Hate Kills a Diplomat

WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 12: A U.S. flies at half staff outside the State Department September 12, 2012 in Washington, DC. U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

There are times when an international crisis comes to a boil, and there's not much the United States can do to prevent it.  What happened in Benghazi, Libya on the anniversary of 9/11/01 was one of those times.

Muslim protesters overran the U.S. consulate there and killed the four Americans who worked there.  One of those was L. Christopher Stevens, who was the ambassador to Libya.  He was the first American diplomat to lose his life while on the job in more than 30 years.

You will recall that, some months back, the dictatorship of Muammar Qadafi was toppled in a civil war with help from Europe and the United States.  And this is the thanks they get.

It turns out that all this violence is over an American-made video that made the rounds of You Tube (before it got pulled), ridiculing the Prophet Mohammed and doling out anti-Muslim rhetoric.  Media reports say that the man who produced the video allegedly duped actors into appearing in it, then overdubbed their lines in post-production.

The United States government had nothing to do with the video, any more than they had anything to do with a Florida preacher who threatened to burn Korans, or with anything else radical Muslims have done in the past to make people conclude that Islam is a violent religion and must be stopped.  But that doesn't matter to those who have been protesting at American embassies all over the Middle East.  To them, perception is reality.

It's still too early to say if President Barack Obama's handling of the situation has made things worse or better, but Mitt Romney couldn't wait.  The Republican presidential candidate, whose own visit to Europe over the summer wasn't exactly a success, reacted like any other candidate whose party has been out of the White House for at least four years:  Heckle from the sidelines, whether you have all the facts or not.

However this incident plays out, a couple of things need to be done going forward.  First, the United States must now tread carefully in Middle Eastern politics, given that the results of Arab Spring hasn't always been working in their favor.  Second, security must be beefed up at the American embassies and consulates, but not at the expense of diplomacy.  Third, without trampling on civil liberties, something needs to be done about hate speech online and in the streets.