It was three years ago in Cairo when President Obama sought to appease the Arab world by apologizing for America.
That is, by effectively apologizing for the notion that culture truly matters — and that Western values, traditions and principles are generally superior to those animating the seething, violently chaotic, Middle East.
The fact is, he was wrong.
The fact is, there is a world of difference between a culture evolved over centuries to value tolerance, true justice and individual freedom — and a culture that harbors a dark vein of medievalist superstitions and hatreds.
That rages against modernity.
This week, Barack Obama got a life lesson: There is no dealing with the 9th century. It can be held at arm’s length, and beaten back when necessary, but it has nothing in common with the 21st century — that is, with civilization.
America, albeit leading “from behind,” was the motive force last year in the liberation of Moammar Khadafy’s Libya.
Payback came overnight Wednesday, when a howling mob in Benghazi murdered US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, a colleague and two US Marines. The American consulate there was put to the torch.
The attack came only hours after another mob breached the walls of the US embassy in Cairo, desecrating an American flag and hoisting the black flag of al Qaeda.
And that was a second lesson for Obama: It was never enough just to kill Osama bin Laden.
Desirable, indeed.
Sufficient, no.
Bin Laden was nothing if not a man of the 9th century; in spirit, if not in flesh, he will be vexing the West far into the future.
Ostensibly, the week’s rioting has been over a mindless bit of videography clearly meant to defame Mohammed and, by extention, Islam.
In the modern world, blasphemy is shrugged off.
In the 9th century, it warrants mayhem.
And in the Obama White House, it’s cause for compromising a fundamental principle, the First Amendment.
After the Cairo incident, the violence was blamed on “misguided efforts by individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims” — the constitutionally protected film.
And yesterday, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was assigned to ask lunatic Pastor Terry Jones to withdraw support for that film.
That last point may be the most telling.
For if the White House doesn’t grasp the symbolic significance of dispatching America’s top military officer to quell an outburst of domestic dissent — however minor and obnoxious — then the threat posed by the 9th century will be totally lost on it.
Which, after three years, comes as no surprise whatsoever.