Wednesday, September 12, 2012

A Point for Service

Yesterday, islamicist radicals stormed the U.S. embassy compound in Cairo, Egypt and attacked the embassay and ambassador in Libya, killing the ambassador and three others.

Their provocation, they say, was a fringe, right-wing film produced ostensibly in the U.S.

That film, while vile, represents the liberty to speak which we gaurantee to our press, however loosely defined, which we say we stand for.  In fact, it is the preservation of that freedom of the press and of speech which helps to differentiate nations with ACTUAL liberties from those who simply say they have them.

I reject that repulsive, repugnant and hateful film, but when I joined the service, partly why I did so was to absolutely ENSURE that such films had the right to be aired.  Negative reaction from hateful militants, abroad OR onshore, should never be a reason to prohibit the airing of views - even reprehensible and vile views.

Such films (or views) are also absolutely NO justification for the attacks upon persons, certainly not upon our ambassadorial staff who had no relation to the producers (nor upon the producers themselves).  Capital punishment for saying something negative about Muhammad is an assinine, hypocritical and murderous over-reaction.  It is a mortal sin in Islam, just as it is in Christianity.  It is using a pretext to engage in violence.  It was offensive in an intolerable way.  Whatever happens in the US does not justify the murder of our overseas staff (or our citizens overseas).  There is NO justification for that kind of action, none, zero.  This was some violent (and crazed) people CHOSING to be offended to that kind of level.

So here's my reply.  The United States needs to make it clear to the governments of Lybia and Egypt that our embassies are soveriegn soil which they've sworn to protect.  They failed, and they must compensate the families of those slain as well as assure there will be no further allowance of such attacks or demonstrations which might lead to such attacks.  As they've now proven incapable of doing so (for the moment), we should pull our staff from their countries other than a skelaton crew of a handful of diplomatic contacts and a platoon or company or two of Marines, each.

We then should announce to the Egyptian and Lybian radicals that since we consider this our soveriegn soil, we will defend it as we are entitled to do so under international law. We should demand the governments of those countries require any demonstrations be done out of sight of our soil and more that they will gaurantee our safety.  Any further attacks should be repelled by force if necessary and if THAT that occurs, the US should then pull our embassies from both countries and sever all ties, advising any nation where this occurs that we consider their nation to be unstable and incapable of fulfilling their international responsibilities.

What these governments have allowed through their negligence or inadequate planning or response, is for an act of war to be perpetrated upon our citizens and our nation, citizens no more guilty of making that film than the demonstrators were.  It is intollerable. We do not tolerate guilt by association verdicts, we do not tolerate attempted usurpation of free speech by intimidation, and we do not tolerate attacks upon our country.  No differently than 9/11, if the governments in these countries are not capable of stopping their citizens from attacking our citizens and soil, we will do so, moreover, we SHOULD do so.

I did not agree with the invasion of Iraq, it was the wrong war upon the wrong nation.  I, however, would gladly stand to the wall and defend our embassies in either country.  THAT is a worthy service, that's why I served.

9 comments:

  1. It appears as information emerges that both Libya and Egypt attempted to protect the embassies and the embassy staff. The ambassador in Libya was not for example shot on embassy property.

    While it is never acceptable for people, no matter what kind of fringies they are to do something like this, it is also pretty darn obvious that these are not nations operating under normal civil law either, but rather nations in a state of extreme volatility.

    They are also both nations where we assisted a dictator to abuse people, for years.

    I think that raises two questions about what happened; on the one hand how much moral high ground we have for indignation, and the other......we knew the degree to which civil government was seriouly challenged in these countries. We have tried to help make that better in both places by our presence.

    I would be very surprised if either country had provided the full assurance of protection that we would expect from a country in less turmoil, with less recent violence overturning their respective government. Even if they did provide that assurance, we're not stupid, we know what is occurring in those countries, but chose to be there anyway. In doing so, we agreed to take these risks. What I don't understand is why we didn't have more security ourselves of our own. Even if we had, escalating the violence level by mahcine gunning these protesters would have only made this even worse, by outraging more and more people against the U.S.

    What we need to do is to find a balance that safeguards our embassy staffs, but that doesn't put us more in conflict with these nations as they redefine who they are and what kinds of government to have. We want them to be democracies, and we are looking at ways to live and work together, not get ourselves inot more shooting wars or to increase the number of people who hate us. Bush did enough of that with Abu Graib and Gitmo and other decisions about torture.

