BENGHAZI, Libya — The killing of the American ambassador to Libya reverberated around the world on Wednesday, challenging perceptions of the Arab Spring and weighing on the U.S. presidential race.
Tuesday’s storming of the Benghazi consulate followed a violent protest at the U.S. embassy in Cairo over an amateurish anti-Islamic film made in the United States and reportedly promoted by a group of renegade Egyptian Copts.
Initial reports said 52-year-old Ambassador Chris Stevens, a fervent supporter of the revolt that overthrew Moammar Gadhafi, and three other Americans were killed by an angry mob as they tried to flee in a car.
But Stevens is now believed to have died from smoke inhalation after becoming trapped in the compound after suspected Islamic militants fired on the building with rocket-propelled grenades and set it ablaze.
U.S. officials are investigating the possibility that the assault was a plot by al-Qaida affiliates or sympathizers, using the protests as a diversion to carry out a coordinated revenge attack on the 11th anniversary of 9/11.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the killings should “shock the consciences” of people of all faiths but vowed that the actions of “a savage and small group” would not make Washington turn its back on Libya.
The U.S. dispatched two destroyers to Libya and deployed a 50-member Marine team to bolster security at its Tripoli embassy.
“Two destroyers are going to be in the vicinity of Libya but only as a precautionary measure,” a senior U.S. official said.
Pentagon spokesman George Little, while declining to comment on specific ship movements, said precautionary steps taken by the U.S. military were “not only logical in certain circumstances” but also “the prudent thing to do.”
President Barack Obama quickly ordered increased security at U.S. diplomatic posts around the world, while denouncing the Benghazi assault, which coincided with the 11th anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks.
“The Marines are sending a FAST (Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team) team to Libya,” an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
U.S. Marines and private contractors are charged with safeguarding diplomatic posts abroad and it was unclear how the attackers managed to breach security.
The Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Teams, under the authority of the U.S. Navy’s chief of operations, were formed in 1987 to provide a fast response to security threats after a series of terror attacks in the 1970s and 1980s.
“These companies are called on to protect forces and installations when a heightened security threat requires it,” states the unit’s website.
There was no immediate conflagration around the Muslim world but CNN showed trouble brewing again on Wednesday night in front of the U.S. embassy in Cairo as anti-U.S. protesters clashed with security officers in riot gear.
New protests against the film were held on Wednesday outside U.S. missions in Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia in addition to those in Egypt. In Tunis, police fired tear gas to disperse a crowd of several hundred.
Meanwhile, Obama laid into Mitt Romney after the Republican White House hopeful criticized the initial response to the attacks on the Cairo embassy and Benghazi consulate as sympathizing too much with the perpetrators instead of defending American values.
“Governor Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later,” Obama said in an interview with CBS News, seeking to paint his opponent in November as a diplomatic liability who is unfit for the Oval Office.
“As president, one of the things I’ve learned is you can’t do that—it’s important for you to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts and that you’ve thought through the ramifications before you make them.”
Obama’s riposte to Romney served as a preview of a high-stakes foreign policy debate in which Romney and Obama will duel next month, one of three encounters that could be decisive before voters decide if Obama deserves a second term.
In a press conference in Florida, Romney denied he had jumped the gun with his statement on Tuesday, saying “an apology for America’s values is never the right course.”
Romney was angry the U.S. embassy in Cairo stood by a statement issued before its walls were breached in which it condemned a movie by a U.S. director deemed insulting to Islam as an attempt to “hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.”
Obama’s latest swipe at Romney came a week after he used the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina to portray his rival as a foreign policy neophyte who would usher in a new “era of blustering and blundering” abroad.
The president’s ally, Senator John Kerry—a possible pick for secretary of state if Obama wins a second term—also fired off a scathing assault on Romney’s credentials to serve as commander-in-chief.
“President Mitt Romney—three hypothetical words that mystified and alienated our allies this summer,” Kerry said, referring to Romney’s wobbly visit to Europe and Israel.
“For Mitt Romney, an overseas trip is what you call it when you trip all over yourself overseas. It wasn’t a goodwill mission—it was a blooper reel.”
Democrats also seized on Romney’s failure to mention an Afghan war strategy in his speech accepting the Republican nomination at his own convention in Tampa, Florida last month, as evidence he is unfit to be commander-in-chief.
Obama, by contrast, repeatedly touts his ending of the Iraq war, the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and the fearsome operation to hound al-Qaida and claims that he has repaired the U.S. image abroad as proof of “tested and proven” leadership.
Meanwhile, the mystery deepened over the identity of the director whose film sparked the protests.
An American-Israeli calling himself Sam Bacile was quoted in the U.S. media as saying he made the film on a $5 million budget with the help of 100 Jews, but no record of such a person has been found.
An Arabic adapted version of the English-language film was reportedly promoted by a group of Coptic Christians in Egypt, where clips were shown on an Egyptian television station at the weekend, setting off the protests.
Steve Klein, a consultant on the movie, denied that Israelis were involved in the film, and said Bacile—which he acknowledged was a pseudonym—was mortified to hear of the death of Stevens.
“He’s very upset that the ambassador got murdered,” he said.
The top U.S. military officer, General Martin Dempsey, called controversial Christian pastor Terry Jones, who has ignited deadly riots in the Muslim world before, to urge him to disavow the film.
Jones, who showed the film on his website on Tuesday, issued a statement confirming that he had been contacted by the producer of the film, “Innocence of Muslims,” to help distribute it and made no mention of Dempsey’s plea.
The video-sharing website YouTube said it was restricting access in Libya and Egypt to the film.
The violence in Benghazi was strongly condemned by Libya’s General National Congress, which went ahead Wednesday with the election of technocrat Mustafa Abu Shagur as the country’s new prime minister in a close vote.
The first task for the new premier will be to bring order to the myriad of militias born out of last year’s uprising, as fears grow that unrest could spread and derail democratic progress following the Arab Spring uprisings.
The Benghazi assault came after thousands of Egyptian demonstrators tore down the Stars and Stripes at the US embassy in Cairo and replaced it with a black Islamic flag, similar to one adopted by several militant groups.
Nearly 3,000 demonstrators, most of them hardline Islamist supporters of the Salafist movement, had gathered at the embassy in a protest over the film.
Worryingly for the United States, the first reaction of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was to condemn not the attack on the US embassy but the film that provoked it.
“The presidency condemns in the strongest terms the attempt of a group to insult the place of the Messenger, the Prophet Mohammed and condemns the people who have produced this radical work,” the president said in a statement posted on his Facebook page.
“The Egyptian people, both Muslims and Christians, refuse such insults on sanctities.”
The Muslim Brotherhood has called for protests outside mosques across Egypt on Friday.
source: japantoday.com
