The killing of Christopher
Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, raises perplexing questions about taking
risks. Stevens was by all accounts extremely competent at his craft. He was
action oriented, emotionally connected to Arab culture and the Arab street, fluent
in its language, and had a wide network of contacts in the region. On September
11 he was visiting the U.S. consulate’s office in Benghazi, a city known to
have extremist militant groups, when demonstrators attacked the consulate. It
is unlikely that this demonstration was truly spontaneous as was first thought;
a response to the inflammatory anti-Islamic video that had circulated on the
web the week prior. More likely, this demonstration was planned to coincide
with the anniversary of 9/11. Observers noted that the demonstrators had
sophisticated weaponry such as RPGs, and seemed to know the location of a U.S. safe
house in the city. As Stevens’ Wikipedia page reports, “A Libyan-American who watched the attack from the Venezia
has challenged a version of events that describes protests and demonstrations.
‘There was no demonstration. They came with machine guns, with rockets.’” Moreover,
the guards at the consulate were hired locals, not marines, and there is some
speculation that a member of the Libyan security forces may have tipped off the
demonstrators as to the location of the U.S. safe house. In short, the city was
a nest of vipers. In light of this attack and Stevens’ death, some of his
friends wondered if he had taken needless risks in going to Benghazi on
September 11 without the protection of a security detail.
One question is whether or not
Stevens took the risk of going to Benghazi without protection, carelessly or
cautiously. One version of his carelessness is the idea, as some observers first
suggested, that Stevens was the innocent American, unaware of the potential for
violence in a post-revolutionary setting such as Libya. Roya Hakakian, an Iranian-born writer who
met Stevens while the latter was running the Iran desk at the State Department,
said that Stevens, “displayed the quintessential sunny innocence of Americans.”
I don’t think this explanation is
plausible. After all Stevens had played an important role in supporting the
Libyan revolutionaries who overthrew and killed Gaddafi. He had been stationed
in Syria and Jerusalem and was no stranger to the violence in the region, and
the tempers of a revolutionary situation. Moreover, several days after he was
killed, the CIA revealed that it had developed an extensive covert operation in
Benghazi, with 12 operatives, to keep track of the different armed militias in
the city. In addition, Stevens’ diary, discovered by a CNN reporter two weeks
after the attack, reveals that he was aware of the threat that the armed
militias posed and worried that he might be targeted. Stevens, as one reporter writes, “knew Benghazi perhaps better than any U.S. diplomat.”
There is however another kind of
carelessness that we can call motivated.
We are familiar with this in everyday situations when, for example, a person
misplaces an important document that demands both her attention and a
consequential decision. We surmise that in losing this important document she
is expressing the wish that she should not have to make the decision, that if
the document were out of sight, it could truly be out of mind. In this kind of
situation, the person experiences a certain pleasure in “rejecting” the
document, ridding herself of it so to speak, even though in the end she must
retrieve it, consider it, and decide. Of course, this arc of thought and action
is not rational per se. The document stands for a situation of some gravity
that cannot be wished or whisked away. But, when under press of strong feelings,
we often treat a symbol as if it were the thing it stood for. This is why for
example people treat a national flag, which after all is only a piece of cloth,
as a sacred object. In sum, what may look like carelessness, losing an
important document, may in fact be motivated.
The question then is what could
motivate Stevens to be careless? All descriptions of his character and his way
of working suggest that he was proud of his ability to talk with common people
on the Arab street, to haggle in the markets, to listen intently, to immerse
himself in the local scene. Days after his death, sympathetic Libyans posted photos
of Stevens on an Arabic Facebook page. In one, he is “slouching down with Libyans eating local
food with his hand.” Another reporter notes that, “he often signed letters and
e-mails to friends as ‘Krees,’ the way many Arabs pronounced his name.”
Describing his character, a friend in Jerusalem said that, "Wherever he was living, he was able to let
go of everything else and live that place completely." As a result,
security regulations that confined his activity frustrated him. "He wanted
that human contact, he wanted to be able to speak to Palestinians on the
street, and he couldn't because security regulations made him always travel in
armored vehicles," she said. "He used to talk about how he felt this
was an obstacle to his ability to really be who he wanted to be."