    Realistically this is an image and propaganda war, a very real war where violent reaction isn't always the smart choice. It is not a choice that has worked well for us consistently in the past. Rather this is the time to be smart, to use our heads rather than to react emotionally, and to strive for the long term goals.

    I don't think that stupid movie was automatically any more protected 1st Amendment speech than other hate speech. The extremists in these countries were wrong, but we need to figure out what to do with our own ignorant conservative extremist fringies.

    These protesters believe in what I have often described as more superstition than real religion that if they don't conform ENOUGH to religion, a vengeful God will hurt them. Rather like the fool Pat Robertson believing that Haiti was hit by an earthquake because God was mad at them for making a pact with the devil. Or the idea that hurricanes or wildfires occur because of homosexuality.

    Those people suffer from ignorance; in places like Libya, it's because they have very few schools. Here, it's more a problem with willful ignorance trying to put stupid religion in our schools in place of knowledge - like the Loch Ness Monster is real, or climate change and evolution aren't, or the Founding Fathers were trying to end slavery and that slavery was a good thing while it lasted for the slaves.

    We can choose to make the situation better, or worse, including more violent; we can choose to help strengthen and stabilize democratic governments or we can destabilize them by our response.

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  2. I am sure that BOTH governments are well aware of how they fell short in their obligations. While I'm not in favor of blaming the victims, I can't believe we were completely unaware of instability and made our decisions; now we need to rethink them.

    Neither of these countries will resolve their problems over night; these kinds of events will occur for a while. If we are smart about it, those events will diminish as we partner with their governments to become the kinds of nations we want and the rest of the world wants - stable, moderate democracies.

    That is of course NOT what Bacile, or the Coptic Christian fanatic or the vile Terry Jones wants; but that is how we know they are wrong. It is not what the right wing Islamophobes want, but then it wasn't what they wanted when they were beating their anti-semitic drum either, or their anti-civil rights for blacks drum or any other hate drum message they like to pound. They want more violence, and they want to provoke their idea of Armageddon.

    We should be sure we stop that, so far as it is in our power to do so.

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  3. Because of the nature of our prior support for Mubarak in the course of our pressure on Egypt to get along with Israel, people in Egypt and in other parts of the middle east where we propped up and supplied military equipment to dictators, believe odd things that make no sense to us.

    Back in mid-July, protesters believed the U.S. helped to rig the Egyptian elections so that the Muslim brotherhood candidate won - who has turned out to be more pro-Israel and moderate than anyone expected, and more pro-US as well.

    "Protesters chanted: "Monica, Monica", a reference to Former President Bill Clinton's extra-marital affair. Some chanted: "leave, Clinton", Egyptian security officials said.

    It was not clear who the protesters were or what political affiliations they had. Protesters outside Clinton's hotel on Saturday night chanted anti-Islamist slogans, accusing the United States of backing the Muslim Brotherhood's rise to power.

    The assault on her motorcade came on a day Clinton spoke at the newly re-opened U.S. consulate in Alexandria, addressing accusations the United States, which had long supported former President Hosni Mubarak, of backing one faction or another in Egypt following his ouster last year.


    That was from a Reuters article in July, on the occasion of opening a new consulate in Alexandria.

    To us that is stupid, ridiculous.

    But we can do much more to eiminate these protests with accurate information than with shooting protesters. I refuse to join the right wing extremists in this country, like Bryan Fischer, demanding mass public executions in response to the Libyan attack.

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  4. Oh Dog Gone, aren't you just a precious little bundle of righteous indignation......

    And so incredible wrong about the entire incident....

    Navy Times
    Deadly embassy attacks were days in the making

    http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/09/gannett-deadly-attacks-were-days-in-making-091212/

    The protest was planned by Salafists well before news circulated of an objectionable video ridiculing Islam’s prophet, Mohammed, said Eric Trager, an expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

    The protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was announced Aug. 30 by Jamaa Islamiya, a State Department-designated terrorist group, to protest the ongoing imprisonment of its spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar abdel Rahman. He is serving a life sentence in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

    When the video started circulating, Nader Bakkar, the spokesman for the Egyptian Salafist Noor party, which holds about 25 percent of the seats in parliament, called on people to go to the embassy. He also called on non-Islamist soccer hooligans, known as Ultras, to join the protest.

