@Baldimo,
Quote:Re: parados (Post 5643789)
Well they did blame the "protests" on his film for several weeks...
Because he had an incomplete understanding of the events, you know, like conservatives had.
Amanda Mustard/ZUMAPress
To hear Republicans explain it, the protests at US embassies around the world and the attack on a US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead are a result of the Obama administration "projecting weakness."
"When we project weakness abroad, our enemies are more willing to test us, they are more brazen and our allies are less willing to trust us," said vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan at an event in Colorado last week. "[T]hat will not happen under a Mitt Romney administration because we believe in peace through strength." Ryan was referring to potential defense cuts, so if Al Qaeda pays enough attention to American budget politics to base its strikes on funding cuts then they probably know Ryan projected weakness by voting for them in the first place. Romney adviser Richard Williamson went so far as to suggest to the Washington Post last month that under a President Romney, no protesters would dare defile an American embassy. "In Egypt and Libya and Yemen, again demonstrations—the respect for America has gone down, there's not a sense of American resolve and we can't even protect sovereign American property," he said.
As the details behind the Benghazi attack come to light, it's becoming increasingly clear that the White House's initial assessment of the attack as spontaneous rather than preplanned was inaccurate. But behind the comparisons to Jimmy Carter and the references to "peace through strength" is a dubious policy critique: not just that Obama is Carter and Romney is Reagan, but that somehow sufficient man-musk from an American president can dissuade any potential terrorist from laying his finger on an American diplomat.
It's true that during Carter's term, several major attacks occurred at US embassies. The most famous is the 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran, but rumors that the United States was involved in the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, led to attacks on embassies in Pakistan and Libya as well—in late November, after Reagan was elected president.
Wendy Chamberlin, a career foreign-service officer who was serving as the US Ambassador to Pakistan when Al Qaeda struck the World Trade Center on 9/11, says being a target is part of the job for diplomats serving in risky areas.
"High-profile targets like ambassadors have always been in danger because they're the symbol of the United States," Chamberlin says. "What you don't want to represent is that you distrust the people, that you don't want to engage with the people, that you hate being there. It's an important part of your mission and get out and mix with the population." Moreover, under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations it is actually the host country that is responsible for the security of diplomatic facilities, not the Marines. The primary responsibility of the Marine Corps' Embassy Security Group states that its "primary mission" is "to prevent the compromise of classified material vital to the national security of the United States," while their "secondary mission" is to "provide protection for US citizens and US government property" during "exigent circumstances." Their first responsibility is to guard secrets, not diplomats.
“High-profile targets like ambassadors have always been in danger because they’re the symbol of the United States.”
Having Ronald Reagan in office didn't mean an end to attacks on US diplomatic targets. Despite Reagan’s refrain of "peace through strength," several high-profile attacks on US diplomatic facilities occurred on his watch, including the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, by Islamic militants. Twice. According to the Global Terrorism Database compiled by the University of Maryland National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), attacks on American diplomatic targets actually rose during Reagan's term—before beginning to subside in the mid-1990s.
"That follows the trend of terrorism generally," says Erin Miller, a research assistant at START who manages the Global Terrorism Database. "In the early 1990s there's a drop-off worldwide in terrorism against pretty much all target types." Miller cites the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a subsequent wane in leftist terrorism as one possible explanation for the downturn beginning in the mid-1990s.
The decline is probably not because terrorists were intimidated by Bill Clinton more than they were by George H.W. Bush. Two of the worst terrorist attacks on American diplomatic targets, Al Qaeda's bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, happened on Clinton's watch. It does however, make the Romney campaign's claim that having a Republican in office will frighten terrorists out of striking at American diplomats or staging violent protests at American embassies extremely dubious. The UMd. database lists 64 attacks on American diplomatic targets during the George W. Bush administration, including car bombs at the US embassy in Yemen and armed attackers assaulting a US consulate in Saudi Arabia.
It's currently unclear to what degree mismanagement, security lapses, or intelligence failures meant the United States failed to anticipate the attack on the consulate in Benghazi. But no matter which party is in office, no matter who is president, terrorism and violence are always going to be a potential risk for foreign-service officers serving in troubled areas. The important thing, Chamberlain says, is to stay engaged.
"Every ambassador and [foreign-service officer] understands the risks we take in being abroad," Chamberlin says. "I don't know any ambassador who hides in his embassy. Getting out with the public and speaking is our job, it's why we're there. If you don't want to do that you shouldn't go."
Adam Serwer is a former reporter at Mother Jones.
National
US diplomatic missions attacked at least 44 times in 52 years
Pakistan leads with five attacks on American diplomatic facilities
Sabir Shah
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
From Print Edition
LAHORE: Sunday’s attack on the US Consulate in Karachi was at least the 44th major offensive launched by angry local mobs or terrorists against the American diplomatic facilities around the world during these last five decades or so, a research conducted by “The News International” shows.
Some 44 attacks in just over 50 years, or 52 years since 1958 to be more precise, thus reinforce the common belief that life has never been easy for American diplomats posted in foreign countries. In Pakistan, the American diplomatic facilities have now been attacked five times — probably more than any other country in this context — meaning thereby that on an average, the US embassy or consulates have come under attack once every seventh year in this Islamic Republic since November 21, 1979.
