At least four American officials including U.S. Ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens are reportedly dead after outraged Islamist mobs attacked U.S. diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya on September 11. The frenzied hordes were apparently upset about an online film made by an Israeli-American that ridicules the Islamic Prophet Mohammed as a savage pedophile. Experts, however, say it is much broader than that.
According to news reports, protesters in Cairo tore down the American flag and replaced it with the black banner used by al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists. In Benghazi, where the Obama administration played a key role in helping Islamist forces bring down the government last year, the American consulate was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades before being looted and burned down. U.S. Ambassador Stevens and at least three other State Department officials were reportedly killed.
The Obama administration has already condemned the YouTube video in question for insulting Muslims. But the anti-American fury unleashed by the film has not died down yet despite massive financial support from President Obama to Islamist groups including the al-Qaeda-linked rebels in Syria and Libya, as well as Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood regime.
In Cairo, thousands of frenzied protesters shouting anti-American slogans assembled at the U.S. embassy. Some scaled the wall or stood on top of it shouting through megaphones. Others scrawled Islamist slogans on the property while leaders of the rampage blasted free speech protections for permitting insults of Islam and its prophet.
The mob eventually ripped down the U.S. flag and tore it to shreds before burning parts of it. A black banner that went up in its place, used by Islamic extremists worldwide, read: “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger.” On the embassy wall, one protester wrote: “If your freedom of speech has no limits, may you accept our freedom of action.”
Some protesters also shouted, “Obama! Obama! We are all Osama,” a reference to former U.S. ally and al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. Multiple groups and individuals including the brother of an al-Qaeda leader claimed responsibility for organizing the Cairo embassy protests.
The new Muslim Brotherhood regime ruling over Egypt, which is officially charged with protecting foreign embassies, apparently deployed some riot police that were largely ineffective. Despite the increasingly totalitarian rule of President Mohammed Morsi and growing anti-American animosity, the Obama administration is currently finalizing a $1-billion bailout for his regime. The U.S. government and Western elites also played a large role in overthrowing the former U.S.-backed dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.
Later on September 11, as Americans mourned the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, dozens of heavily armed Islamic militants in Libya attacked the U.S. consulate in the city of Benghazi — the heart of the U.S.-backed Islamist revolution that overthrew secular strongman Moammar Gadhafi. RPGs and a hail of gunfire aimed at the compound killed multiple State Department officials and injured others. The building was eventually looted and set ablaze using homemade explosives.
Even before the violence began, the U.S. government was condemning the anti-Muslim film that sparked the uproar. “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,” the U.S. embassy said in a statement. “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.”
Witnesses also noted that even though outrage over the film may have sparked the rampage, rioters were also protesting U.S. foreign policy, support for Israel, efforts to impose American values in the Islamic world by force, various invasions of Muslim countries, and more. “The American system will fall,” protester Ahmed Hamza in Cairo was quoted as saying.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who in July was met by furious protesters in Cairo throwing tomatoes while accusing her of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, said the death of U.S. officials in Libya was a “terrible loss.” She also said the U.S. “deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others” but “there is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”
A spokesman for the newly elected Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt said the incident was “an expression of a feeling that is thought to be an insult.” However, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry also claimed the violence was “extremely deplorable” and that the government had to work hard to “get things under control.”
The newly elected Islamist regime supposedly ruling Libya — much of the country remains under the control of war lords, terrorists, and rival militias following a devastating U.S. government assault to bring about “regime change” — also condemned the violence. However, the attack raised serious questions about the ability and willingness of foreign regimes to protect U.S. government assets amid growing anti-American fury.
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who also supports the large-scale foreign interventionism that has led to so much hatred against Americans, seized on the crisis to attack President Obama. “It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks,” he said in a statement released late Tuesday.
Obama’s campaign promptly responded to the comments by launching a counter-attack. “We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Governor Romney would choose to launch a political attack,” a spokesman for Obama re-election campaign was quoted as saying.
The film that allegedly triggered the violence, entitled Innocence of Muslims, was made by Israeli-American real-estate developer Sam Bacile, according to news reports. “Islam is a cancer,” Bacile told the Wall Street Journal after the Islamist attacks broke out. “The movie is a political movie. It’s not a religious movie.”
Previews of the “satirical” film depict the Islamic Prophet Mohammed as a homosexual child molester who murders his opponents, but even mere images of the prophet are considered offensive by many Muslims. Segments of the film were posted online months ago but only recently began to attract attention.
Analysts had long warned that the Obama administration’s illegal wars and unconstitutional support for Islamist extremists, many of whom were openly affiliated with al-Qaeda, would eventually result in blowback. It appears that those concerns are already proving to be correct, but experts say this is likely only the beginning.
Libya remains in ruins following the bloody war against it waged by Western powers, Islamic extremists, and the Obama administration, which never obtained the necessary congressional authorization. In Egypt, the U.S. government played a key role in the so-called “Arab Spring” uprising that eventually handed power to the socialist-minded autocratic Muslim Brotherhood.
Meanwhile, Iraq is still in chaos. Afghanistan is in ruins as U.S. troops continue to be slaughtered by the forces they are training. And Syria is being destroyed with the full support of the U.S. government as Islamic extremists and the Western establishment seek to overthrow the ruling dictatorship.
Christians throughout the Middle East are already being butchered as a direct result of the U.S. government’s lawless foreign policy: variously backing dictators and terrorist groups before turning against them. For Americans, however, the consequences have only just begun to emerge.
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Photo: In this April 11, 2011 file photo, U.S. envoy Chris Stevens speaks to local media at the Tibesty Hotel where an African Union delegation was meeting with opposition leaders in Benghazi, Libya: AP Images
