WarSclerotic

Al-Qaeda claims responsibility for killing US ambassador in attack on US consulate in Libya | The Times of Israel.

Terror group says assault was response to US drone strike in Pakistan that killed its Libyan-born number two

A Libyan man walks through the rubble of the damaged US Consulate in Benghazi after an attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, on the night of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012 (photo credit: AP/Mohammad Hannon)

Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility on Saturday for Tuesday’s attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, in which US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

The terror group said the assault was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and executed in response to a US drone strike in Pakistan that killed the organization’s number two, Abu Yahya al-Libi.

Libi was a Libyan national who served as lieutenant to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of al-Qaeda.

Eastern Libya’s deputy interior minister, Wanis el-Sharef, said Friday that four people had been arrested in connection with the attack.

In an audio recording released to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary, Zawahiri asserted an Islamic duty to “liberate” every inch of Muslim lands, and called upon Muslims to “purify” their countries of corrupt leaders during what he termed a period of “American weakness.” Muslims should “topple the western proxies” left in their countries “and especially the Saud clan and the gulf sheiks in the Arabian peninsula,” he declared.

US envoy Chris Stevens speaking to local media in Benghazi last year. (photo credit: AP/Ben Curtis)

As early as Wednesday, Israeli and American media reported that al-Qaeda operatives had carried out the attack, using the release of an anti-Islam movie that sparked violent protests around the Muslim world as a pretext for the chaos.

Killed in the attack in Benghazi were Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith, and private security guards Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods.

Stevens died as he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff when the mob of protesters, including gunmen armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, attacked.

The consulate is a one-story villa located in a fenced garden in downtown Benghazi. A small contingent of Libyan security forces protecting the facility also fired in the air, trying to intimidate the attackers, said el-Sharef. But faced with the mob’s superior size and firepower, the Libyan security withdrew, el-Sharef said. Gunmen stormed the building, looted its contents and torched it, he said.

Al-Sharef said Stevens and a consulate staffer who had stayed behind in the building were killed in the initial attack on the consulate. The rest of the staff successfully evacuated to another building nearby, preparing to move to Benghazi Airport after daybreak to fly to the capital, Tripoli, he said. Hours after the storming of the consulate, a separate group of gunmen attacked the other building, opening fire on the more than 30 Americans and Libyans inside. Two more Americans were killed and 32 were wounded – 14 Americans and 18 Libyans, he said.

Stevens, he added, was visiting Benghazi to inaugurate an American culture center in the city. His body was identified by his Egyptian interpreter. Stevens died of severe asphyxiation from smoke inhalation, according to the Libyan doctor who tried for 90 minutes to save him. Ziad Abu Zeid said that Stevens was brought to the Benghazi Medical Center by Libyans the night before, with no other Americans, and that initially no one realized he was the ambassador. Stevens was practically dead when he arrived close to 1 a.m. on Wednesday. “We tried to revive him for an hour and a half but with no success,” Abu Zeid said.

Stevens was a career member of the US Foreign Service specializing in the Middle East, and served at various diplomatic posts around the region, including a stint as political section chief at the US consulate in Jerusalem.

He served as deputy chief of mission at the US Libyan embassy from 2007-2009, as part of the team that re-established US-Libyan official relations after a decades-long hiatus. During the Libyan civil war, he was the US representative to the Libyan Transitional National Council, and assumed his post as ambassador on May 22, 2012.

Panetta: ‘Little red lines’ on I… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

UN chief: Resort to force in Iran crisis is ‘unacceptable’ | The Times of Israel.

Ban Ki-moon urges dialogue, says Iran’s refusal to let IAEA inspectors visit its nuclear sites is core problem

Ban Ki-moon, left, speaking with Ali Khamenei during his trip to Iran in August (photo credit: AP/Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader)

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the idea of a resort to military force over the Iran crisis, branding the notion of an attack or counter-attack as “unacceptable” and expressing concern about the “violent rhetoric” on the topic.

Ban made the comments during an interview with the French program “International” which will be broadcast Sunday, AFP reported.

He implored the sides to stick with dialogue to try to resolve the issue, and said the root of the crisis lay in Iran’s refusal to permit IAEA inspectors to visit and monitor its nuclear facilities.

The secretary general’s comments came amid ongoing speculation over a possible Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged the US to set so-called “red lines” that, if crossed, would trigger a military response. The US has avoided doing so, and President Barack Obama reportedly told Netanyahu in a phone-call last Tuesday that he would not do so.

Obama has repeatedly said that an Iranian regime armed with nuclear weapons is “unacceptable” but that there is still time for diplomacy and sanctions before a possible resort to military force.

On Friday, in a conference call with American rabbis, the president said “there may come a time” that the US would “exercise a military option.”

