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How Could This Happen?
It was a mortifying week. We watched angry crowds protesting outside of American outposts throughout the Middle East and beyond. Violent mobs chanted, “We are all Osama.” Structures were defaced or burned. Islamic banners were hoisted where American flags once flew.
Americans were trying to focus on preparing for a presidential election—and we got handed a new mini-9/11.
In the week after September 11 this year, Muslim anti-Western violence hit nearly 30 countries, killing about 30 people. Especially in the Middle East and North Africa, we witnessed a meltdown of order in country after country. It felt like the world was unraveling.
This explosion of unrest sent a chilling message. For the past four years, the Obama administration has worked hard to reach out to the Muslim world—wishing Muslims a happy Ramadan; embracing the Muslim Brotherhood; apologizing for things America did in the Middle East to defend against the Soviets half a century ago; criticizing America’s response to the Twin Towers falling. When the Arab Spring began last year, the White House embraced it, praising and supporting the empowerment of the Muslim street.
September 2012 proved that strategy a failure.
Cairo and Benghazi
In two countries in particular, the attacks were especially vicious—and stung America the worst.
It started in Egypt—and on the anniversary of 9/11 no less. An angry, armed group of about 2,000 Egyptians surrounded the American Embassy in Cairo, breached the compound, yanked down the American flag, ripped it and burned it, then raised a black flag bearing these words in Arabic: “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his messenger.”
But that horrific affront was not the worst thing to happen that day. Six hundred miles away in Benghazi, Libya, a group of over a hundred heavily armed terrorists stormed the American consulate after nightfall. They fired rocket-propelled grenades and set it ablaze, attacked a nearby cia safehouse with guns and mortars, and killed a highly respected ambassador and three other Americans.
