Libya killings show U.S. at risk in Arab world
Editor's note: David Rothkopf is CEO and editor-at-large of the FP Group, publishers of Foreign Policy Magazine, and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
(CNN) -- The brutal murders of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three American diplomatic staffers in Benghazi underscore the profound fragility of U.S. relations in the region. It is hard to recall a time when crises such as this and in the Middle East afflicted so many American interests simultaneously, nor one in which U.S. policies were so deeply at risk.
The tragic events in eastern Libya themselves represent the culmination of events that began and unfolded well outside the mainstream of Libyan life or the U.S. relationship with that country.
(...)
First, the riots and violence illustrate that the broader political circumstances in the countries of the Arab Spring remain unresolved and potentially vulnerable to serious disruption from even small opposition groups. The Morsi government, slow to condemn the Egypt attacks Tuesday, has itself been unsettled by violence across the country in the past couple of months.
Second, however, these are hardly the only tensions bubbling over in the greater Middle East and South Asia. The situation in Syria not only is worsening daily but is spilling over as refugees seek haven in Jordan and Turkey. The Iraqi government, increasingly undependable as a friend of the United States, has allowed Iranian aid flights to Damascus despite U.S. protests. Afghan allies are turning on U.S. troops with alarming regularity. The State Department just underscored the increasing threat from Pakistani extremist groups by finally citing the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network as a terrorist group.
full: http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/12/opinion/rothkopf-libya/index.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Surreal, all of it taken together.
