So where are the voices in the West and the U.S. that rhapsodized about the Arab Spring?  You remember the Arab Spring?  The rule of law, human rights, and democracy were a-coming to the Middle East.  Why, it was 1967 all over again -- the Summer of Love.  Those rascally and brutal dictators, Mubarak and Gaddafi, were deposed in favor of peace-loving, democratic Muslim fundamentalists.

What all witnessed on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 was, indeed, democracy Middle East-style.  Some of us would call it "mobacracy," but the word is so... well, inflammatory... so unsettling.  President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton would surely disapprove.      

Tough.  What a mob of dedicated Muslims (who may have been coordinated) did in Libya was brutally murder the U.S. Ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three American aides.  This after storming the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.  Stevens had worked to help transition Libya from Gaddafi's iron-fisted rule to democracy.  So much for the rabble's gratitude.  So much for the Libyan government protecting its benefactors.    

In Egypt, where the U.S. helped oust Hosni Mubarak, the American embassy was assaulted, yet again on the 9/11 anniversary.  As American Thinker's Rick Moran reported on Wednesday, the mobsters tore down the stars and stripes flying over the embassy and hoisted... an al-Qaeda banner.  Al-Qaeda, the fount of freedom and human rights. 

Does anyone really think these attacks against an American embassy and consulate (U.S. territories under international law) on 9/11 were coincidences?  Or think it was anti-Muslim expressions in the U.S. that were the root cause of this violence?  Anyone not think that raising al-Qaeda's flag over the U.S. embassy wasn't a premeditated affront to the U.S. on a day of remembrance for the three thousand some Americans killed in al-Qaeda's coldblooded assault on the homeland in September 2001?     

But please don't blame the rabble or the governments of Egypt and Libya.  Allah forefend, don't blame Muslim fundamentalists who now run the shows in those two nations. When it comes to Muslim fundamentalists -- fundamental, as in a strict devotion to the extreme and violent teachings of the Quran and the Prophet Mohammed, but we mustn't say so -- the faithful are to be understood and sympathized with.   

We mustn't dare identify Islam as the wellspring for terrorism and violence emanating from the Middle East.  We must pin that on small groups of "radicals" or "extremists" who disregard or pervert the Koran's pacific teachings and the Prophet Mohammed's Christ-like fealty to love and peace.  That there are Muslims who don't act in accord with the violence and brutality that is a feature of Islam and as practiced by Mohammed is true.  That these Muslims are in some real sense a minority and quasi-apostates is also true. 

But let's get back to blame.  Blame affixed to Arab mobs isn't appropriate in Tuesday's attacks against American diplomatic personnel and property.  Those upstanding Libyan and Egyptian citizens were only venting justified rage at decades of Western exploitation.  It's America's comeuppance, too, for supporting -- however inconsistently and grudgingly by President Obama -- Israel, where Jews haven't stormed the American embassy and killed United States representatives; where democracy, the rule of law, and human rights are respected and practiced.

Back home, among left-wingers, Israel's democracy, exercised conventionally, Western-style (unlike Iran's democracy, practiced the old-fashion way in accord with Islamic teachings and replete with theocratic governors, beatings, stoning, and beheadings -- and rigged elections), has fallen out of favor. 

This should give heart to Muslim fundamentalists and their people.  Sympathy for the Muslim faithful's desire to plunge the world into a new Muslim-dominated Dark Ages is real and growing in left-wing circles, this as a means of taking down the U.S., where conservatives and capitalist-roaders are impeding the left's statist march.  It's the old "enemy of my enemy is my friend" routine.        

Can anyone forget the recent remarkable voice vote on the floor of the Democratic National Convention (the Democratic Party, a wholly owned subsidiary of the left) as L.A.'s mayor, Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa, attempted three times to get a two-thirds majority to shout support for reinserting God and Jerusalem as Israelis' capitol back into the Democrats' platform?  Remember that the good mayor had to ram through the reintroduction of God and Jerusalem in face of a majority or a near-majority of delegates opposing said motion?

Don't discount the growing hostility to Israel (or God) among Democrat infidels, dear oppressed Muslims.  Despite the spin among Democrat operatives on American T.V., that little anti-Israel display at the Democrats' convention points to the party's future. 

Those Democrats on the convention floor in Charlotte were party activists; they're part of the vanguard that wish to dump America's steadfast ally in the Middle East, Israel, for a go at standing with the exploited and oppressed Palestinians and other Arabs.  That's the gangster-led Palestinians, whose people live in grinding poverty and squalor...  who are exploited perhaps worse than the American black underclass by their own leaders so that those leaders can thrive.

The fiction of an Arab spring has had its benefits, though.  It more starkly revealed Mr. Obama's and Madam Clinton's hostility to the Israelis.  One cannot say with any certainty that Mr. Obama is an anti-Semite.  But Mr. Obama's dithering on the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel and his evident disdain for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes it clear that Mr. Obama doesn't see Israel as a friend.  The president's Third World love affair doesn't permit it.

Rather than issuing mamsy-pamsy statements from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo about respect for religious freedom and expression in the face of hostile acts toward the United States, the president should be issuing ultimatums to the peace-loving Muslim fundamentalists who run Egypt and Libya. 

To the Libyans, in particular, Mr. Obama should demand that the ring leaders and murderers of Ambassador Stevens and his aides be rounded up and turned over to the United States, post-haste.  Failure to do so should carry dire consequences.  The culprits should be hauled in front of a U.S. military tribunal, and if found guilty, as one presumes they would, they should be hung or shot, and their remains disposed of in the Mediterranean or the Indian Ocean without benefit of Muslim rituals.

Hard justice?  You bet, very hard, but that's the language that the thugs and murderers in the Middle East will understand.  The language Muslim fundamentalists use against innocents is far, far rougher, up to and including the parading through streets of their victims' -- often -- desecrated bodies.

Enough, already, with Rodney King-like State Department pronouncements that impply, "Why can't we all just get along?"  Enough with the politically correct clap-trap about the intent of Islam and the actions of its adherents.  Enough with the mournful declarations, the candlelight vigils, and the pretty ribbons.  Symbolism doesn't stop bullets. 

The Arab Spring is a terrible fiction.  The war against the United States begun by Muslims in the 1990s and made vivid on 9/11 continues to this day.  The United States needs to fully and publicly engage this war.  Drone attacks and other clandestine operations alone won't cut it.

In a hard, often cruel, world, an unflinching, unapologetic, and public assessment of America's Muslim enemies is imperative.  Counterforce, sure and swift, and retributive justice, are in order. 

The Muslims have made this war.  It's Americans' right and duty to finish it.