Quoted from Mr Patrick Cockburn article 13 September 2012, I from 'The Independent'
' The murder of the American Ambassador and his staff in Benghazi is retaliation for a US made video slandering the Prophet Mohammed will have serious repercussions in the US weeks before the Presidential election.
The killings undercut President Obama's claim that killing Osama Bin Laden was a deathblow to Jihadi Islam.
Anything that reminds the US voters of 9/11 has political implications.
Deaths of US soldiers in Afghanistan no longer have the impact they once did. But there is something shocking and new about the death of Mr Stevens
the first American Ambassador to be killed anywhere in the world since 1979.
The Libyan revolution was never quite as it was portrayed at the time. True that it's leaders in Benghazi were astute from the beginning to play down the role of Islamic militants in the uprising. In reality, the rebels were always more violent and anarchic than was reported.
The truth is that the Arab Spring uprisings, not just Libya but across the Arab world, drew much of their explosive strength from the combination of very different people and strands of opinion united by hatred of oppressive and corrupt autocracies.
It is not that the revolutions were anti-American or anti-Western. It is rather that, for decades, Arab rulers almost instinctively took pro-western positions in opposition to the wishes of their own people.
From the beginning demonstrators were clear that they would not countenance the degree of foreign intervention to which their rulers had previously bowed.
This was true in Egypt, but it also resonated in Libya despite the victory of the insurgents depending entirely on foreign intervention.
There are still plenty of people in Western armies and intelligence services who feel nostalgia for the old ways of doing things, when they dealt with a compliant Egyptian army and did not have to worry about democratically elected Muslim Brothers or other more extremes.
The Arab Spring was never a collective vote in favor of Western states, but a series of real revolutions that have other surprises, both good and nasty,in store. '
The above is a good understanding of what the Middle Eastern consensus is. Mr Cockburn is insightful regarding the dynamics at play in the region at the moment.
Real revolutions are never neat and tidy, they tend to be horrendously messy. What we are seeing now is the continuation of the Arab Spring.
Hopefully, once the dust finally settles something may eventually take shape.
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