RUTHFULLY YOURS

What does the deadly violence against U.S. officials in Libya and Egypt say about the Arab Spring? Is Mitt Romney ready to lead in this international atmosphere? Is our current president?

SHOSHANA BRYEN
The violence in Egypt and Libya — now spreading to Morocco and Kuwait — is an indication that the U.S. is unable to buy leverage. We bombed Qaddafi and undermined Mubarak on behalf of the revolution, but it has not engendered warm feelings toward us — or our president — in their successors. (In Morocco, they’re carrying signs that say “Death to Obama.”) Revolutionary movements either have, or are co-opted by people who have, well-developed ideologies and agendas. The Muslim Brotherhood was forged over the course of decades spent in Egyptian jails. Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Haqqani network, Hamas, and Hezbollah know what they want to achieve, and it has nothing to do with representative democracy. They can’t be bought by a few months, or even years, of American largesse or by America’s dumping of Israel. This should be a warning about what we think we can accomplish by arming the “Syrian rebels.”

President Obama wanted our troubles in the region to be the fault of President Bush, but it wasn’t true. The problems in the Middle East are the result of festering tribal, religious, and ethnic hatreds fueled by oil money, a reasonably educated public, and better communications.

America’s problem is that it fails to understand that the enemy of my enemy is not my friend. He is only closer to me than my enemy, and only for now.

— Shoshana Bryen is senior director of the Jewish Policy Center.

DOUGLAS J. FEITH & SETH CROPSEY
The murderous anti-American violence in Libya and Egypt highlights a grim dilemma. Even U.S. officials who believe that promoting democracy and human rights serves U.S. interests need to acknowledge that popular revolutions against unattractive authoritarians can make matters worse. In other words, sometimes our policy choices are between bad and worse. Hatred of tyranny does not, alas, equate to love of liberty. One doesn’t have to feel nostalgia for Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship to recognize that the new Islamist government in Egypt seems intent on doing far more harm to human rights and U.S. interests than Mubarak ever did.

The challenge for U.S. officials is to maximize the chances that we can influence events for the good. By cutting pro-democracy funding in the pre-upheaval period and generally shunning a leadership role, the Obama administration has not met this challenge. This has been true in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere.

President Obama is more interested in renouncing American assertiveness and establishing the paramountcy of the United Nations Security Council than he is in advancing the particular interests of the United States.

— Douglas J. Feith and Seth Cropsey are senior fellows at the Hudson Institute.

CAROLINE GLICK
It is extremely telling that in the aftermath of the 9/11 assaults on the U.S. embassy in Cairo, U.S.-supported Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi has refused to condemn the attack. He has called on the U.S. to prosecute the filmmaker who produced the film that Muslims find insulting. In this vein it is important to note that the film was screened on an Egyptian Salafist television station. Moreover, the assault on the U.S. embassy was led by Mohamed Zawahiri, al-Qaeda chief Ayman Zawahiri’s brother. Mohamed Zawahiri was released from prison by Morsi.

As for Libya, it is clear that the forces who assaulted the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and murdered the U.S. ambassador and three other foreign-service officers were professional fighters. They were armed with RPG-7s. They were in possession of intelligence information regarding — at a minimum — the whereabouts of the U.S. ambassador.

When the U.S. began its sponsorship of the Libyan rebels against the already neutered Moammar Qaddafi, it was already known that elements of al-Qaeda were participating in the rebellion. And when Qaddafi fell, one of the first things the victorious rebels did was raise an al-Qaeda flag over a courthouse in Benghazi.

All of this is simply to say that the true face of the misnamed Arab Spring, so enthusiastically supported by Obama, is finally undeniable. The Obama administration has played a central role in overthrowing U.S.-aligned regimes and replacing them with regimes that are hostile to the U.S. and its strategic interests.

I find it noteworthy that the Washington Post was swift to condemn Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for referring to the administration’s apology to the mob attacking the U.S. embassy as “disgraceful.” It was disgraceful. And it is even more disgraceful that the Washington Post would seek to squelch debate about the nature of Obama’s foreign policy and its contribution to the assaults on the U.S. embassies on September 11.

— Caroline Glick writes for the Jerusalem Post.

BRIAN T. KENNEDY
Let us put this simply: There is a war going on between the Islamic world and the Judeo-Christian West. They seek our destruction by whatever means possible. We are the enemy. We in the West seem unwilling to acknowledge this.

