Libya lessons for politically correct US

The Muslim world is burning. The spark was lit by an anti-Islam video made in the United States, which portrays Prophet Muhammad in a poor light. Over the past few days, protests have spread from the Middle East and North Africa to countries across the world. Even in countries like India, Muslims have given vent to their anger against the video (read the US and its policies).

The protests have turned violent in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan and many other countries. US and Israeli flags have been burnt in the Philippines, and demonstrators clashed with police in Indonesia, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails.

In Lebanon, the Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah made a rare public appearance in Beirut earlier this week exhorting Muslims across the world to intensify their protests against the video. Perhaps what Nasrallah said - the West does not understand the "breadth of the humiliation" caused by the "worst attack ever on Islam" - can drive some sense into Western leaders' minds and compel them to change the way they see Muslims across the world.

Egypt has seen some of the most violent protests, with demonstrators attacking the US Embassy in Cairo, tearing down the US flag and replacing it with an Islamist banner.

Muslims' anger against the video has seen attacks on US consulates, embassies and business interests across the Arab World. Protesters have also targeted British, Swiss, German and Dutch properties.

More than a dozen people have already died in the violent demonstrations across the world.

By far the worst and most tragic loss the US suffered was in Libya, where Christopher Stevens, US ambassador to Libya, and three other American personnel were killed in Benghazi in an attack on the US consulate on Sept 11.

That the tragic attack took place on the 11th anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks and came just after Libya's interim President Mohammed el-Megarif had returned from Bani Walid, a town still controlled by forces loyal to former Libyan leader Muamar Gadhafi, after negotiating the release of a person who had taken part in Gadhafi's capture and assassination, was no coincidence.

It is shockingly surprising that el-Megarif could travel to Bani Walid, whose 100,000 residents still revere Gadhafi, negotiate a deal and return unscathed. But it is more shocking that the US ambassador was killed in Benghazi, the cradle of anti-Gadhafi protests and the backbone of the rebellion that ultimately ended Gadhafi's rule.

In more ways than one this shows how far the US Middle East policy is removed from reality. The US-led West forced the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution against Libya and misused it to launch an attack to oust Gadhafi. That the West wanted a regime change in Libya was never in doubt. The West had already revealed its "hidden" agenda when it "dumped" Hosni Mubarak in Egypt after hobnobbing with (even mollycoddling) him for decades.

But what the US policy has yielded in the Middle East, and in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and other Muslim states is overall hatred for the West, especially the US, and led to radical Islamic elements rising to prominence and even gaining power. The development in the Muslim world exposes, and quite blatantly, the flaws in the American policy to spread its brand of democracy to the rest of the world through any means possible.

Permanent Security Council members China and Russia, and countries like India, stand vindicated for opposing the UN resolution on Libya. And time will prove that they are right in opposing any UN action to oust Bashar al Assad from power in Syria.

Some Arab states are openly funding the Syrian opposition, but the West has, at least publicly, refused to join them. Although the US is overtly reluctant to get involved in the Syrian crisis beyond talks and diplomacy, it seems the US-based Syrian Support Group enjoys the covert blessings of Washington to raise money for the Free Syrian Army despite fears that it might have links with radical Islamic groups.

Will the tragic killing of Stevens in Benghazi make the US realize how faulty its self-righteous policy is?

The author is a senior editor with China Daily. E-mail: oprana@hotmail.com

(China Daily 09/20/2012 page8)