when Clinton cheerfully predicted that the Kremlin had “decided to get on one horse, and it’s the horse that would back a transition plan” removing Assad.

Needless to say, Putin did no such thing. The war went on; thousands more died. For the past three months, Obama’s policy has become a negative: He is simply opposed to any use of U.S. power. Fixed on his campaign slogan that “the tide of war is receding” in the Middle East, Obama claims that intervention would only make the conflict worse — and then watches as it spreads to NATO ally Turkey and draws in hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters.

No doubt it’s easier for Romney and the Republicans to talk about the death of an ambassador in a terrorist attack than to ask war-weary Americans to think about this. But it is Syria that is Obama’s greatest failure; it will haunt whomever occupies the Oval Office next year.

Raf Sanchez in the London Telegraph

Foreign Office diplomats withdrew from the Libyan city in June following an assassination attempt on the British ambassador but reached an agreement with the US to leave weapons and vehicles at the American compound.

The lightly-guarded US site was overrun by Islamist militants in an attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans last month.

The Foreign Office has confirmed to the Daily Telegraph that the equipment is still unaccounted for a month after the Benghazi assault.

Dozens of attackers tore through the American compound during the September 11 attack and since then Libyans have often roamed freely through its remains, raising the possibility that the British weapons have already been looted.

Details of the agreement between the British and American diplomatic security teams emerged during a Congressional hearing into the Benghazi attack on Wednesday.

Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood, the leader of a US special forces team in Libya, said a deal had been made where the British would “leave their weapons and vehicles on our compound in Benghazi”.

“They would come back and at times withdraw their weapons and vehicles and then return them and leave,” he said.

Britain’s decision to remove diplomats from the eastern Libyan city was repeatedly raised during the hearing, as Republicans demanded to know why the US had stayed even when its close ally had decided the situation was no longer safe.

Lt Col Wood said that the withdrawal of British diplomats and Red Cross workers should have been a warning to US diplomats. “I almost expected the attack to come. We were the last flag flying, it was a matter of time,” he said.

Powerline

It’s difficult to keep up with the crush of news related to the 9/11 assault on the American consulate in Benghazi that took the life of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Reader Martin Karo offers the following brief summary:

After the latest Libya shoe dropped — the letter of House Oversight Committee Chairman Darryl Issa to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — I felt a need to summarize events for low-information voters, starting with myself. There are so many different pieces floating around, most of which have been written about in detail, but no soup-to-nuts summary that I know of, and we’re losing the forest view among the trees. So, in roughly chronological order:

1. As terrorist/militia activity in Benghazi becomes more bold — with at least 13 security deterioration episodes documented, including several attacks on the US Consulate itself — the local mission, over a span of months, repeatedly begs the Obama Administration for better security. Requests denied.

2. In early September, US intelligence community gets specific warnings that Al Qaida and affiliates are planning attacks on US overseas missions, to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary. Nothing is done, and nothing communicated to the US missions in Libya, despite well-known al Qaeda/terrorist presence in Benghazi.

3. Mr. Obama skips his daily national security intelligence briefings during early September, right up through 9/11. There’s a campaign to win, you know. Priorities.

4. Al Qaeda-linked terrorists, using heavy military weapons, assaults the US Consulate in Benghazi; the ambassador flees to a safe house; the terrorists know where the safe house is, go there and murder him (and — unreported in the US MSM — “abuse” the Ambassador, in the local media’s quaint phrase, either before or after his death).

5. The Obama administration finds out within hours that it was an al Qaeda attack.

6. Armed with the information that the US has been attacked by an enemy declared to be at war with us, Mr. Obama immediately swings into action. He issues a statement deploring the deaths and jets off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas. He also skips the intelligence briefing the following morning. After all, he already knows the US was attacked and the ambassador murdered in a terrorist assault. No point in exploring the obvious.

