Inevitably, the Romney campaign chose to use these attacks to make a hasty and stupid criticism last night, which represented the most tasteless political opportunism while also managing to misrepresent the administration’s response to the attacks. Here is the President’s statement on the Benghazi attack. Readers can judge for themselves, but it seems an appropriate initial response to me. There is no “sympathy” for the attackers to be found in that statement, and the Romney campaign’s attempt to use a foolish statement from the U.S. embassy in Cairo as the official position of the administration was typically dishonest. Romney didn’t have much credibility on this front before last night, and he has even less now.
Before yesterday, I had assumed that the Romney campaign was perhaps mildly spooked by President Obama’s post-convention polling bounce, but nonetheless confident that the bounce would recede and that the race would return to the status quo ante September.
Now: not so much.
The Romney campaign’s reaction to the attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya was, as Daniel Larison says, “hasty and stupid.”
I think Daniel is being charitable.
[The second point is that]there is no such thing as worldwide free speech. It’s not simply that few countries other than the U.S. have constitutional speech protections as broad as those of our First Amendment. What’s more important is that few people in the developing world separate tolerated expressions of hatred from official endorsement of such views. Indeed, while Americans think of free speech as something that protects everyone from censorious government, elsewhere peoples not infrequently demand that their governments limit speech. American diplomats must communicate with peoples and governments which not only recognize nothing like our First Amendment rights, but which see such rights as extreme and destabilizing — and with good reason. We in the U.S. may think that attitude barbaric and beyond the pale of civilized discourse, but diplomats addressing the public or officials of a foreign country have no choice but to deal with that reality, like it or not.
All three article are worth reading in full, even though they come from that bastion of socialist, collectivist thought, The American Conservative.
LJ and Archer should take a vacation to Libya or Egypt sometime- see how they treat women all over the rest of the world.
I lived in Egypt for 2 years and you don’t know as much as you think you do.
You liberals refuse to acknowledge that these people have intolerance, bigotry and hatred built into their belief syatems.
If you had any integrity at all- you would direct your anger towards those countries that really do oppress women - instead of the constant accusations being hurled at conservatives.
You don't know how cushy leftist women have it here- like I said- go try egypt or libya with that agenda and see how you get treated. You dont know what intolerance is. I don't care how much time you spent in egypt- your still wrong.
BearMtnHIB wrote: You liberals refuse to acknowledge that these people have intolerance, bigotry and hatred built into their belief syatems.
If you had any integrity at all- you would direct your anger towards those countries that really do oppress women - instead of the constant accusations being hurled at conservatives.
You don't know how cushy leftist women have it here- like I said- go try egypt or libya with that agenda and see how you get treated. You dont know what intolerance is. I don't care how much time you spent in egypt- your still wrong.
I was treated very well in Egypt. Let me see here: I was there as a woman, you were not but I'm wrong? Serious chutzpah there, bud. Sounds like you're expressing a good bit of intolerance. Are you going to call The American Conservative a RINO operation now? Just curious...
BearMtnHIB wrote: If you were treated so well over there- why did you come back here exactly?
Were you treated the same way that women reporter was treated in tahrir square? Gang raped for hours because she was an American?
Tell me about how well they treated you....
Jeez, what stupidity. I came back because the job ended and my family is here. Sounds sort of like, "America - leave it for good, if you're treated well anywhere else."
