AN analysis of the statement issued by the US embassy in Cairo on 11SEP12. Here is the actual statement from the embassy. "The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing
efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of
Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.
Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who
serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy.
Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We
firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of
free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others."
No apology there, but that isn't stopping mitt romney and repiglican extremist from exploiting the tragic deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his US consulate colleagues in Benghazi, Libya for political gain. This from PolitiFact....
By Louis Jacobson
AP photo captures emotional Hillary Clinton as she & President meet staff @StateDept after death of Amb. Stevens #Libya pic.twitter.com/66IDQiOG
The breach of the U.S. embassy in Cairo and the
deaths
of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other diplomats in Libya
prompted a clash in the American presidential campaign over whether a
statement by the Cairo embassy was an apology.
Just hours after the first details emerged about the Libya attack,
Republican Mitt Romney criticized the Obama administration for appearing
weak.
"The embassy in Cairo put out a statement after their grounds had been breached," Romney
told reporters.
"Protesters were inside the grounds. They reiterated that statement
after the breach. I think it’s a terrible course for America to stand in
apology for our values. That instead, when our grounds are being
attacked and being breached, that the first response of the United
States must be outrage at the breach of the sovereignty of our nation.
An apology for America’s values is never the right course."
During this news conference, Romney repeated variations of "apology"
five more times. He called the Cairo embassy statement "akin to
apology," called it an effort to "apologize for American values," said
it was "effectively apologizing for the right of free speech," and
described it as "what appeared to be an apology for American
principles."
This is a theme for Romney: He has long accused Obama of apologizing for America, starting in 2010, when Romney published
No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.
Since then, he has repeatedly criticized what he has called an "apology
tour" by Obama shortly after he took office. PolitiFact has examined
those speeches, consulted experts on speechmaking and apologies, and
rated Romney's claim
Pants on Fire.
The situation in Libya and Egypt is still developing, and details about
what happened are still emerging. But we wanted to examine Romney's
statements and help readers put them in perspective, based on what we
know of the timeline of events.
What the Cairo embassy said
According to media reports,
the U.S. embassy in Cairo released a statement at 6:17 a.m. East Coast
time on Sept. 11, 2012, amid growing anger in Egypt about an obscure Web
video with a highly negative portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad -- a
video that, given past experiences with depictions of Muhammad, seemed
likely to spark protests.
The statement condemned the video:
"The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing
efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of
Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.
Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who
serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy.
Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We
firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of
free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others."
About four hours later,
crowds began to form and over the next several hours, the protesters
stormed the embassy compound, destroyed a U.S. flag and replaced it with
an Islamic flag. About three hours later, according to the
Washington Examiner,
the embassy tweeted, "This morning's condemnation (issued before
protest began) still stands. As does our condemnation of unjustified
breach of the Embassy." (This tweet has disappeared from the Embassy
Twitter feed.)
That night in Libya, militants attacked U.S. facilities in Benghazi,
eventually killing the four diplomats. The news of the deaths was not
announced by the U.S. government until after 7:00 a.m. East Coast time
on Sept. 12.
Around 10:30 p.m., Romney
released a statement
that said in part, "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."
At a 10:15 a.m. press conference, Romney offered the remarks we quoted
above, in which he used the term "apology" or a variation on seven
occasions.
Also that morning, ABC News reported that the White House was
distancing itself from the Cairo statement. "An administration official
tells ABC News that ‘no one in Washington approved that statement before
it was released and it doesn’t reflect the views of the U.S.
government,’"
ABC News reported.
Who knew what, and when
In assessing Romney's remarks and whether the embassy statement was an apology, it's important to understand a few details.
First, the U.S. embassy released its statement at least several hours
before protesters stormed the U.S. compound in Cairo -- and well before
the attack in Libya took place. So the statement was not made in
response to the storming of the Cairo embassy, nor to the killings in
Benghazi.
It’s possible, however, that protesters had already amassed at the
embassy by the time the statement was released; that’s not clear from
the media reports we’ve seen. And there are reports, not backed up by
the current embassy Twitter feed, that the embassy did reiterate the
original statement via Twitter several hours after the embassy was
breached.
Second, Romney’s initial statement on the evening of Sept. 11 calling
the administration’s response "disgraceful" was made with knowledge of
how the Cairo incident ended, but before the announcement of the deaths
in Libya. On the other hand, significant details about both events were
available by the time he made his comments on the morning of Sept. 12.
And third, the
ABC News report
suggests that even the White House was having jitters about the embassy
statement after the fact, saying that it didn’t reflect the views of
the U.S. government.
Later, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney released a quote from
President Obama that said, "I think most Americans, Democrats or
Republicans, understand that there are times where we set politics
aside, and one of those is when we've got a direct threat to American
personnel who are overseas. And so I think that if you look at how most
Republicans have reacted, most elected officials, they've reacted
responsibly, waiting to find out the facts before they talked, making
sure that our number-one priority is the safety and security of American
personnel.
"It appears that Governor Romney didn’t have his facts right," Obama told an interviewer from
60 Minutes. "The
situation in Cairo was one in which an embassy that is being threatened
by major protests releases a press release saying that the film that
had disturbed so many Muslims around the world wasn’t representative of
what Americans believe about Islam, in an effort to cool the situation
down. It didn’t come from me, it didn’t come from Secretary Clinton; it
came from folks on the ground who are potentially in danger. And my
tendency is to cut folks a little bit of slack when they're in that
circumstance, rather than try to question their judgment from the
comfort of a campaign office."