Articles: Romney Gets It Right: It Was ‘Disgraceful’.

By Daren Jonescu

President Obama, stop blaming the victim for Mideast violence | Fox News.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/14/president-obama-stop-blaming-victim-for-mideast-violence/#ixzz26Y1B8lsb

Obama’s ‘proud’ statements on changing US image may backfire – The Hill’s DEFCON Hill.

President Obama has said that elevating the image of the United States around the world was one of his proudest foreign policy accomplishments, but those remarks could boomerang and hamper his reelection bid.

The violence and anti-American protests throughout the Middle East are bringing fresh attacks on the president’s foreign policies as Muslim rage is intensifying in the region.

The protests that have spread could undercut one of the key tenants of Obama’s foreign policy argument that he has restored the U.S. image in the Middle East.

In February, Obama said, “One of the proudest things of my three years in office is helping to restore a sense of respect for America around the world, a belief that we are not just defined by the size of our military.”

Three years ago in Cairo, Obama stressed his leadership would be dramatically different than former President George W. Bush’s: “I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition.”

Prior to the recent violence, polls showed that the image of the U.S. had improved overseas. But this week, protesters in Afghanistan burned Obama in effigy and cable news shows ran footage of many burning U.S. flags in various countries.

Republicans have blasted Obama’s foreign policy record in the wake of the protests and attack in Libya that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead.

They argue that the contrasts Obama made of his policies compared to his predecessor, President George W. Bush, have not yielded the success that he claimed would come in the Muslim world.

And amid the violence and attacks on U.S. embassies, Republicans say that Obama’s foreign policy record is weak and “feckless,” as Obama’s 2008 opponent Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) charged this week.

One Mitt Romney adviser suggested to the Washington Post Friday that Stevens’s death wouldn’t have happened had Romney been president.

“What we do not see is steady, consistent American leadership,” GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan said Friday at the Values Voter Summit, arguing that the Middle East unrest showed the need for new U.S. leadership.

“In the days ahead and in the years ahead, American foreign policy needs moral clarity and firmness of purpose,” Ryan said.

Democrats say that the Republican criticism simply does not ring true, as the president’s record on foreign policy is sound and the Republican ticket has revealed its inexperience, pointing to a statement issued Tuesday evening by the Romney campaign denouncing the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

Democrats add that the protests in countries that were part of the Arab Spring are one element of a long transition away from dictatorship. They say the protests do not represent the U.S. image being tarnished in the region, as they were being carried by militants and not those who sought democratic change in the Arab Spring.

Obama spoke to that point on Friday, when he talked about Libyans in the streets with signs praising Stevens after his death became public.

“The people of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia did not trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday.

Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said that the protests do not represent a blemish on Obama’s foreign policy record.

“I think what’s causing the unrest is obviously the transition in these governments,” Smith told The Hill. “That’s hard to say you can blame Obama’s foreign policy for the fact you had all these dictatorships in the Middle East for years and years that finally fell, and that people are trying to find replacements for it. It’s going to be an unstable and difficult situation.”

The new focus on foreign policy in the campaign comes as images of unrest and chaos have been shown across the Middle East for the past four days, after the first protests and attacks on U.S. facilities occurred in Cairo and Benghazi Tuesday.

Protests raged across the region following Friday prayers, with attacks on U.S. embassies in Tunisia, Yemen and elsewhere, many occurring in countries that were part of the Arab Spring that saw dictators removed from power.

The protests were sparked at least in part by an anti-Islam video produced in the United States, although the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi appears to have been a more-coordinated effort.

The unrest in the Middle East comes amid a presidential campaign where the Democratic candidate has a rare advantage on foreign policy issues. Obama’s foreign policy record includes the killing of Osama bin Laden, the end of the Iraq war and the ouster of ex-Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

For Republicans, however, the protests are a sign that Obama’s successes don’t go beyond the death of bin Laden.

House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) said Friday that Obama’s attitude of “apologizing” has signaled weakness to U.S. enemies in the Middle East.

“Those people take advantage, when they see us apologizing and they see it as weakness and then they come after us,” McKeon told The Hill. “Our foreign policy is I think in shambles, and you just look at this whole Arab Spring and nothing has turned out the way we’ve expected.”

Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said that the president’s attempt at conflict resolution in the Middle East was viewed as “weakness” by militants there.

“Obama thought he pretty much had the foreign policy boxes checked,” Rubin said. “The president came into office determined to set a new tone in the Middle East, to differentiate himself against Bush… Seeing this humiliation of attacks on U.S. embassies, it makes it very hard to judge Obama’s approach as anything but a failure,”

Obama supporters dismiss the notion that Obama “apologized” for the U.S. to gain favor in the Middle East, and that the new unrest does not signal a policy failure for the United States.

Larry Korb, a defense analyst at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, said this week’s incidents in the Middle East would not harm Obama’s reelection chances — and that more of a focus on foreign policy actually would help the president, despite the violence.

“What Americans are much more concerned about is getting out of the wars, getting bin Laden,” Korb said. “If Romney is going to win, it’s going to be on the economy. It’s not going to be foreign policy. People are happy we’re out of Iraq and on our way out of Afghanistan.”

It’s still unclear whether the protests will be sustained beyond this week, or if they will fade out both in the Middle East and the presidential race.

Rubin said this is a different situation from the Iran hostage crisis in 1980, which remained in heavy rotation on the news because there were U.S. hostages involved.

“It could very well be a flash or the pan, long since forgotten by Election Day,” Rubin said.

Cameron Joseph contributed to this article.

The Video Didn’t Do It | The Weekly Standard.

It was bad enough, two years ago, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates called fringe Florida pastor Terry Jones to ask him not to burn copies of the Koran, or last week, that chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey took his turn to call Jones to ask him to stop publicizing a YouTube video, The Innocence of Muslims. But then on Friday, White House spokesman Jay Carney told the world that the violent protests in Cairo and Ben­ghazi and elsewhere were a “response not to United States policy, and not obviously the administration or the American people,” but were “in response to a video, a film we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting.” Carney repeated the point for emphasis: “This is not a case of protests directed at the United States at large or at U.S. policy, but in response to a video that is offensive to Muslims.”

Getty Images

Carney’s comments lie outside the range of plausible spin, even by Obama administration standards, and if his bosses believe them—as we fear they do—are simply delusional. But they are not without consequence. Nor are Gates’s and Dempsey’s phone calls. They all send the message to America’s enemies that if you kill our diplomats and lay siege to the our embassies, the first move the American government will make is to denounce .  .  . Americans. 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?

Muslim Brotherhood website demands that West criminalize ‘assaults’ on Islam | The Times of Israel.

Statement condemns violence against US interests, says free speech should not extend to acts of ‘barbaric aggression’ that humiliate all Muslims

Protesters destroy an American flag pulled down from the US Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, September 11, 2012 (photo credit: AP/Mohammed Abu Zaid)

Without the “criminalization of assaults on the sanctities of all heavenly religions,” the Muslim Brotherhood warned on Thursday, insults to Islam “will continue to cause devout Muslims across the world to suspect and even loathe the West, especially the USA.”

The remarks were part of a statement posted on the English-language website of the Brotherhood in response to a trailer for a new film, which the Egyptian ruling party says is insulting to Islam.

Since the publication of the trailer earlier this week, violent anti-American riots have been raging at US diplomatic missions throughout the Middle East. In Benghazi, Libya, the American ambassador and three others were killed in a violent takeover of the consulate, and in Cairo and Sanaa, enraged mobs converged on the US embassies.

According to the statement, “one and a half billion Muslims [were] subjected to humiliation and abuse in the person of their leader, Mohammed, the Messenger of God, the Prophet of Islam,” due to the film.

The statement cited bigotry and hatred as motives for “repeated abuse,” and denounced as “ignorant” those who permit the abuse — a reference to Western authorities. Islam guarantees all people freedom of belief and freedom of opinion and expression, the statement said, but these freedoms should not extend to attacks on Islam.

“They are crimes and assaults against Muslim sanctities and must not be tolerated by the countries where they are produced or launched.”

The statement cited restrictions on Holocaust denial as an example of legislation that prohibits offensive speech, and suggested that laws should be passed that criminalize insults to Islam. Although legislation against Holocaust denial is in place in Europe, the US does not have similar laws.

According to the statement, Western condemnation of the film would not have been issued were it not for the riots. ”[The West] never made a move regarding the abuse [film] until after the strong reaction seen across the Muslim world,” the statement said.

The Muslim Brotherhood condemned the “bloodshed and violent response” of recent days, but asserted that Muslim peoples and governments had the right to peacefully and legally condemn “this new violation and heinous attack” — a reference to the film — and “to take appropriate action to deter repeats of such acts of barbaric aggression.”

“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 statement said.