7. Nevertheless, for two weeks the Obama administration insists the murders were an overly exuberant protest over an obscure Internet clip, and the ambassador died of smoke inhalation after being separated from his group in a fire. They hold this line even as it becomes increasingly obvious this was a preplanned attack, and the ambassador met a much harsher fate.

8. Questioned early on over these obvious lies, the State Department says it will have no further comment because the matter is under criminal investigation, and they don’t want to interfere with a criminal investigation.

9. A criminal investigation of what now even the Obama administration admits was a terrorist attack? In Libya? Is there no such thing as an act of war to these people? But I digress.

10. When they’re finally exposed as flat-out lying to such an extent even the MSM can’t ignore it, the Obama administration retreats, insisting its initial lies were mistakes based on bad intelligence briefings and blaming the CIA.

11. The relentless, resourceful G-Men get on the case: The FBI holds a press (more…)

Mark Steyn:

…The more that U.S.-government officials talk about the so-called film Innocence of Muslims (which is actually merely a YouTube trailer) the more they confirm the mob’s belief that works of “art” are the proper responsibility of government. Obama and Clinton are currently starring as the Siskel & Ebert of Pakistani TV, giving two thumbs down to Innocence of Muslims in hopes that it will dissuade local moviegoers from giving two heads off to consular officials. “The United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video,” says Hillary Clinton. “We absolutely reject its content, and message.” “We reject the efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others,” adds Barack Obama. There follows the official State Department seal of the U.S. embassy in Islamabad.

…

Obama and Clinton’s two-on-the-aisle act cost $70,000 of taxpayers’ money. That may not sound much in the $16 trillion–dollar sinkhole of Washington, but it’s a pretty big ad buy in Islamabad, and an improper use of public monies. If government functionaries want to do movie reviews, they should have a PBS fundraiser, offering a “Barack & Hill at the Movies” logo-ed burqa for pledges of over $100, and a complimentary clitoridectomy for pledges over $500. I fought a long battle for freedom of expression north of the border when the Canadian Islamic Congress attempted to criminalize my writing, and I’m proud to say I played a modest role in getting Parliament to strike down a shameful law and restore a semblance of free speech to a country that should never have lost it. So I know a little about how the Western world is shuffling into a psychological bondage of its own making, and it’s no small thing when the First Amendment gets swallowed up by the vacuum of American foreign policy.

What other entertainments have senior U.S. officials reviewed lately? Last year Hillary Clinton went to see the Broadway musical Book of Mormon. “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others”? The Book of Mormon’s big showstopper is “Hasa Diga Eebowai” which apparently translates as “F*** you, God.” The U.S. secretary of state stood and cheered…

James Taranto

Call it a video reprise of the Obama Apology Tour: “The American Embassy in Islamabad, in a bid to tamp down public rage over the anti-Islam film produced in the U.S., is spending $70,000 to air an ad on Pakistani television that features President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton denouncing the video,” the Associated Press reports.

The 30-second spot was released yesterday and is running “on seven Pakistani networks.” It’s also getting some free airtime here in the U.S.; yesterday Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” ran it before an interview with Sarah Palin (who was, not unpredictably, critical).

The ad rehearses, with Urdu subtitles, last week’s statements from Obama and Mrs. Clinton in which he declares that America “respects all faiths” and she asserts: “Let me state very clearly, and I hope it is obvious, that the United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video. We absolutely reject its content and message.”

“Muslim protests against insults to the Prophet Mohammad turned violent in Pakistan, where at least 15 people were killed on Friday,” Reuters reports:

Tens of thousands of people joined protests encouraged by the government in several cities including Islamabad, Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore, Multan and Muzaffarabad.

The bloodiest unrest erupted in the southern city of Karachi, where 10 people were killed, including three policemen, and more than 100 wounded, according to Allah Bachayo Memon, spokesman of the chief minister of Sindh province. He said about 20 vehicles, three banks and five cinemas were set on fire.

Crowds set two cinemas ablaze and ransacked shops in the northwestern city of Peshawar, clashing with riot police who fired tear gas. At least five people were killed.

