Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin has the inside story on how the Cairo embassy sent out a statement later disavowed by the White House.
The statement, put out before protests in Cairo began in an effort to quell tensions around an anti-Muslim film, raised objections in the White House and the State Department. A reference to 9/11 and a line about “continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims” were considered inappropriate.
But Larry Schwartz, the Cairo senior public affairs officer, published the memo over those objections, creating a controversy that reached Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“The statement was not cleared with anyone in Washington. It was sent as ‘This is what we are putting out,’” one official told Rogin. “We replied and said this was not a good statement and that it needed major revisions. The next email we received from Embassy Cairo was ‘We just put this out.’”
Fact Checker Glenn Kessler, a former diplomatic correspondent for the Post, describes Schwartz as “a blunt professional who was not afraid of ruffling a few feathers every so often.”
In an interview with CBS News airing Sunday, Obama emphasized that the Cairo statement was not approved by his staff, but added that his “tendency is to cut folks a little bit of slack” in a potentially dangerous situation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/09/13/cairo-embassy-staffer-ignored-concerns-about-statement/
US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was killed in Benghazi yesterday, according to multiple reports.
Four Americans, including Christopher Stevens,
the US Ambassador to Libya, were killed in an attack on the US
consulate in Benghazi Tuesday. The attackers were armed with guns and
rockets and were reportedly angry about a YouTube film that made derogatory statements
about Islam and its central figure, Mohammed. In a statement released
to the press this morning, President Barack Obama "strongly" condemned
the "outrageous attack," saying that the slain US personnel "exemplified
America's commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations
and people around the globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who
callously took their lives."
There were also protests at the US Embassy in Cairo, where Republicans seized on a weak initial statement from officials there to paint the Obama administration as soft-on-Islam (the US Ambassador to Egypt, Anne W. Patterson, is career diplomat who also served as Bush's Ambassador to Pakistan). The initial statement (which appeared before the attacks on the embassies) and a few since-deleted tweets apologized for the offending video and criticized the "continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims." Though the White House told Politico it hadn't approved the statement, GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama of sympathizing with the embassy attackers, saying:
Despite the persistent Republican fantasy that the United States conducts diplomacy the way that Sean Hannity used to treat Alan Colmes, it's not clear a Republican President would have reacted differently to initial reports. In 2006, when European newspapers published cartoons denigrating Islam's prophet Mohammed, the Bush administration similarly affirmed free speech rights but said that "We find them offensive, and we certainly understand why Muslims would find these images offensive."
The statement, put out before protests in Cairo began in an effort to quell tensions around an anti-Muslim film, raised objections in the White House and the State Department. A reference to 9/11 and a line about “continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims” were considered inappropriate.
But Larry Schwartz, the Cairo senior public affairs officer, published the memo over those objections, creating a controversy that reached Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“The statement was not cleared with anyone in Washington. It was sent as ‘This is what we are putting out,’” one official told Rogin. “We replied and said this was not a good statement and that it needed major revisions. The next email we received from Embassy Cairo was ‘We just put this out.’”
Fact Checker Glenn Kessler, a former diplomatic correspondent for the Post, describes Schwartz as “a blunt professional who was not afraid of ruffling a few feathers every so often.”
In an interview with CBS News airing Sunday, Obama emphasized that the Cairo statement was not approved by his staff, but added that his “tendency is to cut folks a little bit of slack” in a potentially dangerous situation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/09/13/cairo-embassy-staffer-ignored-concerns-about-statement/
US Ambassador to Libya Killed in Benghazi; Romney Says Obama "Sympathizes" With Attackers
US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was killed in Benghazi yesterday, according to multiple reports. There were also protests at the US Embassy in Cairo, where Republicans seized on a weak initial statement from officials there to paint the Obama administration as soft-on-Islam (the US Ambassador to Egypt, Anne W. Patterson, is career diplomat who also served as Bush's Ambassador to Pakistan). The initial statement (which appeared before the attacks on the embassies) and a few since-deleted tweets apologized for the offending video and criticized the "continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims." Though the White House told Politico it hadn't approved the statement, GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama of sympathizing with the embassy attackers, saying:
I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It's disgraceful that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.Likewise, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus tweeted yesterday that "Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic." So the official Republican response to Americans being killed abroad yesterday is that the president of the United States is on the side of the killers, so vote Romney.
Despite the persistent Republican fantasy that the United States conducts diplomacy the way that Sean Hannity used to treat Alan Colmes, it's not clear a Republican President would have reacted differently to initial reports. In 2006, when European newspapers published cartoons denigrating Islam's prophet Mohammed, the Bush administration similarly affirmed free speech rights but said that "We find them offensive, and we certainly understand why Muslims would find these images offensive."
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