In the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood operating in North Africa, it meant, in this case, the defiling of the U.S. flag and the murder of U.S. diplomats. These were acts of war. It was incumbent upon Egypt and Libya to protect our embassies. They did not.

Every moment that goes by in which we do not respond demonstrates a lack of resolve, demoralizes Americans about the justice of our cause as a nation, and persuades the Muslim world that we can be destroyed both morally and physically.

Governor Romney was right to be outraged. He should be praised for his restraint.

War should be declared and the terrible swift sword of American justice should be deployed. We should do so not out of some bloodlust but with the cool calculation that punishing our enemies for killing Americans will dissuade them from doing so again. There are ample targets within both countries — sites where terrorists train or operate — attacking which would give the United States a strategic advantage in this long war and demonstrate to the citizens of the United States that we will defend them and their interests.

That is the least that must be done.

— Brian Kennedy is president of the Claremont Institute.

SETH LEIBSOHN
The “Arab Spring” was always a lie unless “spring” was meant as a verb describing the propulsion of radical Islam to places it had not been before, such as the takeover of the most populous Arab country in the Middle East. Our president, after helping usher out our ally in Egypt (however tenuous an ally he was), congratulated the new Muslim Brotherhood leader of Egypt and invited him to the United States for an official visit. And lately, the talk has been about how and when to give money to the Brotherhood government there—not whether we should give it.

In Iran, our president provided the verbal wherewithal to crush the organic dissident protests there in 2009 and has continued a policy of trying to negotiate with Iran’s leaders — leaders who have been at war with us for over 30 years. Just this week, our secretary of state proclaimed that “we’re not setting deadlines” on Iran for it to cease its nuclear-enrichment program and added that she too favors negotiations as “by far the best approach” to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, our truest ally in the Middle East — which also happens to be our most surrounded ally — is publicly told by this president what its borders should be, prompting curiosity as to whether we’ve ever publicly lectured another country about its borders. No deadlines (or anything else) for Iran, but public lectures to Israel on its borders. We could easily build a longer and longer list. These are the messages the Islamists who want to kill Americans, storm our embassies, and burn our flag have received.

Having just come out of convention season, and reading the news of the last two days, as well as the last four years, I am reminded of Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick’s speech at the 1984 Republican Convention, indicting policies of appeasement. Her indictment warned of an America that might someday “depend for its very survival on the promises of its adversaries.” Someday is here. That is the America we have now — except we have done two other things to make matters worse: We have encouraged the rise of our adversaries and we have discouraged the defenses of our allies.

Islamists may be a lot of things, but they are not deaf and they are not blind. So while a lot of attention may be put on documentarians or mockumentarians here, the speeches and actions of this administration have proven much more consequential. Our adversaries, our enemies, are not the ones who fear us today. The only ones who truly fear us right now are those who have trusted and depended on us. The danger of this perversion of defense and foreign policy cannot be overstated.

— Seth Leibsohn is a radio host on KKNT in Phoenix, a fellow with the Claremont Institute, and the co-author, with William J. Bennett, of The Fight of Our Lives.

EMANUELE OTTOLENGHI
The Cairo Speech illusion may now be over. To lead, America must be feared, not loved. Much energy was invested in recent years to improve America’s image. Ink was poured to argue that Middle Easterners hated America’s policies, but that the notion of a Kulturkampf was the bigoted fantasy of “Islamophobes.” An American president made amends, in what was hailed as a historic speech. He changed policies, sought to be humble and multilateral, evenhanded with Israel and magnanimous with its enemies. He turned America’s back on old friends, thinking this would be crowd pleasing. He went to the U.N. He even opened a dialogue with the Islamists, though the only sign they had changed their ways was his hope that they would.

Yet the Arab world is still awash with hatred for America. Neither speeches nor gestures made the difference, in the end.

— Emanuele Ottolenghi is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

James Phillips
The September 11 actions taken against U.S. diplomatic outposts in Egypt and Libya underscore the growing power of Islamist extremist groups, who were the chief beneficiaries of the political turmoil of the Arab Spring. In both cases, Islamist groups used a movie that allegedly insults Islam’s prophet as a pretext to do what they wanted to do anyway: denounce America and expel American influence. In the Libyan case, the demonstration may also have been designed to cloak a terrorist attack on the consulate.