In Mardan in the northwest, police said a Christian church was set on fire and several people hurt.

Mohammed Tariq Khan, a protester in Islamabad, said: “Our demand is that whoever has blasphemed against our holy Prophet should be handed over to us so we can cut him up into tiny pieces in front of the entire nation.”

The State Department’s ad campaign looks like one of the greatest marketing efforts since New Coke.

The Reuters report underscores the basic conceptual problems with the Obama-Clinton apology. For one thing, it assumes that militant Islamic anti-Americanism is based on essentially the same critique as the multicultural left’s anti-Americanism. But how is the claim that America “respects all faiths” supposed to appease people who burn churches? Nor is the secretary’s assurance that the U.S. government “had absolutely nothing to do with this video” responsive to the demand that its maker “be handed over to us so we can cut him up into tiny pieces.”

It seems likely that this Mohammed Tariq Khan faults the U.S. government for failing to do so. Now of course Americans understand what Mrs. Clinton means when she says the government has nothing to do with it. The video’s makers are alive and free not because the government has permitted it but because the Constitution prohibits the government from doing anything else. Don’t blame Obama, don’t even blame George W. Bush. Blame James Madison.

What message does the ad actually send the Mohammed Tariq Khans? On the one hand, a message of weakness: Assemble a big enough mob, kill enough people, burn enough flags and churches, and you too can grab the attention of the most powerful man and woman in the world. On the other hand, a taunt. If Obama and Mrs. Clinton really mean it, the Khans must think, why haven’t they presented the video makers for public mincing? The State Department’s ad contains no answer to that crucial question.

If our government is going to run an ad to educate Pakistanis (or whoever) about American attitudes, wouldn’t it make sense to include an explanation as to why America’s leaders cannot and will not enforce the mob’s standards of blasphemy? To an American, what’s objectionable about this ad isn’t so much the apology for the video’s offense as the abject failure to defend basic American principles of freedom. That same failure makes the ad less than worthless as an educational tool.

That’s the rundown from the Al Jazeera blog about the riots/demonstrations in Pakistan.

Somehow the KFC mention made me chuckle.

No doubt, the prophet is proud of what’s being done in his name.

Rana Tanveer in the International Herald Tribune:

Several Muslim parties and a Christian group held rallies on Sunday to protest against a movie released in America.

Lahore, Pakistan: Around 10,000 people participated in the main rally organised on The Mall by the Tehreek Hurmat-i-Rasool (THR). The participants marched from Nila Gumbad to Masjid-i-Shuhada on The Mall. Despite a ban on rallies on The Mall, the road remained blocked for vehicular traffic from noon to 6pm.

The rally was addressed by Jamatud Dawa chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, THR head Ameer Hamza, JD leader Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki, Pakistan Muslim League (Zia) head Ijazul Haq, Jamaat Ulema Islam-Sami (JUI-S) leader Asim Makhdoom and Jamaat Ahle Hadith ameer Hafiz Abdul Ghaffar Ropari.

One of the participants of the rally, Abdullah Ismail, passed away after he was taken to Mayo Hospital. Witnesses said he had complained of feeling unwell from the smoke from US flags burnt at the rally.

Hafiz Saeed alleged that the film, Innocence of Muslims, had been produced with the backing of US establishment. He said the director, the producer and all those involved in the production and release of the movie must be hanged publicly. “The US must make a law against blasphemy – or we will not let the US consulates in Pakistan function,” he said…

And whose loss would that be?

In 2005 a massive earthquake ravaged Pakistan. The USA stepped up with oodles of aid. Condi Rice paid a visit to Islamabad:

“The devastation is quite extraordinary,” Rice said, adding that the initial $50 million in U.S. aid will be followed by more assistance in the coming months. “The international community will have to be mobilized to help with ongoing rescue efforts, as well as the long-term recovery and reconstruction.”

The model for using a humanitarian disaster to leverage public opinion is the Indian Ocean tsunami relief effort earlier this year. Though the administration was criticized for an initially slow response to that disaster — which killed more than 200,000 people — the U.S. government has now committed nearly $1 billion, with private donations topping that.

