Opinion

Does the Istanbul Process have something to do with Benghazi?

William Federer President, Amerisearch, Inc.
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience in Brussels in 2009, “Never waste a good crisis.”

In the weeks leading up to the Benghazi attacks, Clinton inexplicably removed defense personnel and denied Ambassador Christopher Steven’s repeated requests for security.

Six hours into the Benghazi attack, President Obama called Hillary, as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney admitted on Feb. 20, 2012 to CNSNews.com.

At some point, an unidentified person in authority gave a stand-down order that no help would be sent to Ambassador Stevens.

Why did Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama act in the way they did?

Was it ineptness, or something else? If the latter, can a motive be established?

A possible motive could be the Istanbul Process.

In 2012, Hillary Clinton co-chaired a meeting with 57 Muslim countries in Istanbul, Turkey.

The closed-door meeting was for the purpose of devising a process to implement U.N. Resolution 16/18, which would prohibit speech insulting Islam.

Championed by the Obama administration, Resolution 16/18 claims to seek a balance between freedom of religion and freedom of expression by “combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against persons based on religion or belief.”

Forbes’ Abigail R. Esman wrote on Dec. 30, 2011:

Proposed … in an effort to clamp down on anti-Muslim attacks in non-Muslim countries, Resolution 16/18 has been through a number of revisions over the years in order to make it palatable to American representatives concerned about U.S. constitutional guarantees of free speech.

The resolution, though, is disingenuous in that it is the initiative of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which is made up of Muslim countries that do not allow equal freedom of speech or religion to non-Muslims living within their borders.

The resolution limits free speech viewed as “discriminatory” or which involves “defamation of religion” — specifically, speech which can be viewed as “incitement to imminent violence,” with Islam itself being the religion most known for allowing itself to be incited to “violence.”

This resolution will limit the free speech of non-Muslims, which is the Sharia law restriction placed on conquered peoples, called “dhimmi.” Resolution 16/18, for those who dare admit it, would effectively establish global Sharia law.

In fact, in the OIC countries, the very act of proclaiming that Jesus is the son of God or that Israel is the Jewish homeland would be enough to incite violence.

At the close of the Istanbul meeting in 2012, Secretary Clinton called for “formulating international laws preventing inciting hatred.” OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu commended the Obama administration. “I particularly appreciate the kind personal interest of Secretary Clinton and the role played by the U.S. towards the consensual adoption of the resolution,” he said.

Are there places in the world where these types of laws have already been implemented, and by what process?

In 2005, there were Muslim riots in Europe after a Dutch cartoon was published. The European Union quickly mandated religious-hate-speech codes which prohibit insulting Islam.

Riots, and the process of inciting them, has been a political tactic dating as far back as Rome’s Mark Anthony; or the French Revolution’s Robespierre; or Chicago Labor’s 1886 Haymarket Riot; or Bill Ayers’ Chicago Days of Rage.

Stalin said: “Crisis alone permitted the authorities to demand and obtain total submission and all necessary sacrifices from its citizens.”

Someone who codified this process was Saul Alinsky.

In 1969, Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis at Wellesley College was titled “There Is Only the Fight — An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.”

President Obama taught Alinsky’s tactics while a Chicago community organizer.

What did Saul Alinsky write in Rules for Radicals?

“The organizer’s first job is to create the issues or problems.”

“An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent.”

“The organizer must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community.”

“Fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression.”

“He must search out controversy and issues rather than avoid them … for unless there is controversy the people are not concerned enough to act.”

In other words, Alinsky’s tactics are designed to incite people.

Could those tactics have been applied to implement the Istanbul Process?

In the vein of “Fast and Furious,” if there could, just by chance, be a spontaneous riot incited that could be blamed on someone insulting Islam, then there would be the justification for a hurried rush for Americans to give up their free speech rights.

The State Department’s prompt actions the day after the attack seemingly added credence to this.

Eric Sterner wrote for WorldPoliticsReview.com on Sept. 19, 2012:

The State Department quickly appealed to Google, which owns YouTube, to examine the website’s terms of service for possible violations by the film’s creator. … Ironically, this is the same State Department that protested last year when Arab dictators attempted to censor Internet …

 

The administration essentially implied that a corporation with immense influence over how people express themselves should use that influence for state ends, in this case by censoring content that is controversial overseas …

 

If the State Department can blame mass regional protests on a single video and hint that a private entity should consider censoring content, especially in a case where it believes that content resulted in violence, then authoritarian governments can make the same argument.

 

In fact, they do. Russia, China and several other governments have argued in favor of an International Cyber Code of Conduct that, among other things, would prohibit content that disturbs a country’s “political, economic and social stability, as well as their spiritual and cultural environment.” Nothing could be more injurious to the cause of maintaining freedom of expression in cyberspace.

Another voice calling for the effective implementation of the Istanbul Process was Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor. Brzezinski was instrumental in arming fundamentalist Muslims in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.

Brzezinski fanned the discredited “blame the movie” narrative in an MSNBC interview on Oct. 3, 2012:

If you were to yell “fire” in a theater, and 20 kids got stampeded … you would be liable. You would not be acquitted on the basis of freedom of speech …

 

There is some indication … that there was a conspiracy involved here. People who produced the film … some guy with a strange name in California, another guy who specializes in attacking Islamic groups, a crazy pastor, a Christian pastor in Florida, who likes to provoke the Muslims, produced a movie. … It clearly was to provoke violence, killings, isn’t that a conspiracy …

 

If there are evil forces at work trying to provoke violence … we have the obligation … to crack down.

President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Jay Carney went on for weeks trying to convince the world that the Benghazi killings were the result of a video and called for limits on free speech insulting Islam.

Al Jazeera English reported on Sept. 20, 2012 that the State Department even bought $70,000 worth of airtime in Pakistan with which to blame the video. The commercials were broadcast on “Love your Prophet” Friday.

Whether Obama and Clinton were simply acting as politicians trying to deflect the blame for the Benghazi killings or whether they were using the Alinsky tactics to implement the Istanbul Process and U.N. Resolution 16/18, only continued scrutiny of congressional hearings and media focus can shed some light.

Either way, their immediate response was to “never waste a good crisis” in achieving political ends.

William J. Federer is a nationally known speaker and best-selling author.