    But you keep up the patriotic bravado.....

    THAT is a worthy service, that's why I served.

    It looks so adorable on you....

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  5. Thomas, Penigma is my co-blogger.

    He and I are different people. We sometimes disagree.

    You sir, are an ass who is sloppy with his facts.

    Do see my posts above this one, and learn something.

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  6. Thomas,

    I'm a 12 year veteran of the US Army and US Army Reserves. Are you?

    If you chose to question my service again, you will not darken my doorway thrice.

    Get it?

    DG is far less self-righteous than I am, and frankly one of the least self-righteous people I know. Considering almost every conservative I've ever known or known of exists entirely in the realm of self-righteous justification of hatred by comparing "us" to "them" I find your complaints utter hypocrisy.

    The difference between DG and I here is that while I very much appreciate her "long view" approach, I feel there are certain things which MUST be done regardless of the eventual outcome. In short, a does not always equate to b. and even if so, you can't tolerate a.

    Now, that's simplistic enough for even a droll little troll to get. It's time for you to go back under your bridge. If you chose to apologize for you commentary insulting my service, you're welcome to return, but not before.

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  7. Thomas,

    I used to teach vehicle recognition (and aircraft) in the US Army. LOTS of troops, let alone troops who were Republicans (and Democrats) couldn't tell a T-72 from a Leopard. It was their job to be able to do so, they frequently failed.

    As for the DNC being my better, perhaps, but they certainly seem to be yours. Excuses for belittling someone's service is the act of a troll. Whether it was DG OR me, you don't get to do that. You were careless in your identification, but worse, you were careless in your use of words (at best). And you compound it AGAIN by saying it was MY "pompous blaming", I did no such thing.

    No video, no act, excuses violence. By the way Thomas, that includes things likes "thinking about developing WMD" - Hussein's supposed WMD programs (which didn't exist after 1992), were a fatuous pretext for war. WE invaded and attacked Iraq for it, resulting in the deaths of roughly 500,000 Iraqis. Please reconcile these terrorist attacks, which were simply shrouded in an excuse (the video), with our attacks on Iraq, which were equally simply shrouded in an excuse.

    I'm sorry, was that 4 fingers pointing back at you again?

    As regards the Democrats, if you think that this story is some sort of meaningful comment, you're sadly mistaken. I've seen Republicans call artillery pieces Russian tanks. I've seen fools on Fox News call Russian civilian helicopters attack helicopters. Only those in the military are expected to be expert, and it's my experience a number of them aren't

    I suspect very strongly that if I showed you a picture of a Su-7 and a Mig-24 you'd confuse them and more, I suspect if I showed you picture of a Tu-22 and a B-1, you'd struggle to identify them by name if I didn't tell you before hand. Republicans I knew made at least as many mistakes on military hardware recognition as Dems. I'm fine with Barack Obama not knowing how many firing stations a Los Angeles Class submarine has, or even not being able to recognize one, it's not his job - I'm a whole lot less fine with Mitt Romney sabre-rattling pointlessly or calling for a vast, expensive buildup of arms - to fight whom?

    The area the DEMS have made far fewer mistakes on foreign policy in the last decade is in military policy. You know, the important stuff, the stuff they are actually elected to do, rather than pissing and moaning about BS like what picture they mistakenly used at a political rally.. Good Lord.

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  8. That should have read, "The area the Dems have made far fewer mistakes in the past decade than the Repubs is in military policy..."

    The Dems didn't advocate for invading Iraq, in fact they voted for it only after being lied to and only with serious reservations. Obama brought down Qhaddafi, he didn't turn a blind-eye to him after Qhaddafi promised to be a good boy (as George Bush did), yet then attemtped to get U-Hex (Uranium Hexafloourid) from North Korea THROUGH Pakistan, shipped by Dubai Ports World (you know, the company Dubbya wanted to put in charge of OUR port security).

    PUUUHHHLEEEEEZZEE.. Republicans suck so badly on foreign policy it's a running joke. They'd attack a windmill if you said it was a muslim shrine. Talk about a failure to recognize the enemy, Thomas, you are a poster child. Islam isn't your enemy, it's ignorance which has knicked your achilles.

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  9. And that should have read "Su 24" not Mig-24....

    Actually, the more difficult one to distinguish is the Mirage F-1 from the Su-24.... oh well.

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