On its face, this wish for
contact is laudable. When it results in better intelligence, wider networks,
and trusting relationships with locals, it absolutely enhances a diplomat’s
effectiveness. The questions is whether Stevens experienced these skills and
abilities as tools in the service of his work as or as expressions of his
identity, of the kind of person he was in the world. The above quote; security
regulations, “were an obstacle to really
be who we wanted to be,” suggests that his identity may have been more
central to his self-image than the work he was called upon to do.
But why should that be a
problem? Consider the following situation. Imagine a surgeon is inexperienced
in a particular surgery but fails to consult colleagues before taking up the
scalpel. One interpretation of his lapse is that he imagines he should be the
surgeon who knows everything and that it is shameful to consult colleagues. Who
he is -- the all-knowing surgeon -- becomes more important than the work he has
to do. We recognize in this lapse, the “sin of pride,” and understand why, as
the biblical proverb suggests, “pride comes before the fall.”
Consider as well the award
winning movie, “The Bridge over the River
Kwai.” An imprisoned British officer takes pride in building a railroad
bridge, with the troops still under his command, which his Japanese captors
need for their own war effort in Burma. He becomes so identified with the
discipline and organization he instills in his imprisoned and once demoralized
troops, that he loses site of his wider responsibilities, which is to undermine
the Japanese war effort in any way he can. In the penultimate scene he races to
stop a British sapper from blowing up the completed bridge. In both these cases,
attention and feelings shift from the
work that must be accomplished to the self that must be expressed. Pride
fuels this transition.
This points to one
hypothesis about Stevens’ motivated carelessness, if indeed, that is what it
was. He was proud of his capacity to thrive on the Arab street, and felt that
traveling with a security detail was somewhat shameful. It would communicate
his mistrust of the street and undermine his idea of what made him distinctive
as a diplomat. He would in effect fail to live up to his idealized image of
himself, which was a source of pride, while losing face in front of his Libyan
colleagues. In this way of thinking, the danger, rather than inducing
cautiousness, reinforced the pride. This is the sense in which his carelessness
was motivated.
Of course, this is
speculation, and in that spirit, let me consider an alternative hypothesis. I
have discussed identifying with one’s work, or identifying with one’s idealized
self. Let me add here a third possibility, identifying with one’s ideals. For
example, when reading the accounts of the “righteous gentiles” who protected
Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, once is struck by their humility, their
insistence that what they did was based on common sense rather than
extraordinary courage, even as they put their own lives at risk. Surely, it is
incorrect to say that they took risks carelessly. Rather, their humility expresses
their subordination to a wider ideal that is so self-evident, in this case the
ideal of our common humanity, that they had no other choice. The anticipated
pain of violating an ideal, pain that comes from feeling ashamed in front of oneself, was more compelling
than the danger they faced and realistically confronted.
There is a video of Stevens on the web, (http://gretawire.foxnewsinsider.com/video/state-department-video-featuring-ambassador-chris-stevens/ ), moving in retrospect, in which he introduces
himself to the Libyan people. He projects the informal stance of the everyday
American, calling himself Chris for example, rather than Christopher. The video
describes how he came to embrace the Arab world, reflects his pride in
pluralism and democracy, acknowledges that the U.S. achieved these ideals
through conflict, and suggests that this too can be Libya’s future. In light of
his murder, it is tempting to interpret this video as reflecting his naiveté.
But it is striking that a week after his death Libyan demonstrators, backed by
government troops, chased the militia held responsible for his killing out of
the city. Clearly, he touched people. Perhaps in taking the risk he did,
traveling without a security detail, he was interpreting the ideals of pluralism,
openness and tolerance as injunctions to refuse himself privileges, to be the
equal not the superior of the Libyans, to face the same situation they faced.
The ideals this stance represented were more compelling than the dangers he
faced. He would have been ashamed in front of himself had he violated them. In
this sense we was not careless at all but rather consistent.
Until his diary is published, there is little chance that we can interpret
what he did with any confidence. And even then, the diary may not be revealing.
In light of this uncertainty it is reasonable to ask what we hope to gain by
such speculation. I want to suggest that even if we cannot arrive at an
objective truth, we can arrive at an emotional truth by imaginatively
projecting ourselves into the situation our speculation leads us to consider. In
this way we gain some insight into our shared psychology.
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