Mutanatia greeted his students as they entered the room with
a handshake again. “Welcome to week #1 of NPR’s
World Story of the Day from NPR.” He said. “For your enjoyment, the
brainteasers were posted on my facebook page. If you’d like the links, please
comment here. This is also our 11th week. This unit, we’ll hear
about various stories from across the world. This unit also has a heavy
emphasis on the Middle East. September and August were ripe times for international
news. For the next 3 weeks, we will be discussing the US Embassy Attack in
Libya. After the third week, you will then be asked to take sides as to whose
story you most likely believe: the U.S.’s initial reading of the situation, or
the Libyan President’s assessment.
This lesson comes from September 16th, 2012. It
features the Libyan President discussing the attack on the US Embassy by a mob,
resulting in 4 deaths.. You will hear his assessment of the situation and
remember it as well. Good luck.
Here are the discussion questions:
1) How
likely, in your opinion, is the President of Libya’s scenario?
2) Why
would the attackers want to invade the embassy?
He then passed out the homework:
1) What
relationship did the ambassador have with Libya? Why is this so significant?
I would say that Ambassador Steven's widespread popularity with the people of Libya is precisely the reason he was targeted: the terrorists don't want any kind of a beneficial connection between their country and the United States. In particular, they don't want an intelligent, tolerant, cultured role model for Libya/US relations, who would make Libyans think well of Americans. So they killed him, and did under circumstances so outrageous, that the Americans (they assume) would react with brute force and violence of their own, either sending a more hostile, bigoted ambassador or better yet, cutting off diplomatic relations!
ReplyDeleteFat lot of good their plan did them: they've been run out of their own house by angry mobs of the very type that they were trying to impersonate, they've have lost their following, and now there's a movement afoot to disarm the militias entirely!
:)
ReplyDeleteHow do you think the US *should* respond now?