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 people’s hopes his own” and that may serve as a fitting eulogy both for Stevens and for the disastrous foreign policy of making “other people’s 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 America’s peacekeeping efforts by killing American troops and on down the litany of gratitude in bombs and bullets that have come America’s 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. Clinton’s 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 administration’s 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 Gaddafi’s 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.
“It’s 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.
Thanks for the ping.
Thanks for the ping.
They all read Zinn’s ‘People’s History’ - America/the West evil & Everyone else Good/Better.
Chomsky, what say ye on all this???
>>Glen Doherty, was part of a cohort working in Libya finding and destroying shoulder-fired rocket launchers. Who better than an American who had “gone native” to point them in the right direction?
If Obama hadn’t enabled the “rebels”, those weapons wouldn’t be out “in the wild”, would they? And we wouldn’t be so worried about that.
>>Gaddafi’s and Assad’s regimes killed Americans, and would do so again when in a position to do so. It is strange to see arguments here that we shouldn’t lift a finger to get rid of them.
While that is true, it is also true that Gaddafi coughed up his WMD program during Bush’s Administration, a fact you seem to have missed given the very light MSM coverage. You need to be on FR more, clearly. Gaddafi is a guy who “got it” once he saw what happened to Saddam Hussein, gave up his WMDs, and we threw that away for ARAB SPRING! DEMOCRACY! Kumbayah nonsense.
Do you really think that was prudent, from a Realpolitik standpoint? If so, why?
As far as Assad, I’m not sure why you bring him into this discussion. Though my attitude is there are no “good guys” involved there, either, at least we don’t have an embassy at stake.
I understand that this was taught at Piedmont High School (Western Civilization class) when Mr. Stevens was a student there.
There are many Jewish people in Piedmont.
Makes me wonder if Mr. Stevens was really paying attention.
I have a nephew just like this Steven’s guy. He is a liberal who loves the middle eastern culture, the people and the religion. He’s now living in Dubai and I pray every day for his safety and he that finally wakes up to reality before it’s too late.
Anyone have copies of the Wikileaks cables to which the article refers?
It does seem somewhat unusual that he would out of the embassy for 7/11. Whole thing seems awfully odd or evidence that the agencies our government relies on for info are incompetent,or that the analysts and government decision makers the agencies report to are not very bright.
Hope you know the answers to my questions,I am just very curious. Thanks
end of first sentence in the second para should read (unusual that he would be out of the embassy for 7/11.)
I am not sure they picked on him because just because he was Stevens. I think they picked on him because he was in a vulnerable location and easy to get to.
&&&&
Even his first name could have been enough “justification” to these tribalists for his murder.
Those Libyans have a strange way of showing their gratitude.
I thought Madeline Albright was the dumbest SoS we've ever had, but I think she has a rival now.
I thought Madeline Albright was the dumbest SoS we've ever had, but I think she has a rival now.
I would love the smell of napalm in the morning over Benghazi.
It would smell like......
... genocide?
This probably explains why the security was so lax. It probably traced right back to Stevens himself. He probably thought the natives loved him. He didn’t think he needed a bunch of imperialist stormtroopers, er, I mean, Marines, around for safety. His favorite moment at cocktail parties was probably when he revealed that he didn’t have a real security detail. Hillary probably backed him up on all of this. After all, it was a demonstration of their hip, un-Bushlike rapport with the Muslim world.
Until not so long ago, the Western world was pretty tribalistic as well.
The pre-modern West wasn't terribly different from the non-Western world today in that regard.
And today? Is the contrast between, say, Japan or Korea on the one hand and Holland or Sweden on the other really a contrast between savage tribalism and humane and healthy universalism?
No, it doesn't.
This was the consulate in Benghazi and Stevens was there temporarily.
For all we know security in the embassy in Tripoli was strict enough.
Tripoli:
I can't find a "before" picture of the consulate in Benghazi, but judging from the "after" pictures, it wasn't fortified.
Right, he was in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11 in an unsecured building with practically no security. That seems crazy until you factor in Stevens’ background. He thought he could get away with it because he thought was Jane Goodman amongst the gorillas.
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.
“It’s 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.
*
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