The Ambassador's Tragic Death: a Casualty of US-Middle Eastern Policy

Four diplomats, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, were killed in a rocket attack on September 11 in the city of Benghazi, an action Obama strongly condemned. On the same day, protesters in Egypt also attacked the U.S. Embassy. The reason for both attacks was a film produced by an American that Arabs have determined to be an insult to the Prophet Muhammad. This is the most intense conflict between the U.S. and Arab community since the spread of the “Arab Spring.”

A nation’s ambassador being killed in the country of their posting is an event of extreme significance to foreign relations and often indicates a massive failure of the injured country’s foreign policy. As the Libyan revolution was supported by the U.S., and as Benghazi was also the headquarters of the movement, the political and symbolic significance of the U.S. ambassador’s death is particularly grave.

The planned assault brings to mind, or leads the rest of the world to suspect, three failures on the part of the United States. The first is the failure of America’s strategy for the past 10 years to democratize the greater Middle East. It demonstrates the raw nature of democratization in the Middle East, which has not brought positive developments in regional order, nor led the Arab world to orient itself in an obviously pro-West direction. The killing of the U.S. ambassador shows that factions hostile toward the United States still have a significant base in the region.

The second is the failure of Obama’s policies since 2011 toward the Middle East and North Africa. The Obama administration encouraged the Middle East to democratize and uproot its old strongman politics. However, the U.S. refused to make new investments in the Middle East and instead shifted a great deal of strength to Asia and the Pacific, reducing America’s real leverage to control the Middle Eastern situation.

The third is the failure of the theory that the U.S. has “won” the war on terror. After Osama bin Laden was killed last year, the U.S. assumed that a stage of the war on terror had come to a close and that the threat level that terrorism posed to the United States could be lowered. The ambassador’s death yesterday will certainly make the U.S. reassess this theory.

Yesterday’s attack will undoubtedly deeply affect the U.S. and will also reach all of the West. The severe cultural clash between America and the West and the Arab world has not lessened because of the revolutions. Quite the opposite, in fact — the Arab people’s dissatisfaction with the West has lost the buffer of strongman politics, becoming unhidden and unhindered, and the probability of a real and intense conflict between the two civilizations is increasing.

The Internet age is also putting the disrespect for Arab culture amongst Americans on display. In the last two years, it has been only amongst Americans and their military personnel serving abroad that cases of profaning the Quran have occurred. Arabs have long harbored anger over this, and the protests of the past two days were also, on a certain level, the release of all these feelings.

The killing of a foreign ambassador impinges upon a minimum threshold that human civilization has established, and the global mainstream opinion will be that of condemnation. However, just as with 9/11, the Arab people’s real attitude is far more complex. Eleven years prior, a few Arabs caused the attacks of 9/11. This time, it is again 9/11, a U.S. ambassador has been killed in an Arab country and history has seemingly come full circle, but in actuality, not much has changed.

America’s latest misfortune in the Arab world is a sign that the region may fall into a high level of anarchy. Democracy walked in wearing new clothes, but in the blink of an eye took a roll in the mud. Theocracy has won the first victory, and who will win the next is entirely undecided.

U.S. diplomats put their lives at risk in many countries, and the political implications of this danger are extremely deep. Hopefully, the U.S. will seriously work to remove those old and intricate elements causing the danger, for the sake of both the precious lives of its diplomats and the stability and peace of every region of the world.