News and views relevant to US foreign policy for Sept. 12
“U.S. ambassador to Libya killed in Benghazi attack”: Reuters reports that the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed yesterday along with three of his staff when protestors and heavily-armed Islamist militiamen stormed the embassy compound and a [...]]]>
News and views relevant to US foreign policy for Sept. 12
“U.S. ambassador to Libya killed in Benghazi attack”: Reuters reports that the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed yesterday along with three of his staff when protestors and heavily-armed Islamist militiamen stormed the embassy compound and a safehouse in the coastal city of Benghazi.
The attack, which occurred shortly after the US embassy in Cairo was stormed by a mob, was ostensibly staged over an anti-Islamic film that has been publicized in the US. It is also possible that the demonstration in Benghazi over the film served as “cover” for a pre-planned assault on the compound:
The attack was believed to have been carried out by Ansar al-Sharia, an al Qaeda-style Sunni Islamist group that has been active in Benghazi, a Libyan security official said. Witnesses said the mob also included tribesmen, militia and other gunmen.
The Islamist militia denied it had taken part in the assault on the compound, which AFP suggests was strangely well-coordinated given the fact that the film cited as the reason for the demonstration had not been publicized for very long. Unknown persons set up a firebase in a nearby farm to support the men who breached the walls and set fire to the buildings:
Ansar al-Sharia cars arrived at the start of the protest but left once fighting started, Hamam said. “The protesters were running around the compound just looking for Americans, they just wanted to find an American so they could catch one.”
“U.S. Suspects Libya Attack Was Planned”: The New York Times reports that the Obama Administration has reason to believe the attack in Libya was preplanned – it is not clear if the assault in Egypt is also being investigated for premeditated actions – by al Qaeda sympathizers. The US announced it was pursuing an investigation but had no firm evidence yet:
If it were established that the deaths of the American diplomats resulted not from the spontaneous anger of a crowd about an insult to Islam but from a long-planned Qaeda plot, that might sharply shift perceptions of the events. But officials cautioned that the issue was still under urgent study.
The White House would not comment. “At this stage, it would be premature to ascribe any motive to this reprehensible act,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman.
But according to comments reported by the Christian Science Monitor, Libya’s Deputy Minister of the Interior Wanis al-Sharif has suggested that there was a link between the attack and the announcement yesterday –posted on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 by al Qaeda’s official As-Sahab news outlet – that Ayman al-Zawahri’s deputy, the Libyan national Abu Yahya al-Libi, was killed by a US drone strike in Pakistan.
Al-Zawahri, the Associated Press reports, “urged Libyans — al-Libi was born in the north African country — to attack Americans to avenge the late militant’s death, saying his ‘blood is calling, urging and inciting you to fight and kill the Crusaders.’”
The Deputy Minister of the Interior has subsequently blamed the American government for not taking precautions over this announcement. The US government has yet to respond to this apparent attempt by al-Sharif to deflect blame for the attack’s successful penetration of the embassy grounds after the outnumbered and outgunned Libyan guards stationed there abandoned their posts.
“Romney Campaign Denies Acting Rashly on Libyan Situation”: The National Journal reports that the Republican Party is deflecting criticism from both parties over their presidential nominee’s assertions that Obama was “sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt instead of condemning their actions.”
Romney’s comments referred to a statement, now since walked back, by the US embassy in Cairo condemning the anti-Islamic film for inciting hate. The statement was released shortly before a mob converged on the compound and scaled the wall, but at a press conference in Jacksonville, Florida, Mitt Romney painted the embassy’s statement as a response to the attack after it happened rather than to the film before the protest took place.
Ben Smith reports that in addition to cited condemnations coming from Democrats, Republican foreign policy experts have voiced dismay over Romney making his remarks before more reports were available to judge what had happened in Cairo.
But the campaign has hit back on the criticism of its actions, with Romney not retracting his initial remarks and instead telling reporters that “it’s never too early for the United States government to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values.”
Statements published by Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post – whose editorial board strongly criticized Romney’s remarks – show that several of Romney’s hawkish advisors, most notably former UN ambassador John Bolton, are rallying to his defense and blaming the media for mischaracterizing their candidate’s remarks.
And according to the National Journal, other “senior Romney advisers, who would not speak on the record,” are practicing damage control by presenting the remarks as part of:
]]>“[t]he larger point of Romney’s statement, which accused the administration of initially siding with protesters in Cairo, was that Obama is misreading the violent underbelly of the Arab Spring and jeopardizing U.S. interests in the region.
“This was a story that was building the entire day,” a senior Romney official said of the developments that took place late on Tuesday and into Wednesday morning. …. [a]nd the statement was about the consistent failure of this administration to engage constructively with the aftermath of the Arab Spring.”
