revengeofareasonablemind

It’s Sunday at the Talk Shows September 16, 2012

Today I was exposed to the most amazing cacophony of punditry.  It hurt my brain.  But, it is Sunday morning and the talk shows rule (just before NFL football, of course).   After watching for some time I’ve come to some conclusions.  The Obama Administration is in charge of and responsible for foreign policy for the United States.  Mobs in Egypt, Tunisia and a host of other Muslim countries have taken exception to a YouTube video clip that is contemptuously and insultingly critical of Islam.  This has happened before with a cartoon in an obscure Danish magazine that prompted rioting in Muslim countries around the world. It is not new. This behavior is emblematic of myriad Muslim countries.  American foreign policy must account for the predictable behaviors and cultures of all countries in which our State Department has a presence.  As it turns out, Muslim countries deserve particular vigilance.

However, the Obama Administration explains that in this latest uprising in Muslim countries the behavior is not about US policy in those countries.  It is exclusively about this video that Muslim find so offensive.  I heard Ambassador Rice explain this position in a most emphatic way on Fox News Sunday.   Many interviewers are missing an important question.   Wasn’t that behavior predictable and shouldn’t the US have a foreign policy that addresses the possibility of such behavior getting out of hand and mobs crashing our embassy gates and occupying US sovereign territory inside embassy grounds in a foreign nation.  Diplomatic presence in a foreign nation is an identity with US foreign policy.  An attack against a US embassy is an attack on the US and its policies.  Otherwise the mobs would be attacking internet cafe’s where YouTube is available.

US presence is also an identity with US core values of freedom of speech, religion, an open and free press and the right of peaceable assembly that our state department is supposed represent to a foreign nation.  Our foreign policy fortified by our core values must anticipate that not all countries share our core values.  Muslim countries seem to be least likely to adopt a cordial coexistence with our core values. We should not be surprised.  We should have a foreign policy that fundamentally recognizes that this tension with other nations that do not embrace our core values will exist.

When Egyptian rioters write on barricade walls out side the US Embassy in Cairo, “USA go to hell,” rioting Tunisians set fire to our Embassy in Tunis, and our Ambassador to Libya is assassinated along with three of our State Department staff it speaks to a failure of foreign policy on some level.  It can’t be about a video.  The video was simply the vehicle that exposed the volatility of the extreme and maniacal sentiment that these people in Muslim countries hold for the United States.  They focus on the United States not because of our movie and entertainment industry but because our core values allow for free speech, in this case.  The consequence of free speech is that despicable and vile speech can happen.  Americans don’t like it, but we’ve fought wars to preserve the right.

The riots and violence in the Middle East this past week and for what may be coming weeks is exactly about US foreign policy and its failure to accommodate to and address the possibility that some nations and Muslim countries specifically don’t like the United States.  It is not an act of political desperation to point out this failure as some in the Administration suggest.  It is the legitimate revenge of a reasonable mind.