The fights with my brother easily explain the Benghazi consulate attack

When we were children, my brother and I fought our good fights, almost all of them based on a single concept: we seemed to know exactly what would make the other fly off the handle.  Take a finger very near the other, but not touch.  And keep saying "I am not touching you." Less than a minute later, we trade blows.  Or, simply repeat what the other said. A few of those repetitions later, it is Tom and Jerry launching anything they can get their hands on.

It is a similar pattern that we have observed in the Middle Eastern and Islamic geopolitical issues.  We have enough and more evidence that it takes only a few to say something uncivilized, protected free speech that might be, and there are people who go ballistic.  The offended party rarely ever takes the typical mother's advice to simply ignore the taunts.  Fights ensue.

After a few fights, we learn, we grow up, and we become adults.  Most of us stop engaging in those kinds of behaviors. But, not Terry Jones, writes Marc Ambinder!

Terry Jones is monumentally stupid and even more reckless. His first attempt to provoke Muslims ended in the deaths of innocents.  We live in an age where speech acts can easily escape their geographical confinement, and Jones, understanding how easily he can prove (to himself) his contention that the Islamic religion is inherently violent and corrupt, regularly yells fire in crowded theaters.  

Of course I was not doing anything when I held my finger near my brother's face and said "I am not touching you"--well, other than trying my best to provoke a reaction from him.  Terry Jones manages to provoke people again and again.

Adds Ambinder:

We live in a world where American provocateurs can easily arouse the militancy of Muslim extremists who are more ubiquitous than even I would like to admit, or, at the very least, allow bad people to use extant anti-American sentiment to whip crowds into frenzies. In either case, innocent people, including Americans, die. ...
Those who use the gift of institutionally and legally-protected free speech to exploit and prey upon the vulnerability of certain people to violence ought to be shamed.  

So, what can mothers do with such stupid and irresponsible kids? Again, Ambinder:

On Twitter, the first instinct of a lot of Americans was retributive justice. But the U.S. government's sensitivity about the mood of the violent protesters is maddening but necessary. Being aggressive would cause more unnecessary dying. ...
At the same time, the people who killed people; protesters, thugs, militants, whomever, are ultimately responsible for their actions. If the U.S. government is going to discourage our own idiots from provoking people, then the governments of Egypt and Libya should act to corral those within their own nations who would storm an embassy on the pretext that a film offends.

Turns out that the October Surprise in this election season has come from totally unexpected quarters!

All those neocons who were jumping up and down with joy that the Iraq War and the Great War on Terror unleashed the Arab Spring have even more blood on their hands now, says The Hindu in its editorial:

Ambassador Stevens may have been the victim of his country’s reckless post-9/11 policy of “regime change”. The policy targeted pan-Arabist, staunchly secular though iron-fisted regimes that had cracked down hard on Islamist extremists. The global war on terror that followed 9/11 first toppled Iraq’s Saddam Hussain on the false pretext that his regime was developing weapons of mass destruction that could be used for terrorism.

Consequently, the collapse of the Ba’athist government opened the floodgates for jihadi groups to infiltrate Iraq and fan out in the region. The NATO-supported grisly killing last year of Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi, who had kept a lid on extremists, has been followed by an unprecedented jihadi assertion in the country, led by the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).

LIFG leader Abdelhakim Belhaj sharpened his skills in the 1980s during the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. After 9/11, Belhaj headed for Pakistan and then Iraq, where he befriended terror kingpin Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Ambinder ends his post by quoting this tweet:

When innocent people die because of what you say, it's time to man up. Terry Jones get your ass to Benghazi and defend your film!
— AllThingsHLS (@AllThingsHLS) September 11, 2012

Not only should Terry Jones go there though.  He should take along with him W Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Kristol, ....

Meanwhile, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu wants to bomb Iran, like yesterday, so much so that even his own country is flummoxed. 

“Who are you trying to replace?” the opposition leader, Shaul Mofaz, asked of Netanyahu in the Knesset on Wednesday. “The Administration in Washington or that in Tehran?”

What the hell is wrong with all these people?

It is a mad, mad, mad world!