This looks really bad. It appears that once again, the U.S. was warned, and did nothing:
The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach, The Independent can reveal.
American officials believe the attack was planned, but Chris Stevens had been back in the country only a short while and the details of his visit to Benghazi, where he and his staff died, were meant to be confidential.
The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the “safe house” in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed “safe”.
Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.
According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.
I realize that many Americans would love nothing more than to return to the pre-9/11 state of unpreparedness, but it doesn’t look as if that is going to work.
Nor is doing nothing.
Over and over, this country has tried the restrained approach. We tried it over the killing of American soldiers and the dragging of their bodies through Somalian streets, we tried it again with the Khobar Towers attack, we tried it with the African embassy bombings, we tried it with the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, and all of that was while we were still trying to ignore the first attack on the World Trade Center.
Apologizing for these acts of savagery has not worked. Nor has ignoring them in the hope that they will go away.
Right now, Romney can’t do anything, but at least he tried to speak out against the lame appeasers who are now running our foreign policy. The left is trying to sweep this despicable terrorist under the rug by spinning this into some sort of Romney gaffe. The hope is that if they can make him look like an idiot, people might miss the fact that it doesn’t take a genius to see that appeasement simply does not work. It never has and it never will.
It doesn’t take a genius to smell the stench, although being a genius doesn’t hurt either. But seriously, anyone with basic street smarts can see what is going on.
MORE: Fred Thompson puts it well:
Once again, on a beautiful September 11, Americans must absorb outrageous, deadly, radical Islamic assaults on fellow citizens. These particular citizens were representing America in Egypt and Libya.
Apparently there are two things in the world we now live in that are inevitable. First, any nutcase with a camera can get immediate worldwide attention if he is sufficiently provocative. Second, Islamic crazies will use provocation and any other excuse available to attack the United States and her citizens.
We do, however, have control over our own government’s response to these facts of life. While they are now backtracking under withering criticism, it appears that our embassy in Egypt apologized for the film that apparently incited the attack; that apology came before the attack took place. It was that apology — drawing attention to said film — that encouraged the mob.
When will the Department of State and our president understand that weak, apologetic responses to atrocious behavior do nothing to discourage radical Islamic fanaticism — and in fact do just the opposite?
Good question.
Comments
5 responses to “History repeating itself?”
The attacks on our embassies now look a lot like the attacks on our embassy in Iran in 1979. Looks like
Barack Obama = Jimmy Carter Redux
Hopefully President Romney will refer back to that Reagan-level of strength that finally put Lebanese terrorists activities to an end once and for all.
“Weak horse, strong horse.” Osama Bin Laden warned us. We haven’t listened – any more than we listened when he declared war on us.
The US (and, no, Obama, you didn’t build that) killed him, yes. And that was a GOOD thing. But we should have listened to OBL, because he told us exactly where we were going wrong. Thing is we ARE the strong horse – but we keep pretending to be the weak one. Why?
[…] Not that it’s relevant to the attempt at censorship, but it’s becoming clear that the video was a pretext for the attacks, which many analysts consider to have been pre-planned. […]
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