Heads in the Sand (Updated: Gov’t “Invites” Filmmaker to Midnight Interrogation on Questionable Grounds)

It seems odd that almost none of the news services reporting on the Cairo and Benghazi attacks are mentioning that they were carried out on 9/11 by affiliates or sympathizers of Al Qaeda. The flag the Egyptian demonstrators raised over our embassy was Al Qaeda’s flag, and Ayman Zawahiri’s “reformed” brother was one of leaders of the mob. Now, I don’t think there’s much this administration could or should have done to prevent the overthrow of Mubarak, and I still think it did the right thing by intervening in Libya, but the always dubious idea that Al Qaeda died with Osama Bin Laden no longer passes the laugh test. Extremists are steadily gaining influence in Syria, and probably in Libya and Yemen, too. They’re still capable of killing people in Iraq, and they’re increasingly capable of killing people in Egypt. If the Libya attack (at least) was planned long in advance by Al Qaeda affiliates to avenge our killing of another Al-Qaeda terrorist, then it would seem that one anti-Muslim film was simply a convenient excuse to incite a crowd.

I’m not surprised that Egypt was ill-prepared for immediate self-government. That was probably the last thing Mubarak wanted to prepare them for, after all. I had held out some hope for a Turkish model — with the military hovering in the background to ensure that the next election would proceed on schedule — but that hope died when the army’s top generals were removed in a soft coup a few months ago. In due course, Egyptians will realize that unaccountable and authoritarian regimes are incapable of effective governance, but by then it will probably be too late to do anything about it for several more decades. After all, we tend to forget that it was Nazi sponsorship was essential to creation of the Brotherhood, just as we forget that in a very different way, the Nazis were essential to the creation of Israel. Egypt’s new President and 75% of his constituents believe some sort of 9/11 conspiracy nonsense, and judging from the events in Cairo, plenty of those who don’t deny 9/11 celebrate it. (Somewhere, Christopher Hitchens once wrote about the capacity of others to both deny and celebrate it.) The fact that the world’s greatest powers feel compelled to try to appease these thugs gives them a sense of power that life itself never will, at least until those societies create plausible pathways to self-respect, money, love, sex, fancy gadgets, and everything else that young men crave. But for now, there is no appeasing people like this, no matter how much some may try.

Previously posted here. I know that just about everyone in this country has piled on the noob who wrote those words. That may be the only good thing to come from any of this. I know how hard it is to be a civil servant trying to please six different audiences with conflicting interests. The problem is that on matters this fundamental, there shouldn’t be internal conflicts, and as for the external conflicts, we can’t reconcile them and shouldn’t default to a snivel reflex in the vain attempt to do so. In the interest of adding something new to this discussion, the statement is also risible as a matter of law. Individual respect for religious belief may be good civic behavior in a tolerant and pluralistic society (do you suppose that this week’s events will result in greater respect for Islam or the reinforcement of the worst stereotypes about it?) but unanimous, collective, mandated respect for religious belief is anathema to American democracy. On one of the few recent occasions when anyone tried to ban blasphemy in this country, the Supreme Court said this:

In seeking to apply the broad and all-inclusive definition of “sacrilegious” given by the New York courts, the censor is set adrift upon a boundless sea amid a myriad of conflicting currents of religious views, with no charts but those provided by the most vocal and powerful orthodoxies. New York cannot vest such unlimited restraining control over motion pictures in a censor. Under such a standard the most careful and tolerant censor would find it virtually impossible to avoid favoring one religion over another, and he would be subject to an inevitable tendency to ban the expression of unpopular sentiments sacred to a religious minority. Application of the “sacrilegious” test, in these or other respects, might raise substantial questions under the First Amendment’s guaranty of separate church and state with freedom of worship for all. However, from the standpoint of freedom of speech and the press, it is enough to point out that the state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them which is sufficient to justify prior restraints upon the expression of those views. It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches, or motion pictures. (citations omitted)

Some things aren’t negotiable. So why, in such a vain attempt, should we negotiate away things that really matter to us? We know, of course.

But this is nothing compared to the extent of the denial in the Middle East. For all the why-do-they-hate-us introspection our society has undergone since 9/11, the Middle East seems completely incapable of understanding why it has an image problem, much less doing anything to withdraw society’s approval of violence and intolerance. Governments — even governments that don’t claim the power to control speech and thought — have been known to exercise leadership on such matters.

I would still argue that our aid to Libya buys us influence within its government and puts us within hunting-down-and-liquefying distance of the goons who killed our Ambassador. The situation there is still unstable and fluid — the kind of situation in which we have the most capacity to influence the future shape of its government and society, as our late Ambassador must have known. The case is harder to make for sustaining our current level of aid to Egypt. Yes, we’re buying peace with Israel, and that’s worth something, and what’s more, it’s worth having friends in Egypt’s military and government, but how much is that worth if they aren’t willing to protect our embassy? Because we shouldn’t doubt that they’re able. And are we really invested in the success of the new government, or isn’t the best outcome that it should fail to keep its promises to the people, and that they grow disillusioned with it, as they did in Iran? One thing I’ve come to believe is that our obsequious response to the Rage Boys only arouses their predatory nature. Perhaps if our President were to publicly appoint a commission of inquiry to look into the response of local police forces to both incidents, and then suggest that a comprehensive review of our aid programs would follow, local governments would have an incentive to impose order on the streets rather than to stand aside and let us be the mob’s convenient scapegoat.

Update: Seriously? People are willing to kill over this? It’s nowhere near as persuasive, or even as sacrilegious as this or this (warning: NSFW). Judge for yourself while you still can.

Your government wants YouTube to remove this.

Update 2: The filmmaker has now been arrested, specifically for the act of uploading the video to YouTube.

On Friday, U.S. courts spokeswoman Karen Redmond said the Office of Probation in the Central District of California is reviewing whether Nakoula, who was convicted on bank fraud charges, violated terms of his probation in relation to the video and its uploading onto the web.

He had been ordered not to own or use devices with access to the Web without approval from his probation officer -– and any approved computers were to be used for work only. “Defendant shall not access a computer for any other purpose,” the terms read. [L.A. Times]

So the Muslim Brotherhood is now officially able to demand and get “legal action” taken against an American for offending his medieval sensibilities. Any President who won’t defend freedom of speech, our most important freedom, right here in our own country, should be fired for failing to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Any candidate who won’t preserve, protect, and defend freedom of speech doesn’t deserve to be elected in the first place.

But the case law says that restrictions that infringe on constitutional rights must be reasonably related to the objectives of the parole and probation restrictions. The state can prohibit pedophiles from having contact with kids, and it can prohibit an outlaw biker from having contact with fellow gang members, but blanket prohibitions against communicating over the internet, or against using Facebook or social media sites, have been held unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.

The American Bar Association, Standards for Criminal Justice state that probation conditions “should not be unduly restrictive of the probationer’s liberty or autonomy” and that “where fundamental rights are involved, special care should be used to avoid overbroad or vague restrictions.” American Bar Association, Standards for Criminal Justice 2d { 18-2.3(e)). [link]

Unless the feds have been equally rigorous in enforcing similar restrictions in the past, this looks like pretext to turn our government into a censor for Muslim extremists who will always find some reason to hate us and some pretext to express their hatred violently. I hope Nakoula files for habeas relief, and then follows it up with a Bivens action against whatever officials were behind this. It should make for interesting discovery.