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September 13, 2012
When the Libyan uprising against Muammar Gaddafi began to gather steam in April 2011, American diplomat Christopher Stevens was determined to get there, but it wasn’t easy. “We arrived April 5th,” he later explained. “It was difficult to get there at the time. There weren’t any flights. So we came in by a Greek cargo ship and unloaded our gear and our cars and set up our office there” – in Benghazi, that is, the center of the uprising.
There were already numerous indications that the Libyan rebels were not the democratically-minded, America-loving pluralists of media myth. Rolling Stone magazine, of all publications, had warned in their March 21 issue that “America is now at war to protect a Libyan province that’s been an epicenter of anti-American jihad.”
That province was Cyrenaica, with its capital Benghazi. Rolling Stone noted that in 2008, “a West Point analysis of a cache of al Qaeda records discovered that nearly 20 percent of foreign fighters in Iraq were Libyans, and that on a per-capita basis Libya nearly doubled Saudi Arabia as the top source of foreign fighters.” The main source of those fighters – who mostly became jihad martyrdom suicide bombers, was Cyrenaica.
Stevens’ experience of Benghazi, however, was different – or at very least, the presence of al-Qaeda operatives among the rebels didn’t trouble him. According to a December 2011 piece in the State Department’s magazine State, “Stevens said the Libyans were genuinely grateful to the United States for supporting their aspirations for freedom, as demonstrated by the greeting the team received. The Libyans had hoisted British, French, Qatari and American flags at Freedom Square, the vast open area in front of the Benghazi courthouse.”
There is no way to tell whether any of the Libyans expressing their gratitude to Stevens in April 2011 were among those who brutally tortured and murdered him on September 11, 2012, but it’s entirely within the realm of possibility. Whatever the case, Christopher Stevens has now become the quintessential symbol of what U.S. foreign policy is doing vis-a-vis the global jihad, and of what ultimately will be the outcome for the U.S. if this continues. His story also demonstrates yet again how the establishment Left creates monsters that then devour their creators – as well as numerous bystanders.
Perhaps the most notorious example of relatively recent times is Jimmy Carter’s betrayal and abandonment of the Shah of Iran in 1979, in favor of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini and his fellow mullahs showed their gratitude to Carter by storming the U.S. embassy and taking hostages that they kept until Ronald Reagan’s first Inauguration Day. Carter had no one but himself to blame for his crushing defeat the previous November, for there would have been no hostages, and Khomeini would not have been in Tehran, had it not been for his efforts.
Carter would not and did not understand that there was no winning over a man like Khomeini, for the Ayatollah’s core beliefs included a hatred and contempt for non-Muslims simply because they were non-Muslims. No adjustment of their public policies would mitigate that hatred and contempt, or the warfare and subjugation that followed from them.
Christopher Stevens, and those for whom he worked, have long made the same mistake, assuming that hearts and minds initiatives and gestures of good will toward the Islamic world will eventually pay off in reciprocal action. What happened to Stevens instead, however, is more indicative of how they actually pay off.
What happened to Stevens is a microcosm of what is happening to the country in general. Christopher Stevens, after aiding the Libyan jihadists, ended up being tortured and murdered by them. And with this murder the Obama administration’s folly in aiding the “Arab Spring” uprisings is laid bare. Just as Stevens rushed to Libya to aid the forces that ended up murdering him, so also the U.S. rushed to aid rebels in Egypt and Syria, as well as Libya, thereby installing regimes that are proving to be much, much more anti-American than those they supplanted. The monster unleashed in the Arab Spring has already begun to devour its chief benefactor.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Christopher Stevens “will be remembered as a hero by many nations. He risked his life to stop a tyrant then gave his life trying to help build a better Libya. The world needs more Chris Stevenses.”
