I have felt so devastated all day at the thought of our ambassador in Libya and his staff killed by an angry mob, supposedly because of a hate video. It has the feel of the Carter administration and the hostages in Iran to me, and I pray it doesn't escalate. Liberating countries is a bad business. It seldom works out right. The former international consensus on action on Libya was already in tatters making cooperation on Syria impossible - now we'll be hearing an "I told you so" from the Russians till the cows come home -- which of course distracts from their own evil role in Syria and Iran.
The story that everybody is Facebooking and even discussing out on the street now is taking a shape like this: an American of either Jewish or Coptic background with Jewish donors and fundamentalist Christian consultants made a crude anti-Muslim video which got Muslims in Libya and Egypt so mad that they rioted, and in the mob rage, our ambassador to Libya, Amb. Chris Stevens, and four State Department officials who worked in the Embassy, have been killled. So this hateful movie incited hatred and ended in violence, so we should remove it from Youtube, and mind our tongues. Romney was shameful to bash Obama over this for failed policy, when it wasn't his fault and wasn't respectful of either our people killed or those Muslims insulted. So goes one version.
Or, conversely, we shouldn't give an inch or we will lose our own values for free speech, Romney spoke the truth, Obama's failure to manage the response to the Arab Spring and his apologies to Middle Eastern leaders has caused extremists to take advantage of our weakness.
Naturally, it's more complicated than that.
FACT-CHECKER FISKING -- BUT YES, IT'S AN APOLOGY
The Huffpo is now "fact-checking" on this -- by which they mean Fisking and literalizing what Romney said:
"The Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks."
The reason he could sense this incident as a "sympathizing" with those who scale Embassy walls to maim and kill people was because of this statement from the US Embassy in Cairo, which still remains on the Embassy website, despite the tweets about it being removed:
The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims - as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.
There are a number of appalling things about this statement, and indeed it is an apology despite all the hortatory gyrations of the fact-checkers declaring it as "pants on fire" lie at Politfakt, because it wrongly starts from a premise that *concedes the perspective of the purportedly insulted Muslim as paramount* and worse, it invokes a notion completely antithetical both to US civil rights law as defined by US Supreme Court decisions and to international human rights law by implying that *because of that sense of injury* there must be some mandatory "respect for religious belief" akin to a blasphemy law, i.e. criminalizing or penalizing the insult of God or religious figures.
In a final awful turn of phrase, this statement implies there is some notion that free speech can be "abused" and others' religious beliefs "hurt". These are overbroad to say the least -- in fact, in over-sharing the perspective of the insulted Mulsim, which can be very capacious indeed, this statement has completely turned American values on their ear.
To be literalist, Fisking about whether or not the search word "apology" appears in this string of text is to completely miss the disturbing capitulation that took place: Larry Schwartz, the information officer who wrote this statement is overturning decades of work at the UN by his very colleagues in the State Department and other like-minded diplomats to make the all-important distinction between incitement to imminent violence and insult, between mere "hurt feelings" and real harm.
WHAT IS INSULT?
Why can't you concede the perspective of an insulted Muslim? Wasn't the movie insulting? That's an easy question to answer once you clear away your haze of fearful political correctness: because the notion of hurt feelings is endless and capacious and can't be defined adequately so as not to injure legitimate criticism of Islam -- free speech. You can condemn hateful language because it is hateful! You don't have to go further and invent capacious injuries of insult where they may not even exist or shouldn't exist to the point of violence -- much less tip-toe around these sentiments.
Finding this hard to parse, people? Well, take out those magnifying glasses and compasses and rulers you use to make those very, very fine distinctions between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism! Think of it as something like that!
Interestingly, while there are still some busy thumping their "progressive" chests and defending this Cairo Embassy message, it turns out that this statement wasn't cleared -- not surprisingly as anybody who has followed this sort of issue inside the State Department -- and that Schwartz went with it anyway in the belief it would pre-empt violence. It didn't. It merely illustrated how pandering to notions of insult and blasphemy get you nowhere. It's indicative of a school of foreign service and Beltway thinking that strives to address what they see as a misguided war on terror and provide the "anti-Islamophobia" work they feel needs doing to offset others somewhere else in the government who see see Muslim terrorists under every bush.
The Cairo Embassy statement was issued before the assassination of the ambassador and staff -- which we now know was a planned action by a branch of Al Qaeda, with possibly the mob reaction to the video as a cover. I'm continuing to ask if the entire video was a hoax, with some of the fundamentalist Christians and Coptics in the mix some unwitting agents of influence.
JOINT US AND EGYPTIAN UN RESOLUTION
In any event, I think few people thinking about this realize that the US and Egypt, whatever their differences (and they were always significant and remain so) collaborated on a joint resolution (no. 16/18) last year passed a resolution at the often-controversial UN Human Rights Council with the lofty title of:
Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief.
This resolution had a tortured history, beginning with a series of resolutions that the Organization of Islamic Community got passed in various bodies over the years condemning "defamation of religions". This was essentially a bid to prevent criticism of theocratic states, and also to prevent the ridicule of Mohammed and Muslims, as occurred with the Danish Cartoons. The Western democracies fought this, because it would be antithetical to free speech. They lost, because the "non-alligned movement" (which we just saw show up in Iran) tends to back the OIC in their anti-Western agitation.
