Posted on 09/14/2012 2:42:59 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Winston Churchill once said, An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last. On September 11, Christopher Stevens, a career diplomat, became one of the first Americans in Libya to feed the crocodile of Ansar Al-Sharia and learned too late that while appeasers may hope to be eaten last, they are often eaten first.
Christopher Stevens was a Middle Eastern diplomat who typified the new breed going from the University of Berkeley and the Peace Corps to desks in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria. He taught English to Moroccan children in the Peace Corps and helped Palestinian Arabs in the East Jerusalem Consulate, which has a firm policy of pretending that Israel does not exist.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of Christopher Stevens that he made other peoples hopes his own and that may serve as a fitting eulogy both for Stevens and for the disastrous foreign policy of making other peoples hopes our own that brought on the Arab Spring.
Stevens, like Clinton and Obama, made the hopes of Islamists his own and they repaid him for it, just as Afghans repaid America for supporting them against the Soviet Union, as Lebanon and Somalia repaid Americas peacekeeping efforts by killing American troops and on down the litany of gratitude in bombs and bullets that have come Americas way from the Muslim world.
He risked his life to stop a tyrant, then gave his life trying to build a better Libya, Hillary Clinton said, but if anything his murder exposed the lie that there is a better Libya now than there was before Hillary and he intervened in Libya. Clintons eulogy comes perilously close to conceding Stevens real mission and the degree of American intervention in the overthrow of Gaddafi.
Stevens was the connection between the Islamist Benghazi rebels and the Obama administrations illegal war to overthrow Gaddafi. His mission, like the true mission of the war, was secret, and the consulate, marginally fortified and devoid of Marines, reflected that secrecy. Stevens did not think that he had anything to fear from the Islamists because they were his friends.
In the Wikileaks cables, Stevens cheerfully described fighters who saw resistance against coalition forces in Iraq as an important act of jihad and local businessmen who took pride in the number of suicide bombers who had come out of the area. For years he had walked safely in their company without understanding that he was just as much of a target as a Marine in Baghdad, but without the training, the weapons or the survival skills.
The only reason Christopher Stevens had lasted this long is that the jihadist fighters had known a useful man when they met him. And Stevens proved to be very useful, but his usefulness ended with Gaddafis death. Once the US successfully overthrew Gaddafi and began focusing on stabilizing Libya, Stevens ceased to be a useful idiot and became a useless nuisance. Attacks soon followed on the Benghazi consulate and on other consulates as well, but the Marines were not brought in and Stevens continued relying on local goodwill to secure his offices. It was only a matter of time until the attackers got through.
Clinton, her State Department and its media allies appear unnaturally eager to paint Christopher Stevens as an American martyr to the cause of Libyan Islamism, a kinder, gentler Rachel Corrie who willingly died so that the Islamists might have their dream of an Islamic state in Libya.
We will of course never know what was going through Christopher Stevens mind on September 11, 2012, as he battled the choking smoke, experiencing what so many New Yorkers had experienced on September 11, 2001. Like them, he was faced with a terrible dilemma, a choice between remaining in the fire and committing suicide by going outside.
Many in the World Trade Center chose to jump to their deaths, but Christopher Stevens chose to remain inside and die rather than face the tender mercies of his attackers. Stevens had spent enough time in Libya to have seen what the jihadist fighters did to their captives and must have known what horrors he could expect at their hands. The photos that have been released, along with claims by Libyan jihadists that they sexually assaulted his corpse, suggest that he made the right choice. And perhaps in those final moments, facing that terrible choice, Christopher Stevens finally understood the true horror of the Muslim world that he had fallen in love with as a Peace Corps volunteer.
He was an avid student of Islam and the Middle East, and consistently strove to build the proverbial bridge between our two cultures in the face of sometimes overwhelming antagonism and bitter misunderstanding, a friend from the diplomatic service tells us. But though Christopher Stevens may have studied Islam, he had learned very little about it, and so his final lesson was the bloody one that Westerners who never really learn what Islam is about end up receiving.
The world needs more Chris Stevenses, Hillary Clinton said, but does it really? Does it need more tall dead blond Americans lying bloodied in the gutters of Muslim cities? Does it need men who give up the hopes and dreams of their country to take on the dreams of their enemies without ever realizing where the fatal road of those dreams leads?
Stevens former Peace Corps colleague says of him, Chris devoted his career, and life, to improving relations between the Arabic/Islamic world and the West. That he did and he died doing it, losing whatever career or life he might have had if he had not embarked on a futile errand to make the Muslims who killed him and paraded around his body like him. And like all those who have died over the years in the same cause, the effort was to no avail.
