Terrorist attack in Benghazi kills American ambassador to Libya, two U.S. Marines

U.S. Ambas­sador to Libya Christo­pher J. Stevens, For­eign Ser­vice Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment Offi­cer Sean Smith and two U.S. Marines were killed yes­ter­day when ter­ror­ists attacked the Amer­i­can con­sulate in Beng­hazi with rock­et-pro­pelled grenades and firearms dur­ing a protest by angry Libyans upset with a trail­er for an anony­mous­ly-pro­duced film that den­i­grates Islam, the White House has confirmed.

The attack on the con­sulate is believed to have been car­ried out fol­low­ing some method­i­cal plan­ning on the part of the ter­ror­ists. A group affil­i­at­ed with al Qae­da is report­ed­ly con­sid­ered to be the top suspect.

“I strong­ly con­demn the out­ra­geous attack on our diplo­mat­ic facil­i­ty in Beng­hazi, which took the lives of four Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Ambas­sador Chris Stevens,” Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma said in a statement.

“Right now, the Amer­i­can peo­ple have the fam­i­lies of those we lost in our thoughts and prayers. They exem­pli­fied Amer­i­ca’s com­mit­ment to free­dom, jus­tice, and part­ner­ship with nations and peo­ple around the globe, and stand in stark con­trast to those who cal­lous­ly took their lives.”

“Chris was a coura­geous and exem­plary rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Unit­ed States. Through­out the Libyan rev­o­lu­tion, he self­less­ly served our coun­try and the Libyan peo­ple at our mis­sion in Beng­hazi. As Ambas­sador in Tripoli, he has sup­port­ed Libya’s tran­si­tion to democ­ra­cy. His lega­cy will endure wher­ev­er human beings reach for lib­er­ty and jus­tice. I am pro­found­ly grate­ful for his ser­vice to my Admin­is­tra­tion, and deeply sad­dened by this loss.”

In remarks in the Rose Gar­den this morn­ing, the Pres­i­dent not­ed that Libyan author­i­ties attempt­ed to pro­tect Stevens and his team in the face of the attack.

“Libyan secu­ri­ty per­son­nel fought back against the attack­ers along­side Amer­i­cans.  Libyans helped some of our diplo­mats find safe­ty, and they car­ried Ambas­sador Stevens’s body to the hos­pi­tal, where we trag­i­cal­ly learned that he had died.”

A squadron of fifty U.S. Marines who have received spe­cial train­ing on pro­tect­ing U.S. diplo­mats have been sent to Libya, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma said.

The Amer­i­can embassy in Cairo, Egypt was also stormed by an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive mob upset by the film trail­er. Some indi­vid­u­als from the mob scaled the embassy’s walls, tore down the Amer­i­can flag, and replaced it with a black Islamist flag. Thou­sands of Egypt­ian police offi­cers in riot gear respond­ed to the mob. They per­suad­ed those inside the com­pound to leave, and then remained on guard to keep watch on the crowd out­side of the embassy.

No one inside the Cairo embassy was hurt.

Libyan lead­ers quick­ly expressed their con­do­lences and vowed to find and pun­ish those respon­si­ble for the attack on the consulate.

“We apol­o­gize to the Unit­ed States, the peo­ple and to the whole world for what hap­pened. We con­firm that no one will escape from pun­ish­ment and ques­tion­ing,” said Mohamed Yousef el-Mag­a­ri­af, the Pres­i­dent of the Gen­er­al Nation­al Con­gress of Libya, echo­ing com­ments by Libya’s prime min­is­ter.

In an attempt to quell anger direct­ed towards the Unit­ed States, the Amer­i­can embassy in Cairo released a state­ment con­cern­ing the film that it did not clear with the Depart­ment of State. “[W]e firm­ly reject the actions by those who abuse the uni­ver­sal right of free speech to hurt the reli­gious beliefs of oth­ers,” the state­ment read, adding that the embassy “con­demns the con­tin­u­ing efforts by mis­guid­ed indi­vid­u­als to hurt the reli­gious feel­ings of Mus­lims”. The state­ment was appar­ent­ly put out before the vio­lent attack on the Amer­i­can con­sulate in Beng­hazi, and before pro­test­ers scaled the walls of the embassy in Cairo.

The state­ment has since been dis­avowed by the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, even though it did not appear in any way to con­tra­dict offi­cial U.S. policy.