And the world will get them. Leni never feared there would be a shortage of capitalists ready to sell the communists the rope they would use to hang them. And now, even despite this brutal murder, there is no shortage of diplomats in Washington, ready to show their nation’s good will and bestow its largesse among those who will stab them in the back as soon as they turn in the other direction. If our nation continues indefinitely down this road, the entire country will eventually suffer the fate of Christopher Stevens, writ large.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
There were already numerous indications that the Libyan rebels were not the democratically-minded, America-loving pluralists of media myth. Rolling Stone magazine, of all publications, had warned in their March 21 issue that “America is now at war to protect a Libyan province that’s been an epicenter of anti-American jihad.”
That province was Cyrenaica, with its capital Benghazi. Rolling Stone noted that in 2008, “a West Point analysis of a cache of al Qaeda records discovered that nearly 20 percent of foreign fighters in Iraq were Libyans, and that on a per-capita basis Libya nearly doubled Saudi Arabia as the top source of foreign fighters.” The main source of those fighters – who mostly became jihad martyrdom suicide bombers, was Cyrenaica.
Stevens’ experience of Benghazi, however, was different – or at very least, the presence of al-Qaeda operatives among the rebels didn’t trouble him. According to a December 2011 piece in the State Department’s magazine State, “Stevens said the Libyans were genuinely grateful to the United States for supporting their aspirations for freedom, as demonstrated by the greeting the team received. The Libyans had hoisted British, French, Qatari and American flags at Freedom Square, the vast open area in front of the Benghazi courthouse.”
There is no way to tell whether any of the Libyans expressing their gratitude to Stevens in April 2011 were among those who brutally tortured and murdered him on September 11, 2012, but it’s entirely within the realm of possibility. Whatever the case, Christopher Stevens has now become the quintessential symbol of what U.S. foreign policy is doing vis-a-vis the global jihad, and of what ultimately will be the outcome for the U.S. if this continues. His story also demonstrates yet again how the establishment Left creates monsters that then devour their creators – as well as numerous bystanders.
Perhaps the most notorious example of relatively recent times is Jimmy Carter’s betrayal and abandonment of the Shah of Iran in 1979, in favor of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini and his fellow mullahs showed their gratitude to Carter by storming the U.S. embassy and taking hostages that they kept until Ronald Reagan’s first Inauguration Day. Carter had no one but himself to blame for his crushing defeat the previous November, for there would have been no hostages, and Khomeini would not have been in Tehran, had it not been for his efforts.
Carter would not and did not understand that there was no winning over a man like Khomeini, for the Ayatollah’s core beliefs included a hatred and contempt for non-Muslims simply because they were non-Muslims. No adjustment of their public policies would mitigate that hatred and contempt, or the warfare and subjugation that followed from them.
Christopher Stevens, and those for whom he worked, have long made the same mistake, assuming that hearts and minds initiatives and gestures of good will toward the Islamic world will eventually pay off in reciprocal action. What happened to Stevens instead, however, is more indicative of how they actually pay off.
What happened to Stevens is a microcosm of what is happening to the country in general. Christopher Stevens, after aiding the Libyan jihadists, ended up being tortured and murdered by them. And with this murder the Obama administration’s folly in aiding the “Arab Spring” uprisings is laid bare. Just as Stevens rushed to Libya to aid the forces that ended up murdering him, so also the U.S. rushed to aid rebels in Egypt and Syria, as well as Libya, thereby installing regimes that are proving to be much, much more anti-American than those they supplanted. The monster unleashed in the Arab Spring has already begun to devour its chief benefactor.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Christopher Stevens “will be remembered as a hero by many nations. He risked his life to stop a tyrant then gave his life trying to help build a better Libya. The world needs more Chris Stevenses.”
And the world will get them. Leni never feared there would be a shortage of capitalists ready to sell the communists the rope they would use to hang them. And now, even despite this brutal murder, there is no shortage of diplomats in Washington, ready to show their nation’s good will and bestow its largesse among those who will stab them in the back as soon as they turn in the other direction. If our nation continues indefinitely down this road, the entire country will eventually suffer the fate of Christopher Stevens, writ large.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