Polling has indicated that the U.S. tsunami effort — which included sending a fleet of ships and providing round-the-clock helicopter rescues — has paid dividends to the United States’ image in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country.

A survey of 1,200 Indonesians one month after the tsunami, sponsored by Terror Free Tomorrow and conducted by a leading Indonesian pollster, found that, for the first time, more Indonesians (40 percent) supported the U.S. terrorism fight than opposed it (36 percent). Sixty-five percent of those surveyed had a more favorable impression of the United States, with support strongest among those younger than 30, while support for Osama bin Laden dropped from 58 percent before the tsunami to 23 percent. Terror Free Tomorrow is a nonpartisan group that studies popular support for global terrorism.

Husain Haqqani, director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University and an adviser to Terror Free Tomorrow, said the experience in Indonesia could easily be replicated in Pakistan. Haqqani, a former adviser to several Pakistani political leaders, said that anti-American Islamic groups have begun to realize this and have opposed the U.S. aid because “this may take the wind out of their sails.”

Short memories prevail.

Ah what a lovely day for a stroll…who knows I might come across a spontaneous demonstration and want to add that extra something.

Claudia Rossett on Obfuscating from Behind

With an American ambassador murdered abroad for the first time since 1979, it was clear that someone from the Obama administration had to show up on the Sunday TV talk shows to field questions about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. But of all the many officials to whom the White House might have assigned the job, why on earth did that special someone turn out to be Ambassador Susan Rice?

Rice is the U.S. envoy to the United Nations in New York, not to anyplace in North Africa or the Middle East. Although President Obama has given Rice the rank of cabinet member, she has no direct responsibility for diplomatic posts in Libya, or State Department security abroad, or investigations into terrorism. America’s murdered ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, reported to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not to Rice. Yet, on Sunday, it was Susan Rice who emerged as the administration’s ubiquitous expert on the Sept. 11 terrorist assault in Benghazi. With dizzying omnipresence, she turned up on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN (maybe there were a few more that I’ve missed, but you get the idea).

Not that Rice called it a terrorist assault. Her omnipresent talking point was that the assault in Benghazi was “spontaneous,” that according to “our current best assessment” it materialized as an ad hoc copycat version of the embassy storming earlier that day in Cairo, all in reaction to the “hateful video.” As she told it to NBC, the armed assault that killed Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans was simply what happened, spontaneously, when the spontaneous demonstration in Benghazi got hijacked by “a small handful of heavily armed mobsters.” Or, as she explained it to CBS, ad hoc events spontaneously turned deadly when “extremist elements” took advantage of the heavy weapons that are “unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution.”

OK, this is clearly the official administration line, in which the blanket description “spontaneous”  – akin, almost, to some sort of natural disaster? — becomes the catch-all for deflecting responsibility for any failures of administration policy or practice. The president of Libya, Mohamed Al-Magarief, may disagree, as he has — calling the attack “preplanned” and saying “I think this was al Qaeda” — but for official U.S. purposes it is now Rice’s vague summation of “spontaneity” that has been thrown like a veil over the horror in Benghazi. Who were the “mobsters”? Do they habitually carry around rocket-propelled grenades in case they run across a spontaneous demonstration? For now, and quite likely for some time to come, U.S. officials can deflect questions about the specifics, on grounds that there’s an FBI investigation going on…

From the website of the Muslim Brotherhood. The FJP is their political party.

The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) expresses strong condemnation of the film produced and promoted by US Coptic Christian individuals, which deals serious insults to the Prophet Mohammed.

The party considers the film a racist crime and a failed attempt to provoke sectarian strife between the two elements of the nation: Muslims and Christians.

The LA Times writes about Zakaria Botros Henein, whose ideas are expressed in the anti-Islamic movie:

…For decades, the priest has been among the most galvanizing and high-profile figures in the Muslim world. Jailed several times in his native Egypt for trying to convert Muslims to Christianity, he was exiled by Hosni Mubarak’s government in the early 1990s in exchange for an early release.

