We haven’t seen a real foreign policy crisis in this presidential campaign yet, but the events on September 11th (and I hate writing that again) in Libya and Egypt have created one. There’s a lot of misinformation, screwed up timelines and political nonsense being injected into this issue – and that’s making it hard for any kind of rational thought to break through. And this issue needs some rational thought.
Republicans have a perception that President Obama has gone abroad and apologized for America. Regardless of how many independent fact checks review this perception and say the President hasn’t done this, that hasn’t changed this perception. This, coupled with the statements the President has made – he has acknowledged that we have been “dismissive” or “arrogant” of foreign views, that we’ve acted in ways contrary to our ideals in our behavior abroad, and has stated we’ve made some mistakes – has led large swaths of the American public to believe he doesn’t agree with the idea of American exceptionalism or that he is somehow willing to kowtow to foreign leaders. Throw in a couple of bows to a few foreign potentates, and a meme is born.
Romney’s statement – released early on September 12 – criticizing the U.S. embassy in Cairo’s “apology” statement was a response fully in line with that world view. The fact that Embassy’s statement doesn’t say “we apologize” is immaterial. To those of us who are unhappy when the United States seems to ignore our constitutional principles when dealing with foreign states, it was just a reinforcement of the idea that Obama is ashamed of America, even if he had nothing to do with the statement and the statement was not cleared through Foggy Bottom.
Here’s the statement in full, since many haven’t seen it:
“The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”
This statement, which was made before the Cairo embassy was stormed and before the terrorist attack on our Ambassador in Libya, struck many – including me – as being ill-timed and poorly drafted. The folks who this message was targeted to – the Egyptians who were angry about a stupid webvideo – wouldn’t care what we said and they wouldn’t believe it, either. It certainly wasn’t going to stop them from doing whatever they decided to do. It wasn’t the right message and it wasn’t targeted to the right people. The embassy should have not commented on the issue at all.
Romney was right, then, to criticize the statement. The problem is his criticism conflated the Embassy statement with the deaths in Libya and the rioting. The statement was made before the rioting. His timing was off.
The full timeline is available here. The embassy statement was issued at 5:00 AM on September 11th. The riots began around noon. At 6 PM, the Embassy doubled down on their statement of that morning, saying they stood by it. Word got out around 10 PM that a foreign service officer had been killed in Libya, but no details as to who. Romney issued his statement about the Egyptian consulate statement around the same time, 10 PM, but the statement was embargoed (meaning the press couldn’t use the statement until a certain time) until after midnight so as to keep the campaign’s promise not to play politics on the 9/11 anniversary. Given the fluidity of the situation, the Romney campaign cancelled the embargo, and Romney’s statement went out at around 10:30. The Obama campaign hit back after midnight, and the President confirmed that Ambassador Stevens had been killed around 7:00 AM on September 12. Those of us waking up and reading the news saw the statement about Ambassador Stevens, then the Romney criticism, and confusion began. The press played into this by ignoring the timeline and criticizing Romney for bad timing. As is the case with many fast moving events, things got jumbled.
The reality is that Romney was overtaken by events and a desire to keep his promise not to politicize 9/11. And he did keep that promise, for the most part. Honestly, expecting a political campaign to ignore breaking news, especially news that fits well into one of the campaigns existing core themes, is just not realistic. The campaign did the best it could.
The bottom line – the rational view of what Romney said – is simple. The embassy, and the Obama Administration it works for, need to stop criticizing Americans while trying to play to foreign audiences. Those statements just don’t work. Europe isn’t going to forgive whatever they think we’ve done to slight them because the President says we’ve been arrogant. And muslims angry that some idiot put together a film bashing their religion aren’t going to care if we condemn the people who did it. In the end, all we do is anger folks back home while at the same time angering people abroad.
Many Americans are proud of our record abroad, and we’re proud of our freedoms at home. We don’t want nor do we need the government to pander to non-American audiences. It doesn’t work. Romney was right.
