Kevin DuJan at Hillbuzz.com, a gay, erstwhile pro-Hillary (we’re not sure these days, especially today) blogsite from Chicago, broke this story yesterday, that Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens was gay, asking the question, why did the State Department post him to Libya?
An Arabist with a long history in North Africa, in all likelihood, Ambassador Stevens asked for the posting, and asked for it aware of the general Arab and Muslim antipathy toward gays (luti).
Still, did he fully know and understand the risks?
Yesterday I posted some observations from Moses Sands about survival awareness by people in general. Moses was speaking about the inability of many English men and women in India during the Great Mutiny of 1857, to deal with the notion that there were people out there who would like to kill them, a condition that isn’t supposed to be a part of their world.
…it did remind them they were in a place they were neither welcome…nor entirely safe….just like the world in general, so it seems. The Indians might rise up again, but spoiled whiny teat fits would not ever kill them again. “We read about the tragedy of some toddler slipping under a fence and drowning in a neighbor’s swimming pool, but no one counts the number of children who die each year just because they were never taught the meaning of danger, or how to respond to it on command.”
Obvious new questions arise as to whether Stevens was a special target in Benghazi on this account alone. We already know the attack had nothing to do with a video in the US.
But likewise obvious questions arise as to whether his superiors, up to and including Hillary (surely Huma had some insights) ever broached the subject with Stevens.
Since gays can openly serve in the military now, I assume the same is true for the foreign service…unless it’s a sure promotion killer. Are gay soldiers in Afghanistan pre-warned there are places outside the gates, on the economy, on pass, a gay man does not go? Where did soldiers in Iraq go to let off steam? As a rule people on the outside know almost all the scuttlebutt of what’s going on inside the compound. Neither a soldier nor embassy staffer can truly just mingle anonymously in that part of the world, a lesson I learned very early in my travels.
These are barbaric tribal societies. I know stories that go back into the 1950s, across the Middle East, from Morocco to Iran, about the airman, sailor or soldier, who, while simply touring the local vendors in the casbah, made a backward glance at a seemingly pretty Arab maiden and was found two days later in the desert, stripped, filleted and castrated, his testicles sewn up in his mouth with his shoe laces.
So it’s not just a gay thing.
Does political correctness simply prohibit superiors from broaching certain subjects in the State Department, or prohibit denying certain assignments due to certain risks? Can gays sue on the basis of discrimination if denied certain plum assignments, even though they would be targets for murder? I didn’t say cat-calls and harassment. The general Muslim sanction for homosexuality is death.
Are these subjects no one wanted to raise for political correctness sake?
At least in the military they never leave one of their own behind. They have your back, or so we are led to believe.
But does the State Department? Does the Administration? Do gays in the US Embassy in Cairo, or Tunis, or Rabat know they are targets if they simply step outside the compound and step around the corner for a falafel?
Worse, after this week, do they now understand that they are not even safe inside the compound, for clearly the State Department did not have Stevens’ back, ignoring all of even the simplest precautions, from a higher state of alert due to the date, but also due to confirmed intel that something was going to happen that day?
Obama missed the briefing that day, along with several other days, slept through the murder itself, but surely someone in the briefing chain had to have passed the risk assessment forward. And someone on the receiving end at State, in DC or Cairo, nixed it. It wasn’t a simple oversight.
Yes, I think even Mussolini’s policy toward Libya was sounder than the one the Obama Administration had offered the American people. Even Benito would not have sent gay men into harm’s way so cavalierly or negligently.
