Christopher Stevens, the Libyan

The fanatics who assassinated American ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, in Benghazi yesterday are not only criminals, they’re idiots.

This young, brilliant diplomat, so full of courage, was one of Libya’s best friends and one of the secret architects of its liberation.

In this common struggle, from Paris to Benghazi and then Washington, our paths have crossed several times. It began in Paris on March 14, 2011. Gadhafi’s troops marched on Benghazi, promising rivers of blood. France seemed to be all alone in its support for the Libyan revolutionaries. All seemed lost when I asked Mahmoud Jibril, correspondent for the National Transitional Council who had negotiated with Sarkozy several days earlier, to return to Paris urgently to meet Hillary Clinton, who was there for the G-8 meeting. Christopher Stevens helped with the interview. A very young diplomatic adviser, and feeling overwhelmed, as he later confessed to me, spurred by Jibril’s plea, he was one of the people who urged Hillary to immediately call Obama and relay the SOS that had just been witnessed. The rest is history.

One month later, April 9, we found ourselves in Benghazi where he was no longer an ambassador, but the High Representative of the United States in free Libya. Stevens took the issue head on. He was one of those who pushed for his country’s increased involvement, in the air and, through the first special forces, on the ground. I remember one morning when we both discovered, with a shared laugh, that we had meetings at the same time with the president of the NTC, going against protocol. I remember discussions that were lively but frank, and always in good humor, on the perspective of a Dayton Libyan who was in favor of and bet on a divided and confederate Libya. I remember his elegance, his bright smile, and the day on the road to Brega, when he delivered a vibrant, very literary, and in this place rather incongruous homage to San Francisco.

Then I remember, a year later still, in Washington, D.C. The story comes to an end. I came to interview Hillary Clinton regarding the war of liberation in which our two countries found themselves shoulder to shoulder. Once again, I bumped into Christopher Stevens there in an elevator; we embraced, and then had a long conversation in the cafeteria of the same State Department where he had announced to me his appointment as ambassador. He had the same juvenile air. The same communicative joy. He was convinced that a new chapter had opened in the long history of the United States with an Arab world that this time he saw as friends, not dictators, but people. He had the good intention of continuing to write and embellish this chapter.

The country that he defended, the city of Benghazi which he helped save and which he loved, were both fatal to him. 10 years after Daniel Pearl, another respected American, an admirer of the Arab and Muslim people, he has been a victim of the same fanaticism, the same barbaric and tragic blindness. The Americans have lost an ambassador. The Libyans have lost a companion and friend. The idiots have won.