Jailing people for religious expression is a sure way to “provoke sectarian strife.”

This from the Muslim Brotherhood website in Cairo, dated September 13, 2012 AD:

One and a half billion Muslims are subjected to humiliation and abuse in the person of their leader, Mohammed, the Messenger of God, the Prophet of Islam, of mercy and good tidings for the whole world.

With the message of God, Islam, Prophet Mohammed pulled peoples out of the abyss of backwardness and barbarism to the heights of sophistication and honorable humanity.

The ready blood-letting practiced by some Muslims makes one wonder how far from the abyss of backwardness they’ve been pulled.

He lit the pathways of progress and human thought for all mankind, with pure faith in the one God, belief in all Messengers without distinction or discrimination, full respect and reverence for all Prophets.

The Messenger of God gave the world Islam, which guarantees all people freedoms of belief and worship as well as respect and protection for places of worship, freedom of opinion and expression, human equality and public justice, dignity and solidarity and cooperation among all human beings.

He gave us Islam, which recognized human rights even before anyone in the whole world knew what human rights were. Islam even recognized the sanctity of a human’s blood, honor and money, which must not be violated.

The repeated abuse of the Messenger of God indicate the presence of hatred and bigotry in those who stand behind it, with ignorance, connivance and indulgence in those who permit such persistent abuse.

Thus hurting the feelings of one and a half billion Muslims cannot be tolerated, and the people’s anger and fury for their Faith is invariably predictable, often unstoppable.

Words can sting, but they never maim or kill.

We denounce abuse of all Messengers of God, Prophets and Apostles, and condemn this heinous crime. We further call for criminalization of assaults on the sanctities of all heavenly religions.

Otherwise, such acts will continue to cause devout Muslims across the world to suspect and even loathe the West, especially the USA, for allowing their citizens to violate the sanctity of what they hold dear and holy. Hence, we demand that all those involved in such crimes be urgently brought to trial.

Certainly, such attacks against sanctities do not fall under the freedom of opinion or thought. They are crimes and assaults against Muslim sanctities, and must not be tolerated by the countries where they are produced or launched, since they are also detrimental to the interests of those countries in dealings with the peoples of the Muslim world.

The West has passed and imposed laws that punish those who deny or express dissident views on the Holocaust or question the number of Jews killed by Hitler, a topic which is purely historical, not a sacred doctrine.

The peoples and governments of the Muslim world have every right to condemn, with all peaceful and legal means, this new violation and heinous attack, and to take appropriate action to deter repeats of such acts of barbaric aggression.

While we reject and condemn the bloodshed and violent response to that abuse and the incredible tolerance certain countries show towards it, we cannot ignore the fact that these countries never made a move regarding the abuse until after the strong reaction seen across the Muslim world.

We believe those countries should take appropriate actions and lay out clear and proper procedures to deal with such crimes, especially since preparations for this abuse took place plainly, right under the noses of authorities in those countries – over several months. Prevention is always better than cure.

Finally, we call upon all Muslims to uphold and apply Quranic principles and emulate the Messenger of Allah. That is the most effective way to honor him – by setting a good example, particularly because this abuse comes at a time when peoples are trying to communicate with mutual respect.

Those who insult the sanctities wish to poison budding relations between the peoples, to disrupt the efforts to build bridges between civilizations, and to sow discord between the peoples.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Cairo – September 12, 2012

Victor Davis Hanson:

I guess kissing up and bowing down doesn’t produce the promised result.

View Muslim Protests in a larger map

Send these clowns to reeducation camp, aka civics class.

Jonah Goldberg

An incendiary video about the prophet Mohammad, Innocence of Muslims, was blamed for the mob attacks on our embassies in Libya and Egypt (and, later, Yemen). In Libya, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were murdered. The video stirred some passion here in America as well.