Writ­ing for The Atlantic, Max Fish­er mused that the inci­dent demon­strates the com­plex­i­ty of diplo­ma­cy in the Mid­dle East.

From an Amer­i­can per­spec­tive, it was imme­di­ate­ly clear that the offend­ing film, Inno­cence of Mus­lims, rep­re­sent­ed only the deranged views of its still-mys­te­ri­ous hob­by­ist pro­duc­ers. It is also imme­di­ate­ly clear that one cost of free speech is that you will some­times be offend­ed. But, in the Egypt­ian con­text, this might not have been quite so obvi­ous. “Peo­ple [in the Arab world] com­mon­ly believe that what­ev­er hap­pens in the Amer­i­can media … inevitably the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment is involved,” Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor and for­mer Pak­istani ambas­sador Akbar Ahmed said on NPR this morn­ing, explain­ing that, in coun­tries such as Egypt, often a movie can’t get made with­out the gov­ern­men­t’s approval. This may explain some Egyp­tians’ appar­ent belief that the U.S. gov­ern­ment approved of the film, which may in turn explain the embassy’s desire to clar­i­fy that they cer­tain­ly do not.

Mean­while, Egypt­ian pro-democ­ra­cy activist Wael Ghoneim tried to explain to the Arab world how the attacks would be viewed in the Unit­ed States:

[A]ttacking the US embassy on Sep­tem­ber 11 and rais­ing flags linked to al Qae­da will not be under­stood by the Amer­i­can pub­lic as a protest over the film about the prophet… Instead, it will be received as a cel­e­bra­tion of the crime that took place on Sep­tem­ber 11th.

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney made the deplorable deci­sion to attempt to use the tragedy to score polit­i­cal points. Instead of sim­ply express­ing sor­row for the death of Ambas­sador Stevens, his assis­tant, and pro­tec­tive detail, Rom­ney blast­ed the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion for the way it han­dled the incident.

Rom­ney offen­sive­ly claimed that the admin­is­tra­tion’s response appeared to “sym­pa­thize with those who waged the attacks”.

Rom­ney also erro­neous­ly described the Amer­i­can con­sulate in Beng­hazi as an embassy (there is a big dif­fer­ence between the two types of facil­i­ties) and referred to the city as the cap­i­tal of Libya (the cap­i­tal is actu­al­ly Tripoli).

The Oba­ma cam­paign rebuked Rom­ney for his remarks.

“We are shocked that, at a time when the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is con­fronting the trag­ic death of one of our diplo­mat­ic offi­cers in Libya, Gov­er­nor Rom­ney would choose to launch a polit­i­cal attack,” said Oba­ma spokesman Ben LaBolt.

“Gov. Rom­ney’s com­ments are about as inap­pro­pri­ate as any­thing I have ever seen at this kind of a moment,” added Sen­a­tor John Ker­ry, who chairs the Sen­ate’s For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee and is con­sid­ered to be a pos­si­ble suc­ces­sor to Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton as Sec­re­tary of State.

“They are flat wrong, but they demon­strate an insen­si­tiv­i­ty and a lack of judg­ment about what is hap­pen­ing right now.’

“To make those kinds of state­ments before you even know the facts, before fam­i­lies have even been noti­fied before things have played out is real­ly not just inex­pe­ri­enced, it’s irre­spon­si­ble, it’s cal­lous, it’s reckless.”

Rom­ney did not back down from his state­ment after reporters ques­tioned the state­ment he had released late yes­ter­day evening.

But oth­er Repub­li­cans were far more thought­ful and tact­ful, choos­ing to behave like states­men instead of polit­i­cal opportunists.

Repub­li­cans versed in for­eign pol­i­cy were aghast over the Rom­ney state­ment, accord­ing to Buz­zFeed.

“They were just try­ing to score a cheap news cycle hit based on the embassy state­ment and now it’s just com­plete­ly blown up,” said a very senior Repub­li­can for­eign pol­i­cy hand, who called the state­ment an “utter dis­as­ter” and a “Lehman moment” — a par­al­lel to the moment when John McCain, amid the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis, failed to come across as a steady leader.

Telling­ly, even Rom­ney’s own run­ning mate — U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul Ryan — has refrained from the kind of unre­strained and unfair crit­i­cism lev­eled by Rom­ney in his reac­tion to the tragedy. Rom­ney, as men­tioned, has cho­sen to dou­ble down on his orig­i­nal state­ment, which won’t go over well.