Posted on 09/12/2012 9:56:15 AM PDT by allmendream
In civilized nations the lives of ambassadors and diplomats are held sacred.
When Xerxes sent ambassadors throughout Greece in 491 BC asking for the ritual tokens of submission, earth and water, many Greek cities agreed to submit. Not so in Athens and Sparta.
In Sparta the ambassadors were thrown down a well ("Madness? This is Sparta!" as the movie 300 would have it).
The deeply religious Spartans were appalled at what was done in the heat of the moment and sent two Spartan citizen soldiers (Sperthia and Boulis) to Persia to offer up their lives to atone for the sin committed against the Persian ambassadors.
When they arrived in Persia they were horrified to learn that upon meeting with Xerxes they were expected to prostrate themselves! They were sent to die, but NEVER to bow down! Xerxes laughed at their offer, refused their ritual sacrifice and sent them home.
But then, as now, among men of honor - the killing of an ambassador or diplomat was an act of war. Not so among our feckless President and our appeasing Secretary of State.
The attacks upon our embassies and the killing of our diplomats and our ambassador was an orchestrated attack, scheduled to take place on 9-11. The islamists fanatics were whipped into a fury by state run media. The mob has almost no access to outside information.
http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2012&month=02
"Such violence in response to purported religious insults is not simply spontaneous. It is also stoked and channeled by governments for political purpose"
Hey! Hey! Hillary! How many dead Americans will there be?
“Hey, hey, Hil-la-rey, how many of’r boys did ja kill today” ~ this one really worked on LBJ ~ he gave up.
Killing an American may or may not be an overt aft of war. Killing an ambassador certainly is.
Maybe if Obama bows down and apologizes again they will see the error of their ways/ s.
On an amusing note, throwing the Persians down a well was perhaps a bit more “earth and water” than was required.
The killing of Jumonville was an international incident, but he was a military officer not an ambassador.
Genghis Khan sent a trade caravan and later ambassadors to the Khwarezmid Empire, modern day Iran, Afghanistan, parts of Central Asia, to propose diplomacy and trade. The governor of a province and the Shah himself humiliated and executed them. Genghis did not take too kindly to this and launched one of the most devastating invasions in human history. The Khwarezmid Empire was wiped off the face of the map and cities and their populations were obliterated.
America needs to ‘Ghengis’ up! The great Khan knew how to make sure his nation was respected.
Has it occurred to anyone that Al Queda plans this sort of thing, so that we have no good options? If we do nothing, we look weak and lose influence. If we react with a heavy blow, as they likely would prefer, we destroy whatever contact and influence the US has with Libya, Egypt, etc.
Jimmy Obama’s “foreign policy expertise” is a bad joke, but is indiscriminate, immediate retribution the smartest move here? Arabs understand delayed revenge. Obama will do nothing ever, but I hope President Romney has a long memory and a strong stomach.
I agee completely. Ill considered action would be almost as bad as the apologies and no action course Obama is on.
Why was this title chosen for an article about Egypt and Libya?
It was intentional not an oversight.
Weren’t ambassadors selected as representatives of the government and thus usually friends or family of the leader because that’s the only person you could trust to speak for you?
The guy was connected. His brother was also in the fight commanding troops.
I think that you are correct, Just another reason why the king would go to war, revenge.
Egypt, Libya and Yemen cannot even pretend to have a free press.
The Egyptian President, who was quick to tell us that WE needed to do something about some nut making a glorified home movie about Muhammad quite infamously cracked down on any semblance of independent media in Egypt.
There is a reason why this obscure movie became MUCH MORE FAMOUS in the Middle East than it would have otherwise EVER have been in America (where we at least value good production professionalism) - and that is because the governments in Egypt, Libya and Yemen WANTED it to be famous.
They acted as the publicity agents for this obscure home movie - then tell US that we have to do something about it.
How about if WE tell THEM to shut the hell up about what some obscure nutbag does in America?
They incite a riot on 9-11 using this obscure home movie as the flimsiest of pretexts - and our media plays along either blithely unaware of or entirely uninterested in the fact that nobody in the Middle East (or anywhere else for that matter) would have ever heard of the ‘film’ if not for the publicity given to it via full and direct approval of the governments of Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
The Egyptian government is currently involved in a campaign to eradicate the Coptic people ~ the original population there, who were cruelly overrun by illegal aliens in the 7th century AD.
They knew exactly who produced the film ~ which has been out for some time. It had nothing to do with the demonstrations, but the film maker had a lot to do with why the Egyptian president went after him ~ sure, he's a troublemaker, but he's not a nut case ~ he knows all too well what it means to be hunted down like an animal by moslem fanatics ~ since that's just one of the reasons he's here in this country ~ he has been hunted down and if they could they'd kill him here.
He's fighting back with words.
Rush Limbaugh has been on this guy's case all day ~ so why?
Time to replace the fact checkers there, and Rush needs to be reminded that the 'NUT' as he referred to him, is exercising the same free speech rights that he is ~ and quite possibly on behalf of a far more elevated ambition ~ the right of his people, the Copts, to live free of moslem oppression and murder.
He would do better to film the real life, or ‘based on a true story’, events of Muslim oppression his people face - on an even greater scale now that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken over Egypt with the full approval of the 0bama White House and the Clinton State Department.
BTW, I recall distinctly being in a small group consisting of myself, Richard Cohen, and some little girls in an elementary school who were expressing concern about the genocide taking place in Sudan against the Nilotic people in the South.
They were Christian, and the moslem sector in the North sought to convert them, or barring that, exterminate them while reducing their children to slavery.
