The Istanbul Process, The Missing Piece of the Filmmaker Puzzle

It was heartening to see Rich Lowry in Politico making note of the one largely unspoken element of the Benghazi Cover-up which is going largely unreported. Namely that a man sits in prison because those in the State Department apparently chose to eliminate terrorism from the talking point associated with the Benghazi aftermath. Lowry notes:

Instead, Nakoula ended up the patsy in a tawdry coverup. The State Department Operations Center reported to Washington immediately that the the Benghazi attack was an assault carried out by Islamic militants. The falsehoods about Benghazi weren’t a product of the fog of war; they were the product of the fog of politics. Desperate to minimize the attack and deflect responsibility, Team Obama evaded and obfuscated.

Over at the blog Popehat, Ken White takes exception to those who have defended the “Innocence of Muslims” trailer maker, writing:

Is Nakoula in federal prison because he made the “Innocence of Muslims” video? Superficially, perhaps, in the sense that his behavior may have escaped detection if he hadn’t become famous. It’s even possible that someone in the Obama Administration tipped off — or pressured — the Probation Office about his conduct. (If that’s what happened, there ought to be a Congressional investigation.) But Nakoula’s conduct is the sort that would absolutely be pursued if detected by his Probation Office and would routinely result in a revocation of supervised release and a return to federal prison. People saying otherwise don’t know what they are talking about or don’t care, or both.

Fair enough.

But both Rich and Ken actually manage to miss the key factor, without which Nakoula’s arrest is indeed perhaps unremarkable. And that factor revolves around  UN resolution 16/18,  The Istanbul Process, and the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (formerly Conference). For those who think this is an irrelevant distraction to the Benghazi discussion:

It goes to motive, your honor.  (I’m not a lawyer, but I heard that in a TV courtroom once.)

UN Resolution 16/18 was jointly introduced by the United States and Egypt*. At the time some argued that it was a walk back from previous OIC “Defamation of Islam” resolutions. However, the OIC made clear afterwards it considered the resolution a resounding success, and indeed, that it represented a step forward in their effort to effectively criminalize “Islamophobia.” The Resolution specifically calls for “Adopting measures to criminalize incitement to imminent violence based on religion or belief;”.

Worse still, by participating with the OIC in the Istanbul Process to implement the resolution, the United States has effectively done the same. Speaking about the Istanbul Process, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: