The Middle East is a big, fractious and unpredictable place. The United States was reminded of that fact last year, when a democracy movement came out of nowhere to shake the foundations of governments across the region. Some nasty new evidence emerged this week when violence erupted at three U.S. diplomatic offices and left four Americans dead in Libya.
The violence, which coincided with the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, drew fuel from an anti-Islamic video made in the United States and was fanned by Muslim extremist groups seeking to undermine more secular leaders. Mobs attacked U.S. embassies in Egypt and Yemen, and a well-armed faction carried out a military assault on a consulate in Libya.
All this might not have happened under the iron rule of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak or Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, both of whom were toppled last year. The attacks are no reason to mourn the passing of either dictator, but they make it clear that events in the Middle East are largely beyond our control. In the long run, the transition to democracy should be a net gain for American interests as well as human rights. But it could take some grim detours.
Each of the three countries presents a different problem. The killing of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and others in Benghazi — a terrible loss for the U.S. — was the work of a group opposed to the new, elected government, which is pro-American and secular in character, and which immediately vowed to work with the U.S. to find the killers.
The mob action in Cairo, by contrast, apparently benefited from police indifference, and President Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was conspicuously late in denouncing it. In Yemen, on the other hand, the government has worked closely with the administration in targeting al-Qaida elements, and 24 Yemeni security personnel were injured battling violent demonstrators.
The priorities now are to upgrade security wherever American personnel are stationed, to bring the Libyan killers to justice and to let the Cairo government know it can’t abuse American interests with impunity. If they haven’t done so already, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton need to inform Morsi that unless he disavows such criminality and acts to prevent its recurrence, he can’t expect the $1 billion in debt relief the administration had been assembling or the $1.3 billion Egypt gets each year in military aid. The choice is his.
Considering that the attacks began on the 9/11 anniversary, the administration owes the public an investigation to determine if the State Department failed to take necessary security precautions. But the president’s handling of the aftermath has shown commendable restraint and resolve.
The same can’t be said of Republican Mitt Romney, who instantly piped up to accuse the administration, inaccurately, of apologizing to the attackers in Egypt. It was an irresponsible attempt to gain political advantage from a crisis, and it raised serious doubts about whether he is ready for those 3 a.m. phone calls that come to a president.
The charge that the upheavals stem from a broader pattern of American weakness is equally unconvincing. In Libya and Yemen, the administration has previously employed military force against its enemies. The U.S. military remains the dominant power in the region, and the administration has not been allergic to using it for sound and achievable purposes.
Nor is this bloody unrest an indictment of U.S. support for the Arab Spring. University of Michigan scholar Juan Cole says the episodes occurred because the democracy movement has “left the haters behind, reducing them to desperate and senseless acts of violence.”
The coming months and years will be perilous ones for a part of the world that is just beginning to follow the democratic shift that has occurred elsewhere. A bigger role for ordinary citizens will mean less certainty for everyone, including the United States.
The smart policy for Americans is to accept that we can’t control everything, reaffirm our determination to uphold our interests, and keep a cool head. We’ll need it.