Nevertheless, various human rights groups, notably Human Rights First, which was formerly headed by Michael Posner, who is now the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the Obama Administration, worked for a better resolution to be passed that would promise action to be taken against intolerance and hatred, but would not involve "defamation" or blasphemy.
When the US came back on the UN Human Rights Council, with the expert work of Suzanne Nossel and other officials in the International Organizations section of the State Department, this resolution 16/18 was finally passed. It had a crucial concept taken straight out of US Supreme Court jurisprudence: only "incitement of imminent violence" can be criminalized (Brandenberg v. Ohio). That's the Supreme Court test, which is explained like this: while you can call in a general sort of way for Jews or blacks to be killed, and not be prosecuted in the US, if you stand on the street corner and call for Jews or blacks to be killed *right now* this instant when there's a mob with clubs nearby, you can be prosecuted. It is seldom if ever used in fact to prosecute anybody, as usually hate crimes involving violence have criminal offenses to be invoked, and the bias aspect of the crime, rather than having to parse speech.
This wording in the UN resolution, while it may seem inadequate or even problematic, was hard-won, it took many hours of negotiation, but in the end, Egypt and the other OIC countries accepted it because it also came with a lot of promises for actions -- training of officials, improvement in tolerance education and so on.
The US called this a "consensus" resolution meaning that it represented a negotiated outcome that was as good as it could get, but was pleased with the outcome. US officials feel as if this is one of their great achievements on the Council and in foreign policy in general, and they are very prickly about any attempts to criticize it as perhaps insufficient or easily manipulated. Most of the criticism has come from a few right-wingers, for whom it seemed to contain too much capitulation; lefty human rights groups concerned about threats to free speech passed on it. Interestingly, Abigail Esman at Forbes, not part of the international justice jet-set privy to the negotiations of human rights documents (and the special meaning we all hope some of the hard-won wording will retain), was publicly skeptical, and seemed unaware at first of the Supreme Court background to the phrase "incitement to imminent violence." She reasoned that "defamation" and "incitement" were likely easily interchangeable for Islamic states -- and she's right.
The various incidents that have occurred since this resolution, whether the pastor who wanted to burn the Koran in the US, or the US troops accidentally burning the Koran, or now this hate video on Youtube -- as bad as they are and worthy of our condemnation -- do not meet the US test of incitement of imminent violence. They don't call for the harming or killing of people or even the destruction of property as such; they merely disrespect a holy book and holy figures.
Nevertheless, it's precisely these types of incidents that the OIC wants to stop by force of international law and with prosecution -- and some of their people are willing to back up their desire with violent retaliation.
There can be confusion about what "incitement to imminent violence" means when the reaction to these hate videos is to retaliate and kill Americans. But that's not the context of the jurisprudence, which refers not to those who feel they are injured and insulted, but refers to those who are doing the inciting of others to do injury. There is jurisprudence around this in Article 19 and Article 20 in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights at the separate UN Human Rights Committee as well. States can suppress speech for "reasons of public order or national security in a democratic state" -- more hard-won negotiated language! -- but there might be good arguments made that none of these incidents fit those tests, either.
WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THE CAIRO STATEMENT?
Larry Schwartz and his colleagues seemed completely oblivious of all these existing ways of treating this problem of insult and incitement, and maybe never got the memo on 16/18 -- although that is very hard to believe as it was a press release on the US Embassy in Geneva and disseminated throughout the Foreign Service community. Had someone alive and atuned to the nuances of these hard-won consensus documents *with Egypt* taken a hand to this "preventive" statement, they could have used language right out of the resolution, and said the US:
"Condemns any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, whether it involves the use of print, audio-visual or electronic media or any other means"
They would not even have to go into more hazardous territory and speak about the need to determine whether incitement be to imminent violence; they could just leave the more defined statement out there so that the discussion can be had in the press and in the home.
That way they could leave intact the rightful American values of not restricting speech, especially critical of government or religious public figures, but not appear to be endorsing hatred. Let the courts decide -- although let's not have pretentions that courts in Egypt would decide this justly.
But then in the next sentence, they could say something like this:
"The US affirms the universal values of freedom of speech and freedom of religion" -- full stop, without having to invent trouble by talking about "abuses" of rights which isn't a legal concept in this context. Then they could add what amounts to a moral, not a legal position: "We deplore displays of intolerance and hatred to the Muslim religion and we call for tolerance and respect." That doesn't *mandate* respect but just urges it as a moral act. The phrase "Nothing justifies violence" then would have to finish out this brief statement-that-could-have-been -- and actually, should be drafted immediately for use in the inevitable next round of insulted Muslims using violence to stop speech they don't like.
Now, because it can be hard to explain one's thinking in the compression of Twitter, I'll respond to an interesting blog by Shai Franklin, a long time champion for human rights and Jewish community leader.
He find Romney's denunciation of Obama terrible and even reckless -- they appear to indict all of Obama's policy in the Middle East -- and he feels that all of this is feeding into the right-wing pro-Israel Jewish forces that he, as a liberal who also loves Israel, evidently wants to disassociate himself from. Understood.