It was very difficult to expand the group of concerned citizens (Cohen had difficulty getting his well researched articles published in fact) ~ but eventually that happened, somebody cared, and South Sudan has its own country now.
That's the situation I see us in vis a vis the Coptic Egyptians. NOBODY CARES but me, a couple of holyroller preachers on TV and maybe an obscure radio talk guy somewhere ~ where are the little girls?
...and make a hack Mohammad porn video while pretending to be Jewish as about the 100,000 down on the list priority.
My sympathy for this nutbag went out the window when he pretended to be Israeli with Jewish backers. I guess he thought a Muslim backlash was OK as long as it was directed at America and Israel.
That's where the war is joined ~ and the insiders knew all about that, most particularly the Egyptian government's new masters.
Now, let's say the genocide takes place as planned in Egypt, are you going to be among the first to say "Hey, hold on, look what this Copt said about Jewish investors?" ~ OR ~ is it possible you will get over your own personal concerns, raise your face to the sky and scream in rage over the Egyptian government's murder of these people. That's already taking place BTW.
The Copts in Egypt are a despised minority with no power, no guns, and no organization.
He so played into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood / Egyptian government that there is rampant speculation that his is a Muslim pretending to be a Coptic Christian pretending to be Jewish.
As to what goes down in Egypt and what they do with the Coptic Christians there - I think we should have already shut off the money we send to them; condemned the treatment of the media, their people, and their ethnic Christian minorities; and covertly helped the Coptic Christians to be an ARMED minority within Egypt.
Right now the money we send to them finances the government that whipped up the mob against us - and finances the oppression and murder of the Coptic Christians.
I didn’t say I believed he was a Muslim pretending to be a Coptic Christian pretending to be Jewish - I said that what he did played so well into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood that there was speculation that it was so.
My response was that it didn’t matter. The pretext of why the Muslim mob needed to be up in arms against America on 9-11 is just about irrelevant and immaterial - without his idiocy no doubt some other bit of fluff would have been exaggerated or lacking that, something made up.
My point is that these places have a state run media - and they publish nothing that the powers that be don’t want them to publish. The obscure insult was amplified because the Muslim Brotherhood and the governments of Egypt, Libya and Yemen wanted a riot against America on 9-11.
Bunch of them in the DC area got together for a big barbeque (of fresh raw hamburger and sorghum bread) at a park along the Occoquan Tuesday evening. They even had a fireworks show.
I think the New Years celebration moves to a different day next year.
Frankly, if they are chasing you around trying to murder you on account of your religion or race I'm always going to go soft on the dirt and erratic behavior ~ that's 'cause I"m an American and that's what we do.
Today is the Coptic new year.
Not sure if the reports that this guy is Coptic even made it to Egypt - and it will do so ONLY if the Muslim Brotherhood/Egyptian government thinks it will serve their purposes.
Right now I think they are content to let it be known that he is an American and purportedly Israeli.
Maybe when the fervor against America dies down they can recycle it and re-purpose it to direct the mob against Coptic Christians.
Used to row Crew on the Occoquan. Beautiful location. Too bad they don't allow swimming. But I remember taking a beautiful woman out in a Crew double and ‘accidentally’ tipping it over so we could swim around a little and cool off. ;)
I think most people think the junk is dumped there to get rid of it, but that's not at all what it's for.
Plus in WWII much of the area was used to train troops and test experimental things of unknown types. You could get bit!
This year Coptic New Year was Tuesday 9/11. They do the leap year thing a little different and are running 8 years behind the current Western calendar. That gives them nearly another decade before the doomsday predictions of the maya catch up to them.
The reason they told us not to swim in the Occoquan is that it is a water reservoir and they didn't want human feces in it.
My bad on the newyear - I misread what the Coptic church website was telling me.
So has the mob been directed against the Coptics in Egypt yet? So far they still seem to be rioting outside our embassy. No doubt as there are much fewer Copts to kill in Libya and Yemen they will go on letting their state run media say it was an American/Israeli - until and unless it suited their purposes to do otherwise.
Letting the Moslem Brotherhood into the government brings back the age old hatred the Moslems have for the Copts.
They've been planning this genocide for a good 1300 years ~ possibly more ~ and always remember, the Egyptian people are mostly Coptic, and the illegal alien Arab invaders are mostly moslem ~ so being a good Freeper you know where to stand now.
But they need not be a majority, or have been historically the indigenous people subject to ‘illegal alien invaders’ to have American sympathy and support.
As a descendant of the ‘illegal alien invaders’ who drove the indigenous people of America to minority status a lot more recently than the 7th Century I don't give much weight to “dey took our land (and yobs)” claims of those who lost historic conflicts.
The Normans are not giving Normandy back to the French. The Turks are not giving Turkey back to the Greeks. Americans are not giving America back to the Amerindians. Egyptians are not giving Egypt back to the Copts.
Sorry. Nobody gets given much of anything in this world.
“The world continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout hearts and sharp swords.” F.E. Smith
pret much ~ still, the Coptic Egyptian experience is a lesson to those who allow widespread illegal immigration to occur.
Allow? It wasn’t immigration it was an invasion! They didn’t creep in - they came with fire and sword! They didn’t ask permission!
yup, illegal invasion ~ mexican coyotes are also armed. They kill people. all same thing. The fate of the Copts could be our fate unless action is taken.
Resisting illegal immigration is a lot different than resisting an army. Both are necessary but different tactics are required. Necessary for either is the will to resist. That is sorely lacking in the USA right now.
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