Post-Arab Spring “moderate” Muslim regimes cornered by radicals.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis September 15, 2012, 12:45 PM (GMT+02:00)

Hopes that deaths of four US diplomats won’t be the last

The United States is positioning military forces so that it can respond to unrest in as many as 17 or 18 places in the Islamic world, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced late Friday. “We have to be prepared in the event that these demonstrations get out of control,” he said.
Those words dashed hopes in Washington that the anti-US Islamist rampage by now sweeping 21 countries over a video deriding Islam had passed their peak. In fact, by their sixth day Saturday, Sept. 15,the street protests against American embassies and other US symbols of influence were growing more violent and more organized, threatening not only American lives but tearing up President Barack Obama’s entire outreach policy toward Arabs and Muslims. I

In at least four Arab countries, anti-US protesters were no longer just throwing stones but using firearms. The most serious occurred in Egyptian Sinai, where scores of armed Salafist Bedouin linked to al Qaeda firing missiles, grenades, mortars and automatic weapons were able to break down two guard posts at the US-led Multinational Force near El Arish base in search of American victims. A battalion of Colombian troops fought the invaders off in fierce battle for hours, preventing them from reaching the hundreds of US officers, soldiers and air crews pinned down in fortified quarters.
In Cairo, Islamist demonstrators began firing rubber bullets at Egyptian security forces which have still not succeeded in breaking up the disturbances.
In Tripoli, Lebanon, protesters and the Lebanese army exchanged heavy gun fire. In Khartoum, Islamists shot their way into the US embassy and the American school before setting them ablaze.

In Tunis, the American ambassador almost suffered the same fate as his colleague, Chris Stevens and three consulate staffers who were murdered in Benghazi, Libya, last Tuesday, Sept. 11. The ambassador and several US diplomats were rescued from the burning embassy building by a special Tunisian counter-terror unit and taken to safety.
Friday, saw the first five fatalities as well the first violent Muslim demonstration in the Australian town of Sydney.

debkafile’s counter-terror and intelligence sources draw seven conclusions from nearly a week of surging anti-American violence across the Middle East, South Asia and beyond:
1.  The anti-Islamic video film was not the cause of the upheaval only a pretext.
2.  The outbreaks were orchestrated by a number of radical Islamic organizations ranging from the ultraconservative Salafis to Al Qaeda terrorists. They took advantage of swelling anti-US sentiment in many Arab and Muslim countries to weaken local governments which maintain ties with the United States, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
3.  It is not yet known how the mechanism coordinating operations among those Islamist extremist groups works, but it has already shown to be faster and more efficient than the American intelligence and counter-terror bodies keeping track of them. Day by day, Washington is caught unawares by fresh outbursts.
4.  After firing up Arab and some Muslim streets, this radical coalition believes its component organizations are gathering enough leverage to start pushing out the “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood branches brought to power by the US-backed Arab Spring in order to take their place. The anti-US ferment will therefore not abate, as Washington hopes, until they achieve their goal.
5.  The US has sent two platoons of 50 men each of specially trained Marines to protect its embassies in Libya and Yemen and may send a third to Sudan. Otherwise, the Obama administration dare not send in American troops to prop up the new Arab regimes; any visible US military intervention in those countries would only enhance the radicals’ popularity and weaken the regimes they are fighting to remove.
6.  The new Muslim Brotherhood rulers of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya face a tough strategic dilemma; Lean more heavily on American support to save their regimes, or bow to the Islamist extremists, turn their backs on America and give them a place in government.

7.  Power-sharing with radicals has already begun in some Arab countries, spelling the reversal of Obama’s policies and the goals of the “Arab Spring”

Those policies aimed naively at the removal in the name of democracy of autocratic, secular Arab rulers to make way for “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood regimes elected by the people and ready to work with the United States. This ideal was violently reduced to ashes in the second week of September 2012.
It is hard not to recall another debacle of 33 years ago, when President Jimmy Carter helped overthrow the Shah of Persia only to bring implacable ayatollah rule to Tehran.

German Paper: ‘Obama’s Middle East Policy Is in Ruins’ | Washington Free Beacon.

While the U.S. media focuses on GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s reaction to the attacks on American embassies across the Middle East, the international media has focused its attention on the actual president, Barack Obama.

In a roundup of international opinion, German Der Spiegel featured this take from the conservative Die Welt:

“US President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy is in ruins. Like no president before him, he tried to win over the Arab world. After some initial hesitation, he came out clearly on the side of the democratic revolutions. … In this context, he must accept the fact that he has snubbed old close allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Egyptian military. And now parts of the freed societies are turning against the country which helped bring them into being. Anti-Americanism in the Arab world has even increased to levels greater than in the Bush era. It’s a bitter outcome for Obama.”

“Obama was naive to believe that one only needed to adopt a new tone and show more respect in order to dispel deep-seated reservations about the free world. In practice, the policies of the Obama administration in the region were not as naive as they may have seemed at times, and the Americans have always been much more involved in the Middle East than the passive Europeans. But Washington has provided the image of a distracted superpower in the process of decline to the societies there. This image of weakness is being exploited by Salafists and al-Qaida, who are active in North Africa from Somalia to Mali.”

“One thing is clear: If jihadists believe they can attack American installations and kill an ambassador on the anniversary of Sept. 11, then America’s deterrent power has declined considerably. For a superpower, it is not enough just to want to be loved. You have to scare the bad guys to keep them in check.”