I suppose it’s better than the Libyans, who opened fire on protesters outside the Libyan People’s Bureau in London with a submachine-gun, in what was clearly an attempt to murder opponents of the Gadhafi regime. Unfortunately for them, while they hit and injured a number of the people they were aiming at, they also hit and killed a female police officer (the video of her lying dying in the road afterwards is one of those things you can never quite unsee).
The Libyans claimed that they were defending themselves against an angry mob storming the building. Video showed that the “angry mob” was actually confined behind barriers on the far side of the street, where they posed not the slightest threat to anyone and were sitting ducks for the gunman. HM Government was distinctly unamused by the whole business, and some unpleasantness followed. As far as I know, the killer was never brought to trial.
So I confess that my first reaction to the news about the thugs in DC was “At least they didn’t machine-gun anyone this time.” All the same, there’s a horrible sameness to these tyrants and their secret police thugs: attacking protesters in foreign capitals serves no practical purpose whatsoever, but they just can’t seem to resist doing it. Dictators gonna dictate, I guess.