While the US embassies and consulates remained the most frequently-targeted international foreign missions during this 52-year period under review, over a dozen of these attacks were recorded during former President George W. Bush’s tenure — the most during the rule of any president in the world super power’s history. Here follows the list of 44 attacks, according to information extracted from various sources including the US Naval History and Heritage, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Al-Jazeera TV etc:
1) On January 27, 1958, the US embassy at Ankara was attacked. This happened just a couple of days before John Foster Dulles, the then US Secretary of State under President Dwight Eisenhower, was set to arrive in this Turkish city for a Baghdad Pact meeting.
2) The United States Embassy at Libreville (Gabon) was bombed on March 5, 1964.
3) The United States Embassy at Libreville was again attacked on March 8, 1964.
4) On January 31, 1968, the US embassy at Saigon (South Vietnam) was attacked, killing few diplomats who had to fight themselves.
5) One person was killed when the US embassy at Phnom Penh, Cambodia was attacked on September 26, 1971, while a softball game was in progress.
6) A US marine was wounded when Communists in Manila attacked the American diplomatic mission in 1972.
7) On August 19, 1974, the US ambassador and his assistant were killed by a sniper in a riot outside the country’s embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus.
8) On August 4, 1975, Japanese Red Army gunmen raided the US embassy at Kuala Lumpur. No casualties were reported.
9) On Nov 4, 1979, US embassy at Tehran was attacked and country’s 52 diplomats were taken hostage by a group of pro-Revolution students and hardliners. The Iran hostage crisis continued for 444 days till January 20, 1981.
10) On Nov 21, 1979, a mob attacked US embassy in Islamabad, killing two American diplomats.
11) On December 2, 1979, the US embassy at Tripoli (Libya) was attacked. No casualties were reported.
12) On April 18, 1983, a car bomb attack on US embassy at Beirut claimed 63 lives, including 17 Americans.
13) On Dec 12, 1983, a truck bomb exploded outside US embassy at Kuwait, killing six people.
14) On September 20, 1984, a Hezbollah truck bomb outside the US embassy at Beirut killed 24 people, including two Americans.
15) In Nov 1984, a car bomb outside the US embassy at Bogota (Columbia) killed one person.
16) On May 14, 1986, Japanese Red Army attacked the US embassy at Jakarta.
17) On June 9, 1987, Japanese Red Army attacked the US embassy at Rome.
18) On September 17, 1989, a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) fired on US embassy at Bogota (Colombia) caused no damage.
19) In 1990, the US Embassy at Tel Aviv (Israel) was attacked.
20) On July 27, 1993, a car bomb planted outside the US Embassy at Lima (Peru) ripped off.
21) On September 13, 1995, an RPG was fired on US embassy at Moscow.
22) On June 21, 1988, an RPG was fired on the US embassy at Beirut by Hezbollah.
23) On August 7, 1988, Al-Qaeda attacked the US embassy at Nairobi.
24) On August 7, 1988, Al-Qaeda also attacked the US embassy at Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania). The two simultaneous attacks had killed 224 people altogether.
25) On January 22, 2002, Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami gunmen attacked the US consulate at Kolkata, killing five people.
26) On June 14, 2002, an Al-Qaeda truck bomb detonated outside the US consulate at Karachi, killing 12.
27) On October 12, 2002, the US consular office at Denpasar (Indonesia) was bombed by Jemaah Islamiyah as part of the Bali bombings.
28) In 2002 again, nine people were killed by bomb blast near US embassy in Lima (Peru). It was seen as attempt to disrupt forthcoming visit by President George W. Bush.
29) On February 28, 2003, unknown gunmen attacked US embassy at Islamabad, killing two people.
30) On June 30, 2004, a suicide bomber hailing from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan attacked US embassy at Tashkent, killing two people.
31) On December 6, 2004, Al-Qaeda gunmen raided the diplomatic compound at Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), killing nine Americans.
32) On March 2, 2006, two people were killed when a car bomb exploded outside the US consulate in Karachi.
33) On September 12, 2006, gunmen raided the US embassy at Damascus (Syria), killing four people.
34) On January 12, 2007, a Greek revolutionary group fired an RPG at the US embassy at Greece. No damage done.
35) On March 18, 2008, a mortar attack at the US Embassy at Sana’a (Yemen) killed two people.
36) On July 9, 2008, an armed attack at the US consulate at Istanbul killed six people.
37) On September 17, 2008, 16 people were killed when the US embassy at Sana’a (Yemen) was attacked.
38) On July 11, 2011, supporters of the Syrian government stormed the US embassy at Damascus, smashing windows and raising a Syrian flag at the US diplomatic compound. The office building was damaged as the Syrian security forces were slow to respond. Following the embassy assault, the residence of the US ambassador, Robert Ford, was also attacked by a mob.
39) On September 13, 2011, Taliban attacked the US embassy and the NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters at Kabul with small arms and RPGs.
40) On October 28, 2011, a man armed with an automatic weapon fired shots at the US embassy at Sarajevo, hitting a police officer before authorities shot and wounded him.
41) On April 5, 2012, eight people lost lives when the US Consulate at Peshawar was attacked.
42) On September 11, 2012, a group of violent protesters stormed the US consulate at Benghazi (Libya) against the recent anti-Islam blasphemous video film—- killing the US Ambassador and three staff members.
43) On September 11, 2012, the US embassy at Cairo was also attacked.
44) On September 11, 2012, the US embassy at Sana’a too came under an aggressive assault.
Most attacks? Under Bush and Reagan. Obama has 4 deaths to Bush's 80 or so. Please. Put it to bed. Fork it, its done. Its over. Nothing to see. Move on for the love of Mike.