These actions are not only an assault on the United States but are also part of an intensifying power struggle, in which Islamist extremists hope to monopolize the anti-American soapbox in order to outflank and marginalize more moderate rival factions. They are determined to hijack the unfinished revolutions in Egypt and Libya in a similar manner to that in which Khomeini’s Islamist faction hijacked the Iranian revolution in 1979 by seizing the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

President Obama has bent over backwards to apologize to and appease groups that will only be emboldened by such apologies, because they see them as weakness. It reminds me of Jimmy Carter in 1978 and 1979. Governor Romney, who has a strong belief in American exceptionalism and a willingness to unapologetically defend American values, is reminiscent of Ronald Reagan.

In 1980, Iran released the American hostages in large part owing to fear of what Reagan would do as president, as Iran’s President Bani-Sadr later admitted. Would a President Romney command the same grudging respect in Iran and elsewhere in the Muslim world today? That is hard to say, but he would likely do much better on that score than Jimmy Carter . . . or Barack Obama.

— James Phillips is senior research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the Heritage Foundation.

DANIEL PIPES
For starters, could we grizzled conservatives delete the perky and inaccurate “Arab Spring” term from our vocabulary, in favor of something neutral like “Middle East upheavals”?

The recent violence against American missions is a small part of the large and growing instability in the region, ranging from Turkish insurgency to Syrian civil war to Yemeni chaos to Indian Ocean piracy, from Libyan tensions to Iraqi lawlessness to Afghan disorder. In brief, the name of the game is anarchy and it, rather than the more familiar tyranny, is the region’s great challenge. As the Arab saying goes, better a thousand years of tyranny than a day of anarchy. Anarchy also presents unique difficulties for a great power.

Barack Obama has shown himself unfit to lead. For one, his focus is domestic, with foreign affairs an afterthought. For another, he shies away from asserting American interests, seeing this as a form of imperialism.

As for Mitt Romney: He lacks a record in this area, but his executive experience looks good and he has a crew of competent advisers, making me optimistic.

— Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum.

Claudia Rosett
There is no simple Arab Spring. What’s unfolding is a new age of the world, and amid the fracturing of the old order in the Middle East and North Africa, there is a bloody struggle taking place over who will next make the rules and rule the turf. Far more is at stake than the future of Libya and Egypt. When America’s role becomes one of apology, of bearing witness, of leading from behind, of offering aid as an entitlement and subordinating its own interests to an “international community” dominated by unfree states, the result is to embolden enemies of freedom.

Looming beyond the September 11 attacks on the U.S. embassy in Cairo and consulate in Benghazi — which were attacks on American turf — is the menace of Iran, still rolling forward with its “unacceptable” terror networks, genocidal threats, and nuclear program. In capitals from Pyongyang to Caracas, from Beijing to Moscow, this sends a message of American weakness that will not be addressed by beefing up embassy security.

Three years ago, President Barack Obama went to the United Nations to declare that “no one nation can or should try to dominate another nation.” It is way past time for an American president — Democrat or Republican — to stand up on the world stage and declare that America is back, that there is serious leadership again in the Free World, and that America will defend first and foremost its principles, its interests, and those who choose to behave as its genuine allies.

— Claudia Rosett is journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and heads its Investigative Reporting Project.

BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
The lethal attacks that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Libya this morning, and the effort to overrun the U.S. embassy in Cairo, both highlight the dangers of an Arab Spring gone awry.

Washington should respond swiftly. First, the U.S. needs to strengthen counterterrorism and security measures around its installations, and focus on finding the fanatics behind the attack in Benghazi. It should also pressure Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi to pursue criminal charges against the Salafi activists of the al-Nour and al-Asala parties who are believed to have stormed the U.S. embassy in Cairo.

The Obama administration — or a future Romney administration — must link financial aid with the reduction of violence against Western targets. Morsi has largely ignored the plight of Egypt’s Coptic Christian communities, who face increasing levels of Islamic-animated violence. Misogyny and widespread sexual harassment of women in, for example, Egypt must be confronted by the leaders of Arab Spring countries.

Both Republicans and Democrats must resist the temptation to throw up their hands at these expressions of barbarism. Only American leadership can help these fledgling Arab democracies move forward.

— Benjamin Weinthal is a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.