Ilya Shapiro, a constitutional law scholar at the libertarian Cato
Institute, told PolitiFact that "the embassy statement was disgraceful
appeasement of Islamic radicals. The only thing that needs
‘fact-checking’ is the extent to which (the statement) reflects
administration policy."
We didn’t receive a response from the Romney campaign, but a senior
foreign policy advisor to the Romney campaign -- Richard Williamson,
former ambassador to the United Nations for special political affairs --
addressed the issue during an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC
on Sept. 12.
"The fact is, the substance of what the governor said last night was
true," Williamson said. "He continues to stand by it. We shouldn’t be on
an apology tour, but rather be aggressive in condemning this breach of
sovereign American soil. We should be defending our principles, our free
speech in pluralism."
He added, "The substance of what the governor said last night was true
then and it’s true now. The American people have a choice to make, and
it’s between an administration that apologizes for our values and
principles and someone who stands up for it … someone who leads from
behind which contributed to the turmoil and someone who wants to lead
from the front."
What three apology experts say
To explore whether the statement represented an apology, we sent it to
the four experts we interviewed for our previous fact-check on Romney's
claim about Obama's
apology tour. Here are the comments of the three who responded:
•John Murphy, a communications professor at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign who studies presidential rhetoric and political
language, said Romney was wrong to label it an apology.
"First, the statement does not use the word ‘apology’ or ‘apologize’
and does not use any synonym for that word. There is no statement here
that says, ‘We are sorry.’
"Second, the grammar of the statement condemns the actions of a third
party. An apology, to be pedantic, is when the first party says to the
second party, ‘I have offended you and I am sorry.’ This statement
condemns a third party -- misguided individuals -- that does not
officially represent the United States. The term ‘individuals’
dissociates them from the U.S. Therefore, it's impossible to say that
this is an apology from the U.S. to anyone.
"Third, the statement does not apologize for the right of free speech;
it affirms it. It condemns those who abuse the right of free speech, but
it claims that this is a universal right, as is religious toleration.
So, the statement does not like what the misguided individuals said and
did, but recognizes they have a right to do it."
"It's a condemnation," Murphy said, "not an apology."
• Lauren Bloom, an attorney and business consultant who wrote
The Art of the Apology, said that Romney is "once again allowing his emotional allergy to apology to interfere with his judgment."
Bloom said that "if there's anything more central to American values
than respecting each individual's right to worship as he or she pleases,
I'd be hard-pressed to say what it might be. The statement that
‘respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy’
not only is true, but is as clear an expression of one of our most
cherished values as I can imagine."
She said the embassy statement is "not an apology -- quite the
contrary, it's a confirmation that the American people recognize the
right to worship freely and will not accept religious bullying in the
name of free speech. To say that someone who deliberately insults others
in the name of religion has acted wrongly isn't an apology -- it's
simply a recognition that those insults go too far."
• Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, a professor who studies international human rights and maintains the website
Political Apologies and Reparations, a database of documents on apologies, said the statement is "not an apology."
Rather, she said, "it is a condemnation of ‘abuse’ of the universal
value of free speech. A condemnation is not an apology. … The Embassy
statement also reaffirms two American values: the American value of
respect for religious beliefs and the American value of democracy."
About this article:
Sources:
Mitt Romney,
remarks in Jacksonville, Fla., Sept. 12, 2012
U.S. Embassy in Cairo,
statement, Sept. 11, 2012
PolitiFact,
"Obama's remarks never a true 'apology,'" March 15, 2010
Associated Press
"Egyptians Protest Video, Scale US Embassy Walls," Sept. 11, 2012
New York Times, "
U.S. Suspects Libya Attack Was Planned," Sept. 12, 2012
Washington Examiner, "
The embassy attacks: A timeline," Sept. 12, 2012
The Atlantic, "
Moment by Moment, How a YouTube Clip Snowballed Into MidEast Violence," Sept. 12, 2012
Slate, "
Timeline: The Romney Campaign's Odd Response to the Embassy Protests," Sept. 12, 2012
ABC News, "
Obama Administration Distances Self From Statement Issued by US Embassy in Cairo," Sept. 12, 2012
U.S. Embassy in Cairo
Twitter feed
Email interview with Erwin Chemerinsky, dean the law school at the University of California at Irvine, Sept. 12, 2012
Email interview with Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, Sept. 12, 2012
Email interview with John Murphy, communications professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Sept. 12, 2012
Email interview with Lauren Bloom, author
of The Art of the Apology, Sept. 12, 2012
Email interview with Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, professor of
International Human Rights at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo,
Ontario, Sept. 12, 2012
Researchers: Louis Jacobson,
J.B. Wogan
Names in this article: Barack Obama,
Mitt Romney
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/sep/12/romney-says-us-embassy-statement-was-apology-was-i/
Philippine policemen stay beside a machine gun as they secure an area
in front of the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines, on Thursday Sept.
13, 2012. Manila police tightened security in the area following an
attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in
Libya. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
Mitt Romney addresses the killing of U.S. embassy officials in
Benghazi, Libya, while speaking in Jacksonville, Fla., on Sept. 12,
2012.
