A video sharply critical of Islam and Mohammed, “Innocence of Muslims”, was first posted to the Internet in July 2012. Two months later, still a week prior to the anniversary of the attacks in America on 9-11, there had still been little reaction within the Islamic world.
But on the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York, armed militants stormed a “diplomatic outpost” in Benghazi, setting the building on fire. Ambassador Stevens, computer specialist Sean Smith, and CIA security contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, both former Navy SEALs, were killed over the course of two battles that night.”
The US administration was quick to blame the July video for the rioting in such places as Cairo, Istanbul and Rome that preceded the attacks in Libya, as US facilities and embassies were set on fire and attacked across Northern Africa and in the Middle East. And despite major evidence then available to the contrary from the American intelligence and diplomatic sources on the ground locally, the Libyan attacks were initially and through much of the next weeks still described by senior members of the administration as a spontaneous demonstration that got out of hand implying that as such they could not have been anticipated and thus prevented.
Now nearly two years later, the video release continues to be blamed for the riots of September 8-11, 2012 that occurred in Yemen, Egypt, and in Istanbul and Rome, although the attacks in Benghazi are now determined to have been a planned terrorist assault. But this narrative is wrong headed.
We have seen this all before, however, and that is a pattern of the US first not understanding the terrorist attacks against us and then falling victim to a serial attempt to find excuses for Islamic terrorism as related primarily to perceived grievances of the Muslim world against America.
For example, on September 30, 2005, a series of cartoons, some depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist with an atomic bomb, were published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. One report concluded that few people outside the Scandinavian nation took notice at the time. A group of Danish Muslim organizations brought the issue to the attention of Danish authorities but failed to get any action. By the end of 2005, any violent reaction in the Islamic world to the cartoons being published was virtually non-existent.