That's a family fight that I'm not part of, and therefore don't feel as constrained by. People are constantly calling me a neocon, a CIA agent, a Zionist, etc. even though I am a non-governmental activist who is Catholic by faith and who has always voted for the Democratic candidate in elections. That is, I can sympathize with the revulsion of "settler terrorism" that J-Street and the Council on Foreign Relations and Peter Beinhart and many other liberals feel, in defiance of what they see as AIPAC driven politics, but I take it more simply: why do Obama and Ban Ki Moon put pressure on the issue of the settlements so publicly, but never put pressure on Palestinians to renounce terror and violent attacks on Israel? Can't we have both? And so on.
I also don't see a problem with calling into question all of Obama's Middle East policy, given the results we see. They are problems he inherited, but problems he didn't fix because of his realpolitik with states and "quiet diplomacy". What's all this taking Jerusalem out, then putting it back in to the DNC platform? What's all this about scolding Netanyahu? Doesn't this display weakness and disarray that any fanatical extremism can see as an entree to move in and help weaken the camp further?
OBAMA'S RUINOUS FOREIGN POLICY
This incident for me -- where Obama had to be shaken into reactively saying "nothing justifies violence" instead of leading with it instinctively -- is part and parcel of bad Obama foreign policy on human rights, which I view rooted in the worldview of the Democratic Socialists of America and others that influenced the young Barack in the community organizing movement. And that is that peace and politics come before human rights advocacy or demands, and they get thrown under the bus -- especially with Russia, Africa, China.
If you don't want to hear neocons ranting about Obama's apologetic stance -- and that's exactly what it is! -- then read George Packer in 2010, an impeccable New Yorker liberal, who essentially says the same thing -- he calls out the president for not making human rights central to foreign policy, for calibrating it according to perceived American interests country by country, for addressing Middle Eastern aspirations for freedom with programs for business or children, and not women and human rights.
Obama ruined 35 years of work around the Helsinki Accords when he went to Russia the first time and told the Russians, even in doing the good deed of raising Mikhail Khodorkovsky's case, that he was "not going to interfere in their internal affairs". This was absorption of too much Soviet propaganda via the peace movements of the 1980s he was in and around. It's not an internal affair to raise universal principles on a case where universal human rights are violated. The problem continued to this day, as Obama rejects the Magnitsky Act in favour of a realpolitik approach to Russia that doesn't work. He added insult to injury when he invoked a staple of Soviet propaganda circa 1982 -- "no first use of nuclear weapons" -- which the Soviets could smugly demand as they had tank superiority in Eastern Europe.
Or take his actions around Iran -- pulling punches, talking about deals with no conditions. Or China -- where fortunately, the story of the dissident in the Embassy ended well, but which involved too protracted a time when it didn't, with the diplomats even letting him leave, and losing touch with him when he was hospitalized.
Then -- during his DNC acceptance speech, Obama sets back 30 years of work by US diplomats at the UN again, urging that there be "responsibilities" as well as "rights" -- as if we all, NGOs and officials alike, didn't beat back this bad-faithed notion from states like Russia, China, Sudan, and Pakistan eager to distract from their own massive human rights crimes and put the burden on citizens to be "more responsible" to the state.
There has been so much more like that -- and now this. There continues to be a huge fuss on the left -- opportunistically so, of course, given the approaching elections -- that Romney has ruined his chances for election. No, he has not. People need to think more clearly about this in the coming days. Again, why did it take Romney's stark condemnation to finally shake out of Obama this "clarification": ""While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants." Romney sounds so blunt and "awkward" to some because they've been in a soothing cocoon for four years trying to reassure themselves that Obama is really for human rights. He's not. Let's move on. Let the Democrats come up with someone who is in four years.
The Baltimore Sun gets it right by saying "Romney Has a Point" but chickens out:
Neither statement "sympathized" with the attackers, as Mr. Romney claimed. Nor did they amount to what Mr. Romney claims to be a pattern of Mr. Obama apologizing to the world. And it was in poor taste for Mr. Romney to open a line of political attack even as news broke about the deaths in Libya — on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to boot.
In fact, the statement did kowtow to the mob climbing the fence precisely because it comes from a profound place of sympathy with the insulted -- and that is the problem. And indeed it is part of a concerted policy, begun with the very Cairo speech, to bow and duck and retreat and apologize for our perceived pass aggressive promotion of democracy, our "lecturing" on human rights. There's no sense of "hey, guys, it's just a video made by these wackos who don't mean anything, let's not go crazy, eh?"
Why don't all those Hollywood stars who love to stump for Obama now come out with a statement repudiating this crude hate film, but affirming freedom of expression vital to their industry and condemning violence in response to film?
BTW, the Baltimore Sun could easily find out that Romney made the statement before the news of the deaths broke, but it doesn't matter. It's not like politics is off limit on the anniversary of a terrorist attack or before elections -- that's when we need political debates and it's so typical of the Obama Administration and the liberals that hold it so close to try to put a chill on speech and debate by invoking church-lady notions of proprietary.
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