Its especially tragic that Chris Stevens died in Benghazi because it is a city that he helped to save, Obama said, repeating the same lie that he used to drag America into his illegal war. Benghazi was not in any need of saving, it was the Americans who came to Benghazi, like Chris Stevens, who needed saving.
That is the terrible blind spot in our vision which, like Christopher Stevens, tells us that we need to save the Muslims who hate us, rather than showing us that we need to save ourselves.
Very sobering article this morning.
While reading, I couldn't help but think about the character Harold Lauder in “The Stand” (Steven King).
When his usefulness to evil was complete and he lay broken at the bottom of a ravine he wrote a note prior to committing suicide.
It said “Forgive me, I was misled”
Insanity is believing the canard “Islam is a Religion of Peace”. Unfortunately for Mr Stevens...the Islamic Terrorists got their “piece”....
Excellent article....and why we need to think and act realistically...and not based on some warped “conventional wisdom” or “consensus”. Time to get real about Islam
The Left wins by divide and conquer.
Islam will let the Left nurture their “victim status” in the U.S. and then they will conquer (they will never worship at the alter of socialism).
Stephens is the canary in the coal mine.
Bump!
There is none so blind as he who will not see.
Portraying Islamists as victims is typical of the Left’s mentality, for sure.
Ironic that, actually, members of the more virulent strain of Islam (which is most of them, not all) are victims - not of the West, not of America, not of us citizens who might “denigrate” Islam, but victims of the Islamic religion itself and of all done in the name of that religion.
Those trumpeting Islam as their motive have killed and brutalized and impoverished more Muslims than they have anyone else. And within households, women are victims more than anyone. And children are brainwashed and have no future, no hope.
So I would say to the Hillarys et al of the world, Islam has within it the seeds of what is victimizing Islam.
Just stop with the attacks on American free speech and the excusing of this tyrannical religion, all the while condemning the violence. They are TAUGHT from the cradle to be violent.
Rush really rained on Hillary’s parade yesterday, and I was glad he did.
The world is getting quite an eye-full - despite the state media working overtime to protect all the bad actors.
Thanks for posting this. It’s the same mindset that Timothy Treadwell had.
Aren’t they, though!!
Open those eyes, world, and keep ‘em open.
On another thread they are reporting that Israeli police are trying to bottle up a crowd of Muslim worshippers who are trying to go from their mosque to American diplomatic facilities, and it is getting very ugly.
Watch who defends American interests, world. Israel is trying, all the while the O administration continually disses them and plays up Muslim “victimhood”.
Islamic Rioting Reaches Jerusalem Israel police dispersing rioters who seem to be headed
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2930933/posts
What a terrible tragedy. We here in the Bay Area continue to hear what a truly and honestly decent man Christopher was.
He was a true believer in peace and found not only his passion but his true love that kept him immersed in his work.
Too bad the black souls of the Middle East can always be counted on choking out not only life anywhere they go but also light from even the brightest of stars.
More:
“TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) A large cloud of black smoke has risen around the U.S. embassy in Tunis where stone-throwing protesters and police are waging a pitched battle.
Thousands of demonstrators have massed outside the embassy and several were seen climbing the outer wall of the embassy grounds and raising a flag on which was written the Muslim profession of faith,......”
This is the first real information I have read about the Libyan debacle.
Barbarians require a brutal dicatator to keep them in check.
US interests aren't served by replacing the dictator with Islamofascist Mob Rule.
Could serve as the chilling epitaph of US policy in region. Great article.
“..always hated things that make no sense...”
“truly have power over people when you can get them to consider, tolerate, etc. things that MAKE NO SENSE...”
Yes indeed!!! This is also known as brainwashing. Television has brainwashed our nation and very few Americans now have the power or ability to think for themselves or think logically.
Something rather odd, not mentioned by the press, but quietly confirmed by some State Department insiders, is that State has long given preferential hiring to homosexual embassy staff and by giving political support to ambassador candidates who are homosexual.
They believe, whether or not it is true, that homosexuals are less hassle in overseas assignments. To accommodate them, their sexual partners are given make work jobs in the embassy.
This sometimes results in problems, when such personnel are appointed to countries that are very anti-homosexual, yet they foolishly exhibit their homosexuality in indiscreet ways.
So State really tries to pound into them that they are to remain “in the closet” for the duration of their assignment. As such, they have a much stricter DADT policy than the Pentagon ever did.
Two major rules of islam is to 1) lie to infidels and 2) kill all infidels. A wise man knows the difference between winnable and futile battles.
Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province isnow inder sustained attack.So far, 2 dead and 29 inhured. Don’t know whether the dead are the attackers or Americans yet.
As for Chris Stevens, he was not attacked at the EMBASSY. He was INVITED to rhe Consulate in Benghazi which was nearly completely unprotected. He was deliberately set up.
What would we have done differently under a McCain administration, save having a few Marines?
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