Obama Administration Finally Catches On To Implications Of Muslim Embassy Riots

...we here in the Middle East have tonnes of jokes about Allah, the prophets and the angels that are way more offensive, funny and obscene than those poorly-made cartoons, yet no one ever got shot for telling one of those jokes or at least we had never seen rallies and protests against those infidel joke-tellers.
Iraq The Model, commenting on the protests against Mohammed cartoons, February 6, 2006

The last time we saw this kind of massive outpouring of rage and destruction in the Muslim world against criticism of Mohammed was back in 2006 -- in reaction to the Danish cartoons  (click on image to see entire cartoon--at Human Events Online):


At the time, the blogger Iraq The Model commented that the cartoon protests occurred months after the pictures were first published, and the Muslim protests against the cartoons were less than spontaneous:

I swear that 90%+ of the protestors in Muslim countries have not seen the cartoons and do not know the name of the paper and when I say that I'm sure of it because I have access to the web 24/7 and I spent a really long time searching for the cartoons and couldn’t find them until a friend emailed me a link and.

You know that those cartoons were published for the 1st time months ago and we here in the Middle East have tonnes of jokes about Allah, the prophets and the angels that are way more offensive, funny and obscene than those poorly-made cartoons, yet no one ever got shot for telling one of those jokes or at least we had never seen rallies and protests against those infidel joke-tellers.

What I want to say is that I think the reactions were planned to be exaggerated this time by some Middle Eastern regimes and are not mere public reaction. [emphasis added]

Fast-forward to today, when the a wave of anti-US riots have spread across the Muslim world -- this time in reaction to a video that mocks Mohammed. This time, the riots have resulted in the murder of US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.

But once again, those riots are not spontaneous.

James Taranto examines the lack of spontaneity in the Muslim attacks on the US embassies resulting from the video.

He quotes from an article by Sara Chayes, to demonstrate the original lack of Muslim interest in the anti-Mohammed video:

According to initial media investigations, the clip whose most egregious lines were apparently dubbed in after it was shot, was first posted to YouTube in July....

According to the Wall Street Journal, when the video failed to attract much attention, another Coptic Christian, known for his anti-Islamic activism, sent a link to reporters in the U.S., Egypt and elsewhere on Sept. 6. His email message promoted a Sept. 11 event by anti-Islamic pastor Terry Jones and included a link to the trailer.

Taranto notes:

So the reaction took not two weeks but two months. More important, it required the film's propagation by mass media, including the Egyptian TV station Al Nas. NPR's Steve Inskeep has the details in a piece on The Atlantic's website:

The offensive film clip was almost unknown--an irrelevant piece of trash on the Internet--until a film producer managed to place a tiny item in an Egyptian newspaper. But it wasn't until the TV broadcast that things really blew up.

The hosts played an extended clip of the video dubbed in Arabic, pondering what should be done. One, Khalid Abdullah . . . asked if anyone had apologized. His co-host Mohammed Hamdy declared, "An apology is not enough. I want them convicted." [emphasis added]

It took a bit a pushing before the Muslim riots ignited -- a fact that may have finally sunk in at the Obama administration.

At first White House spokesman Jay Carney blamed the video for the attacks on both the Cairo and Benghazi embassy:

Let’s be clear: these protests were in reaction to a video that had spread to the region,” said Carney. “We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack.

Jim Treacher at the Daily Caller notes in his Daily Trawler blog that the Obama administration now admits that the attack on Benghazi was a premeditated terrorist attack:

Why, as recently as last night, Obama was telling David Letterman that it was all the fault of a “shadowy character” with a YouTube account and an outdated understanding of the First Amendment. Yet another private citizen thrown under the bus for standing in the way of Obama’s path to power.

Yeah, about that whole deal… Maybe not so much? Foreign Policy reports:

The Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was in fact “a terrorist attack” and the U.S. government has indications that members of al Qaeda were directly involved, a top Obama administration official said Wednesday morning.

“I would say yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy,” Matt Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said Wednesday at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, in response to questioning from Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-CT) about the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

As for who was responsible, Olsen said it appears there were attackers from a number of different militant groups that operate in and around Benghazi, and said there are already signs of al Qaeda involvement.

Similarly, a call to burn the US embassy in Cairo was made on September 9, 2 days before the actual "spontaneous" attack.

Meanwhile, the riots continue. The question is whether all of those riots as well are merely a response to the video or something else.

Russia Today in this report on various Muslim riots that have broken out, closes with the question whether the riots at this point are all--and only--about the video:



Granted that Russia Today may not be the most objective reporting around, but the point is worth considering, whether the US -- even with a president whose middle name is "Hussein" -- has failed to win over the Muslim world as Obama himself once promised.

Whatever the case may be, The Iraq Model's final observation is worth noting:

One last thing, even if the entire EU apologizes it won't change a thing; fanatics in our countries here had always considered the west their infidel arrogant crusader enemy and no apology no matter how big or sincere can change that.

It was true then.
It is true now.

-----

If you found this post interesting or informative, please it below. Thanks!

Technorati Tag: Mohammed and Cairo and Benghazi and Obama.