Over at MSNBC, a riot of consensus broke out when contributors Mike Barnicle and Donny Deutsch as well as University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler all agreed that the people behind the video should be indicted as accessories to murder. “Good morning,” declared Butler, “How soon is Sam Bacile [the alleged creator of the film] going to be in jail folks? I need him to go now.”

Barnicle set his sights on Terry Jones, the pastor who wanted to burn the Koran a while back and who was allegedly involved in the video as well. “Given this supposed minister’s role in last year’s riots in Afghanistan, where people died, and given his apparent or his alleged role in this film, where . . . at least one American, perhaps the American ambassador, is dead, it might be time for the Department of Justice to start viewing his role as an accessory before or after the fact.”

Deutsch helpfully added: “I was thinking the same thing, yeah.”

It’s interesting to see such committed liberals in lockstep agreement with the Islamist government in Egypt, which implored the U.S. government to take legal action against the filmmakers. Interestingly, not even the Muslim Brotherhood–controlled Egyptian government demanded these men be tried for murder.

Now, I have next to no sympathy for the makers of this film, who clearly hoped to start trouble, violent or otherwise. But where does this logic end? One of the things we’ve learned all too well is that the “Muslim street” — and often Muslim elites — have a near-limitless capacity to take offense at slights to their religion, honor, history, or feelings.

Does Barnicle want Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, charged with being an accessory to murder, too? That book (more…)

According to news reports, Obama didn’t have to worry about that phone call in the wee hours. He slept right through the violence in Libya.

Then he boldly held a news conference, took no questions, recorded an interview with CBS to milk the meme Big Baloney had inaugurated (it’s all about Mitt’s bad manners) then flew off to Vegas to raise money.

If it had been Bush…

Many more images of sympathetic Libyans here

Say, let’s change the subject to Romney’s “gaffe.” Allapundit writes

The consulate where the American ambassador to Libya was killed on Tuesday is an “interim facility” not protected by the contingent of Marines that safeguards embassies, POLITICO has learned…

A senior administration official Wednesday called the Benghazi consulate “an interim facility,” which the State Department began using “before the fall of Qadhafi.” It was staffed Tuesday by Libyan and State Department security officers. The consulate came under fire from heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades at about 10 p.m. local time on Tuesday. By the time the attack ended several hours later, four Americans were dead and three others had been injured.

The Benghazi consulate had “lock-and-key” security, not the same level of defenses as a formal embassy, an intelligence source told POLITICO. That means it had no bulletproof glass, reinforced doors or other features common to embassies. The intelligence source contrasted it with the American embassy in Cairo, Egypt – “a permanent facility, which is a lot easier to defend.” The Cairo embassy also was attacked Tuesday.

There’s not even a pretense of an excuse made there. Whether it’s S.O.P. to deploy Marines to “interim facilities” or not, this was no ordinary facility. It’s an unfortified building in a volatile Muslim city that’s been targeted by jihadis before — and it’s 9/11. Obama had no qualms about sending Marines to Benghazi today to reinforce the building; there’s no reason to think he couldn’t have sent them sooner. So what’s the excuse? Or is he simply counting on the media not to ask him this question? Because if so, I’ve got to tell you — that seems like a smart bet at this point.

Speaking of our concern-troll press corps, here’s Chris Matthews summing up the narrative du jour by insisting that “The tragedy in Benghazi that cost Ambassador Stevens his life unfortunately has been overshadowed by the desperate reach by Mitt Romney to secure political advantage.” Top American diplomat killed by jihadis on September 11th at a consulate with no Marine protection = page two. Romney hitting Bambi hard on it = page one. I’ll leave you with two thoughts. One: Matthews can play dumb all he wants but Romney’s statement about the administration sympathizing with the attackers in Egypt was a perfectly apt way of describing that filthy press release from the Cairo embassy yesterday afternoon. And no, it’s no excuse that the embassy released that statement before protesters stormed the compound later in the day; they emphatically stood by their statement later in the afternoon. Unless Matthews is suggesting that the president can’t be held responsible for official U.S. embassy declarations (special rules for The One, as usual), I don’t know what his objection is.

