I don't want to put this on twitter because I don't want to become part of the public debate, but to clarify some things I've seen: there was never any danger posed to any embassy personnel on Tuesday. There are significant differences between both the security situations and the embassy compounds themselves in Egypt and Libya. And I say that with regret because I knew Christopher Stevens and he was a rough ridin' great guy. I am not surprised by reports that he died after returning to the embassy to assist/lead the evacuation.
That said, Libya's revolution was armed and messy and involved internal tribal paradigms and various external agents along with influences of religious/ideological extremism. That means its not only less stable, but also has weapons floating around the country accessible to those extremists. I DO believe the original protests were "sparked" (if not necessarily "fueled") by the film. However, who set the spark may be less clear and less "grassroots," as is who may now be using the subsequent explosion as a smoke screen.
Egypt maintained several of the same institutions. It has an infrastructure in place that is absent in Libya. It doesn't have the same level of unaccounted weapons being shuttled around the country. And of more immediate importance to the personnel, the embassy here is a mega-compound. It's enormous and compartmentalized and has a significantly higher Marine contingent. The protest caught no one by surprise: we have access to the same channels they use to organize them. Personnel are shuttled back and forth in vehicles with level 6 armor. Those that were still inside were behind several more layers of defense, including Marines who I can personally assure were willing and able to clear the courtyard if things escalated beyond "property damage" to "threat to American lives."
I can't go too much into the public relations issue. Too sensitive right now. But I will say the ambassador is very popular with the administration, and not for ideological/partisan reasons. I will also say that I would not have cleared those initial statements although I do support the procedural guidelines that framed them (sorry. I know that's vague.)
We don't expect things to reach the level they did in Libya (to paraphrase a common Latin American complaint about US perceptions: "the Arab world is not a monolith"). But Friday could be a real crap storm. The salafists and secularists and "hooligan" ultras are good for a rowdy show, but they have no where near the organizing capacity of the Muslim Brotherhood (few organizations outside Hezbollah do). So the MB joining the protest elevates the scale along with the potential political tensions due to Morsi's affiliations (what worries me here is that the dozens of military trucks and personnel that usually camp out along the shady street in front of the Embassy here in Garden City quickly and inexplicably vanished right before the protests broke out). To make matters worse, the Copts are planning a counter protests (counter to what, I'm not exactly sure). So that's three groups with a history of internal conflict all potentially converging for a passionate and anger-driven debate right on our doorstep. Oh, and Egypt is hosting a conference on Syria on Monday with the Iranian delegation in town.
But for perspective, I'm at a coffee shop in town right now. I walked to the grocery story on Tuesday evening and to a restaurant last night. The perception that there are bands of angry Muslims roaming the streets seeking out Americans is not accurate (well, not yet at least...) Even during the height of the revolution, the only real danger outside Tahrir was indiscriminate looters looking to take advantage of the chaos. And even then, the boabs (kind of a beefed up doorman/security guard) at residences hosting US personnel are extremely protective of their properties and extremely well-connected to the goings-on in each neighborhood.
There should probably be a resolution or something to this post here, but it's already really long.
