Never the Twain Shall Meet

The National Interest - http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/never-the-twain-shall-meet-7496 

Never the Twain Shall Meet

Leon Hadar

September 21, 2012

Both Republican and Democratic administrations often have promoted the notion that the United States has the right and the obligation to disseminate its values worldwide.
In the context of promoting these values, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has placed the cause of protecting Internet freedom on the top of the U.S. foreign-policy agenda. Hence during a conference at the Hague last year, Clinton stated that Washington needed to take “a stand for freedom of expression on the Internet, especially on behalf of cyber dissidents and bloggers” and support those in the Middle East and elsewhere “who are blocked from accessing entire categories of Internet content.”
Today, there is an irony in the fact that much of the anti-American violence in Arab countries has been driven the same kind of “Internet content”—in this case, the trailer of an anti-Muslim film posted on YouTube, reflecting the American tradition of freedom of expression, including the Internet freedom that Secretary Clinton has called upon the leaders of Egypt and Libya to respect.
Muslim demonstrators are accusing Americans of not respecting their religious tradition by permitting the dissemination of a film that mocks the Prophet Muhammad. Perhaps if the Egyptian and Libyan governments had blocked their citizens “from accessing entire categories of Internet content,” the U.S. embassies in those countries may have not been attacked.