News and views relevant to US foreign policy for Sept. 11
“New intelligence on Iran nuke work”: The Associated Press reports that the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) has received intelligence from the United States, Israel and at least two other Western countries showing that Iran has “moved further toward the [...]]]>
News and views relevant to US foreign policy for Sept. 11
“New intelligence on Iran nuke work”: The Associated Press reports that the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) has received intelligence from the United States, Israel and at least two other Western countries showing that Iran has “moved further toward the ability to build a nuclear weapon”.
“Nuclear Mullahs, Continued”: Bill Keller responds to reader questions about his column that argues against a preemptive war on Iran’s nuclear program:
Q: You say that after an attack, Iran would have strong motivation to rebuild its nuclear facilities, this time faster and deeper underground. But the Israeli attacks on nuclear reactors at Osirak, Iraq, in 1981 and Al-Kibar, Syria, in 2007 were quite successful in keeping those countries non-nuclear.
A: First, Iran’s multiple facilities, well fortified (especially the centrifuges buried deep in the rock at Fordow, near Qom) present a much tougher target than the reactors in Iraq and Syria. Second, and more important, the Osirak attack, far from stopping Iraq’s nuclear ambitions, hastened them. After Israel bombed the reactor, Saddam Hussein launched an accelerated, covert program to manufacture nuclear weapons. When the First Gulf War ended his ambitions in 1991, that program was well underway. Experts disagree how far Saddam was from having a weapon (estimates ranged from six months to three years) but the Israeli strike in Iraq accomplished what many fear a strike in Iran would accomplish: it gave the nuclear weapons program new life. Third, Israel’s attack on the (suspected) nuclear reactor in Syria was kept secret for a long time, so that Syria did not feel obliged to undertake reprisals against the superior Israeli military. It’s inconceivable that Iran and the world would not know whom to hold responsible for an attack on its facilities, and Iranian leaders would have to lash back, if only to save face. Fourth, what ended Iraq’s nuclear ambitions was a full-scale military invasion in 1991 – followed by an (unnecessary and botched) occupation in 2003. No doubt, occupying Iran would solve the problem of its nuclear program. Anybody up for that?
“Former CIA Chief: Obama’s War on Terror Same as Bush’s, But With More Killing”: Wired reports that Michael Hayden has offered words of praise for President Obama’s counterterrorism agenda after initially criticizing the POTUS’s early comments against programs Hayden helped formulate under George W. Bush, such as the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques and domestic wiretapping:
“But let me repeat my hypothesis: Despite the frequent drama at the political level, America and Americans have found a comfortable center line in what it is they want their government to do and what it is they accept their government doing. It is that practical consensus that has fostered such powerful continuity between two vastly different presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, when it comes, when it comes to this conflict,” Hayden said Friday while speaking at the University of Michigan.
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But Hayden, in a nearly 80-minute lecture posted on C-Span, said Obama came to embrace Bush’s positions. Both Bush and Obama said the country was at war. The enemy was al-Qaida. The war was global in nature. And the United States would have to take the fight to the enemy, wherever it may be, he said.
“The Deafness Before the Storm”: Vanity Fair’s Kurt Eichenwald delivers a bombshell report in the New York Times on the 11th anniversary of the September 11th attacks arguing that the Bush Administration had received multiple warnings prior to August 2001 from the CIA about Osama bin Laden’s intent and capabilities to attack US targets. According to Eichenwald, the White House dismissed the agency’s sources as agents “in” on a maskirovka directed by both Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden:
But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.
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“The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government’s transliteration of Bin Laden’s first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.
“Iraqi Spokesman: Al-Hashemi Is ‘Connected Directly’ To Terrorists”: Al-Monitor interviews Iraqi Government spokesman Ali Aldabbagh on the in absentia death sentence against the country’s Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi and the ongoing oil revenues dispute between Baghdad and the Kurdish north. The wide-ranging interview also touched on Iran-Iraq relations, including an oblique reference to reports that the US is pressuring Iraq to do more to undermine Iranian assistance to the Syrian regime:
]]>Al-Monitor: The US has asked Iraq to inspect Iranian planes flying to Syria to prevent arms and material from reaching the Syrian government. Is this a reasonable request? Will the government of Iraq consider doing so?
Aldabbagh: The US never asked [us] to do so, but it is our commitment not to allow the flow of arms or fighters to both parties in Syria. We had informed the Iranians that Iraq will never [allow the] use [of] its airspace to do so. Iraq is ready to be part of international efforts to stop any arms to Syria. We protect our borders from [allowing the flow of] any equipment or fighters to or from Syria. Iraq is totally committed to these principles. The US had satisfied with Iraq measures toward Syria.
Al-Monitor: How do you assess Iraq-Iran relations? Does your relationship with Iran complicate your ties with the United States, as in the case of Syria?
Aldabbagh: Never, on the contrary. The US understands that Iraq should maintain good relations with Iran, as we [have] been mediating between them. Even with the Syrians, we differ on some issues with US, while we agree and have the same ideas on some Syrian aspects. Such differences never affect our relations — the US respects Iraq sovergnity [sic] in building relations with others.