The following is the entire statement — condemned by Governor Romney and disavowed by the Obama administration — that was released by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo responding to the furor over an American-made hate film targeting Muslims, several hours before the protests that would breach their walls (contrary to Mr. Romney’s bizarrely repeated claims). Please note that the values in the following statement are now explicitly the values that our highest political leaders reject:
U.S. Embassy Condemns Religious Incitement
September 11, 2012
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.
Wow, what terrorist sympathizer (to paraphrase Gov. Romney) wrote that claptrap? Have you ever in your life seen such apologizing for America?
Has the Obama administration distinguished itself from the actually un-American (in character) comments of this imbecile, Romney? On the contrary! In standard fashion, President Obama wasted no time in dashing off to embrace the fringe-right. Both ABC News and Politico have reported that, per an administration official, the statement by the U.S. embassy in Cairo was inappropriate and “does not reflect the views of the United States government.”
(Having observed the U.S. government closely over the years, I concur that, indeed, it does not.)
And what of our actual values? The sad truth (and nauseating irony) is that America’s obsession with redrawing the map of the Middle East and crushing (Shi’ite) Iran has once again realigned our state interests with those of (Sunni) al Qaeda: in Libya, Syria, and Lebanon, at least (again, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Seymour Hersh’s 2007 article, “The Redirection,” should be essential reading for anyone trying to figure out American foreign policy in the region today).
Once again, through our Saudi Arabian (Sunni) allies, we’re funneling millions of dollars and heavy arms to the extremist Salafis and Wahhabis who hate us, even though many of them are evidently marching to al Qaeda’s fife. For, in addition to his call to support the U.S.-backed uprising in Syria, al Qaeda’s co-founder (with Osama bin Laden), Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, called for anti-American action in Libya, just 24 hours before America’s ambassador and three others were killed on this latest anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks — an incident that has helped ignite (along with the hate film itself) a fire of protest and rage that has now reached Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq, Iran, Yemen…
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I realize that many Americans are confused at this moment, having bought into the propaganda that the United States has somehow encouraged or helped facilitate the democratic aspirations of the Muslim world over the last year — but nothing could be further from the truth. In Libya and Syria, America has co-opted and perverted the same “Arab Spring” that we otherwise tried to thwart in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, and Palestine. We’ve done so by indirectly backing terrorists and fanning the flames of ethnosectarian hatred in order to destabilize nations whose leaders we’d like disappeared, simply because they refuse Western domination (no other explanation stands up to scrutiny).
Here, in an excerpt from an excellent roundtable discussion featuring Glenn Greenwald, is former National Security Council and State Department official Hillary Mann Leverett explaining “what U.S. policy is about, which is: U.S. policy identifies expatriates living outside of the country, tries to fund, arm, and convince them to come together to be a front to go back and change regimes in countries we don’t like.”
Ms. Leverett’s assessment is useful, reminding us of the inorganic nature of the U.S.-underwritten chapters of the Arab Spring (the movement that, however inspiring, has succeeded organically only in Tunisia and Egypt; everywhere else, it’s either been thwarted by the West and its thugs or co-opted by foreign elements, leading Libya and Syria into their present nightmares).
And now some southern California screwball, convicted of at least two crimes (preparing to operate a meth lab and stealing Social Security numbers for the purpose of committing bank fraud), has produced a religious hate film in cooperation with his Muslim-hating American partners, including crusader-training, Temecula mosque-foe Steve Klein. When first questioned by reporters, the film’s racist director, Mr. Nakoula — the Coptic Christian, American — besides giving a false name, spread the fiction that he is an Israeli Jew and made sure that the press understood his views on Islam: “Islam is a cancer.”
It certainly seems like he was trying to provoke something, doesn’t it?
Too bad our political leaders are afraid to stand by our embassy’s condemnation of this filmmaker’s Nazi-like beliefs. Too bad that such timidity and exploitation/appeasement of right-wing hatred and bigotry is endemic in our government and institutions. But let’s face it: with Republicans pandering to outright bigots — and Democrats bending over backward to not offend them — America in the Obama-era is no place to build a mosque.