And neither can Big Baloney. First,  Sarah Palin

Murdered Ambassador Christopher Stevens, whose corpse was dragged through the streets of Benghazi.

Apparently President Obama can’t see Egypt and Libya from his house. On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks ever perpetrated on America, our embassy in Cairo and our consulate in Benghazi were attacked by violent Islamic mobs. In Cairo, they scaled the walls of our embassy, destroyed our flag, and replaced it with a black Islamic banner. In Benghazi, the armed gunmen set fire to our consulate and killed an American staff member. The Islamic radicals claim that these attacks are in protest to some film criticizing Islam. In response to this, the U.S. embassy in Cairo issued a statement that was so outrageous many of us thought it must be a satire. The embassy actually apologized to the violent mob attacking us, and it even went so far as to chastise those who use free speech to “hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” (Funny, the current administration has no problem hurting the “religious feelings” of Catholics.)

But where is the president’s statement about this? These countries represent his much touted “Arab Spring.” How’s that Arab Spring working out for us now? Have we received an apology yet from our “friends” in the Muslim Brotherhood for the assault on our embassy?

…our nation’s security should be of utmost importance to our Commander-in-chief. America can’t afford any more “leading from behind” in such a dangerous world. We already know that President Obama likes to “speak softly” to our enemies. If he doesn’t have a “big stick” to carry, maybe it’s time for him to grow one.

Zing!

You’d think Obama would get right on this, if only for political cover.

Tony Harnden writes in the Daily Mail:

The Obama administration is engulfed in a full-blown foreign policy crisis just two months before the presidential election with the two campaigns trading angry accusations over events in Libya, Egypt and Israel.

Footage of the body of Christopher Stevens, United States ambassador to Libya, slung over the back of a protester, was reminiscent of the 1993 ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident in Somalia in 1993 when militia fighters lynched American aircrew in the streets of Mogadishu.

President Barack Obama’s staff will also be mindful that a shadow was cast over Jimmy Carter’s presidency by the Iranian hostage crisis after the US embassy in Tehran was stormed by Islamist extremists following the Iranian revolution.

Tony, it’s only crisis if Big Baloney says it is. The so-called paper of record, the New York Times, had the story on page 4.

Today’s LA Times had the story on page 3. The headline: “American Diplomat Killed in Libya” Diplomat??!!

They murdered our ambassador!

On 9/11:

Cairo (CNN) –
Angry protesters climbed the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Tuesday and tore down the American flag, apparently in protest of a film thought to insult the Prophet Mohammed.

A volley of warning shots were fired as a large crowd gathered around the compound, said CNN producer Mohammed Fahmy, who was on the scene, though it is not clear who fired the shots.

Egyptian police and army personnel have since formed defensive lines around the facility in an effort to prevent the demonstrators from advancing farther, but not before the protesters affixed their standard atop the embassy.

The black flag, which hangs atop a ladder inside the compound, is adorned with white characters that read, “There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his messenger,” an emblem often used in al Qaeda propaganda.

…

“We were surprised to see the big numbers show up including the soccer Ultra fans,” he said. “I just want to say, how would the Americans feel if films insulting leading Christian figures like the pope or historical figures like Abraham Lincoln were produced?”

He added that “the film portrays the prophet in a very ugly manner, eluding to topics like sex, which is not acceptable.”

Well, American Christians survived the provocative “artwork” Piss Christ without throwing a fit or burning flags — and the artist was paid with taxpayer money. Some other clown made a Madonna out of turds and called it art. Christianity survived.

The satirical “Book of Mormon” won numerous Tony awards and is a huge box office hit. The Godfather III was a libelous insult to the Catholic church. No one came uncorked.

And how did we respond to the Muslim primitives who attacked our embassy? With this:

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.

How about rejecting the actions of those who behave like animals when their feelings are hurt?

Why not explain that “sticks and stones…” isn’t a rallying cry to stone people?