Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton’s remark, “What difference does it
make?”--regarding how the motive of the terrorists in the Benghazi,
Libya, attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and two CIA men isn't
important--will always be associated
with her. She added that the only important thing was to punish those
responsible.
Other than a number of obvious points, here are two things that deserve more consideration.
First,
the motive of an attack is always important. The Obama administration
represented the attack as being in response to an anti-Islam video made
by an Egyptian-American. If that were to have been true the implication
is that the attack was the fault of American behavior.
Critics
tend to see the motive as being due to sheer hatred of America or
something along those lines. In fact, the motive is somewhat different
and extraordinarily important:
--To
promote Islamist revolution by hitting at the United States, thus
showing America is weak and can be defeated as a way to inspire more to
engage in violence and revolutionary activity. You can call this the
strategic motive. As an example, at the time of Iran's Islamist
revolution many Iranians feared the United States, seeing in almost
superhuman, superpower terms, as eager and able to overthrow any regime
in Tehran that was too militant. Thus, the movement should be cautious.
Rejecting
this idea, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wanted to prove that America
was weak and could not stop his movement from doing anything it wanted
and this is how he portrayed the hostage crisis in the U.S. embassy. A
parallel case was that of Usama bin Ladin and the September 11th
attack. The message is: Islamism is the movement to back, it is winning
victories over the
infidels, and can triumph totally.
--To
show that terrorism works in injuring the enemy and thus is superior to
what others do, including the political maneuvering and mass base
building of the Muslim Brotherhood. This can be called the tactical
motive. The message is: terrorism is superior to the methods used by
other groups so let's keep doing it and increasing the number of
attacks. In this specific case, the United States easily helped
overthrow Qadhafi but it is helpless against our willpower, willing to
die, and
methods.
--To put the focus on hatred of America as a way to gain more support for Islamism as—to use
contemporary rhetoric—hatred of the “other.” This can be called the ideological motive. The message is:
Those non-Muslim, non-Arab Americans are the true enemy and any government that is on good terms with them is a traitor.
These
points have been repeatedly stressed by Islamist leaders—Ayman
al-Zawahiri comes to mind—in his writings. He and others spoke of how
killing fellow Muslims would make the revolutionaries unpopular but
killing Israelis or Americans would win them popular backing.
--In
this case, a specific motive was to portray the Libyan regime as an
American puppet. To overthrow the regime, it is necessary to attack and
defeat the United States, making Americans and U.S. influence flee the
country. The message is: the Americans cannot save the Libyan government
just as they could not protect the shah in Iran or Mubarak in Egypt.
Once Syria falls, the Islamists there will pull out Obama, Clinton, and
Secretary of State John Kerry quotes to "prove" that President Bashar
al-Assad was an American agent and thus everything bad he did can be
blamed on Washington.
The
Obama Administration wants to bury this analysis because it calls
attention to the threat of revolutionary Islamism and, in the last case,
to the negative aspects of its own Libya policy. Whether or not that
initiative of overthrowing Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi was a good
idea the fact remains that such a policy has costs. Whether or not
unilateral actions and the use of force is a good idea or not in any
specific case, standing aside and doing nothing while Americans were
killed will also have its costs. Whether or not America has made
mistakes in its past policies, apologies and concessions will only
persuade the Islamists and a large sector of the local population that
the United States is weak, can be defeated, and therefore attacks should
be escalated.
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Aside
from the irrelevance of motive, the other point Clinton made was to
emphasize that the most important thing was to punish those responsible.
While that sounds impressive, virtually nothing has been done to
achieve that goal. In general, of course, the problem is identifying and
finding the terrorists, especially if they are located in a country
which provides a safe haven to terrorists. The United States never
effectively punished, for example, those who attacked the Marine
barracks in Beirut in the 1980s
The
Libyan case, however, is different. Libya is ruled by a government that
is as close to being a U.S. dependent as any Arab government in modern
history. There is no sign of serious U.S. pressure on the Libyan regime
to do anything. On the contrary, we see that the regime has let suspects
go and that those responsible still operate freely within the
country.
Again,
we are not dealing with terrorists hiding out in places like Iran,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, or Lebanon but rather people going about
their daily lives in a country supposedly friendly to the United States.
Of
course, it is embarrassing for the Libyan government to cooperate in
going after these terrorists. But one would think, especially given
Secretary of State Clinton’s remarks, that the priority on getting these
individuals would override that political consideration. It doesn’t.
Remember
that it is highly likely—U.S. leaders with access to intelligence know
for sure—that high-ranking officials in Pakistan were helping Usama bin
Ladin hide despite receiving billions of dollars in U.S. aid. But Libya
is an easier case since supposedly the United States has a lot of
leverage there.
Remember,
too, that it is highly likely that the U.S. leadership let those brave
Americans in Libya die because it didn’t want to rush in with military
forces and embarrass an incompetent and unwilling
to act Libyan government. Indeed, we know for certain that this is why
the consulate did not have proper U.S. security protection but--hard as
it is to believe--the security was turned over to Islamists who could be
reasonably suspected as being anti-American and linked to terrorists.
The individuals guarding the consulate had not even received any serious
training.
So
Clinton’s show of indifference isn’t just a question of distracting
attention or callousness, it is a clear symptom of exactly what is wrong
with the Obama Administration’s handling of this and other issues. To
paraphrase Obama's own famous remark, Clinton's statement is a way of
claiming in
regard to the current crisis in the Middle East that the Islamists
"didn't build that," a guilty America did. That kind of thinking will
lead to a disaster for U.S. interests and the loss of more American
lives.
Barry
Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22
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