Nothing like a good embassy storming

Nothing grabs the eye of EVERYONE IN AMERICA like a good embassy storming. It echoes our past experiences in 1979 Pakistan, 1980 Iran, and makes Americans both angry and confused.

Most of us will sit here, isolated here in North America, and think: 

"Egypt, Libya, and Yemen may all be post-revolutionary places of chaos, but sweet hell, wasn’t it American support that helped overthrow their tyrannical dictators!? Shouldn't they love us?!"

That narrative is true. But it misses the point.

As journalist Jeremy Scahill says in an NPR interview, the people in Yemen see America as a strange ally: We support the worst and most corrupt in their country (who have taken control of the government), and shoot missiles from our drones that often hit villages in the countryside that aren't even al-Qaida.

Now, as it's turning out in Libya, the mob that attacked the US consulate seems to be the work of al-Qaida. And as it’s turning out, that mob was probably the work of an “organized attack.” Islamists from al-Qaida probably also had a finger in the embassy storming in Egypt, too.  

But blaming al-Qaida and thinking that people in the Middle East love American policy because we’re allied with them is short sighted. It overlooks that there are too many disenfranchised Muslims in the Middle East to count. For decades they’ve lived under brutal dictators, some supported by the United States, who like Hosni Mubarak, purposely choose to leave major parts of the population illiterate to safeguard against learning about the crimes of his own regime.

That’s the situation in Egypt. And it’s not too different elsewhere. So it should be of no surprise that these post-revolutionary countries are a little hot right now.

All that was needed to spark this recent series of embassy/consulate stormings was a trigger. And that trigger just happened to be a crude YouTube movie trailer, made by a twisted Jewish dude and a racist Christian, to rekindle public outrage. It’s terrible. But it’s all true.

In conclusion, the Middle East is obviously going through transition. Poor and angry Muslims who have been oppressed for decades are now free. Freedom, as everyone is learning, comes with as much responsibility as it does reward. And in the meantime, good on President Obama for deploying the Marines. It’s about time we have a little fucking security over there.


Update: Well, it's amazing how much changes overnight. Now protests are across much of the Islamic World. For an on point Q&A on how we got to this point, check out Jihadica's bit on "US Embassy Protests." It's better than what's in the NYT's today.