Is Obama's administration clueless on Mideast turmoil

 Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans are dead. Protests are roiling Arab nations, threatening U.S. embassies and diplomats from Egypt to Sudan to Indonesia. The Middle East is on fire, in more ways than one. For more than a week the Obama administration insisted that this was solely a response to the work of an obscure, asinine filmmaker. Now that story is beginning to unravel.

Last Friday, White House press secretary Jay Carney explained the violence in the Middle East: "It is in response to a video -- a film -- that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting. That in no way justifies any violent reaction to it. But this is not a case of protests directed at the United States, writ
large, or at U.S. policy."

The administration walked out Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on the Sunday talk shows to offer the administration's view. "What sparked the recent violence was the airing on the Internet of a very hateful, very offensive video that has offended many people around the world," Rice said.
The reaction of our leadership, including the president, to the bleeding and the slaughter of Americans was not anger, not fury, not a terrible swift sword of justice, but a sheepish response condemning the exercise of our own freedom of speech.There is a near invincible unwillingness on the part of the Obama administration to acknowledge the presence of radical Islamic jihadists. The video may have had some impact on the protests and violence, but are we to believe our embassy was attacked on the anniversary of September 11, not because of the significance of that day, but solely because of an obscure film released on YouTube? I think not.Radical Islam is antithetical to the American values of freedom of speech, religion, conscience, and equality, and will use any excuse to provoke attacks against us. In fact, its proponents don't even need an excuse, as the USS Cole bombing and attacks on September 11, 2001, proved. By blaming the recent attacks on a movie, the Obama administration refuses to acknowledge this serious danger, while at the same time blaming our own First Amendment.

president of Libya's parliament, was one of the first to pronounce the attacks premeditated. He said, "The way these perpetrators acted, and moved, and their choosing the specific date for this so-called demonstration, I think we have no doubt that this was preplanned, determined."

Will the rest of the administration now stand by its original story?

If a small, obscure, tasteless film is solely responsible for the anti-American sentiment in the Middle East, then American foreign policy is at the mercy of any provocateur with a pen or a camera. Rice went so far as to say Sunday, "As we've seen in the past with things like 'Satanic Verses,' with the cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed, there have been such things that have sparked outrage and anger, and this has been the proximate cause of what we've seen last week."

The Obama administration's foreign policy in the Middle East is one of appeasement, contradictions, and fecklessness. Or is this what "leading from behind" looks like?

Is Egypt, once a most vital ally in the region, still an ally or not? The President doesn't know. Why did the U.S. intervene in Egypt and Libya but not in Syria or Iran, where the threat to U.S. security is much graver? We don't know.

Why was there not heightened security at our embassies on the anniversary of September 11? Will there be retribution for the death of an American ambassador? It seems that the only retribution leveled will be against filmmakers and cartoonists, not jihadists.