I am not convinced that the burning of the Benghazi consulate, and even the demonstrations that have followed, show that Stevens and other hopeful folks were deluded. What they show is that a government that does not exercise a monopoly over force cannot stand up to armed extremists eager to exploit religious or nationalist passion. To state the obvious, Stevens was killed not by "Libya" but by a handful of people in a crowd of several hundred. It's unclear whether, as administration officials have reportedly begun to conclude, the violence was premeditated, or whether it was an opportunistic response to the gathering of an angry crowd, but a consensus has begun to form that the attack was carried out by Ansar al-Sharia, a militant group.
So what does "Libya" think? As my colleague Marc Lynch has noted, both Libya's leaders and Libyans taking to social media have condemned the attack unequivocally, and have spoken of their high regard for Stevens. Willliam Lawrence, North Africa director for the International Crisis Group, who is now in Tripoli, says that even Salafist groups have vocally condemned the killing, and Ansar al-Sharia has distanced itself from the rogue elements said to have carried out the violence, inviting Libya's militias to hunt them down and bring them to justice. But in Cairo, Marc points out, Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi has been silent about the violence. Egyptian public opinion remains fervently anti-American, and Morsi may fear mounting a public defense of the United States. Libya's leaders had no such restraint.
So, yes, we should stipulate that Obama was almost as naïve as President Bush in believing that he, personally, could bring about a sea change in Arab public opinion. The resentment of the United States is very deeply rooted, and only partly connected to U.S. behavior. But that part matters, and it is not naive to believe that deeds can make a difference. The Arab Spring gave the United States a new chance to do the right thing. It did so in Libya. One of the arguments for more actively siding with the rebels in Syria is that doing so will give the United States standing if and when the rebels triumph.
I don't want to misrepresent my conversation with Stevens. He was much more interested in what the Libyans were doing for themselves than in what the Libyans thought about America. The reason for his optimism was that Libya had gone to the polls and rejected both separatists and Islamists. The Higher National Election Commission had done a creditable job. Ex-rebel leaders forming the new army were open to advice, whether from the United States or the United Nations. For Libyans, he said, the United States was appealing above all as a model for their own country's development.
Libya's National Assembly has just chosen a new prime minister, Mustafa Abu Shagur. In the course of the all-day balloting, says Lawrence, "there was a rallying against the prospect of chaos" that swelled support for the moderate candidate Mahmoud Jibril, who lost to Shagur by two votes. Lawrence suggests that the tragedy might serve as a "coming-together moment" for Libya's very fragile democracy. If that turns out to be so, then Chris Stevens will not have died in vain.
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