Killing an ambassador can lead to dire consequences. President Obama has promised that the killers of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other State Department employees will be brought to justice.
Indeed. Justice is essential, but equally essential is taking the fight to the terrorists who were behind the attack. The U.S. government now suspects an al Qaeda link.
No one will be surprised if the American response requires the use of violent force. If so, we can only hope for something short, sharp, and effective. It ought to make the point that American lives are costly to take but without taking innocent lives in turn.
History shows that this is a dangerous moment. In the past, the death of an ambassador has sometimes marked the start of a war. Letâ??s look at two examples from European history, one from the early modern era and the other from the ancient past.
In 1618 there occurred the infamous Defenestration of Prague. What is a â??defenestration?â? Thereby hangs a tale.
It was the era of the Reformation, a period that saw Europe torn apart by disputes between Catholics and Protestants â?? conflicts involving not only theology but also politics and power. By 1618, Europeans had grown used to a century of on-again, off-again sectarian violence. Now it was the turn of Bohemia (today part of the Czech Republic). When a new Catholic king, Ferdinand of Styria, took the throne, he moved to limit Protestantsâ?? freedom.
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