BENGHAZI!
A New History of the Fiasco That Pushed America and Its World to the Brink
by Ethan Chorin
An expert on Libya and a witness to the 2012 Benghazi attack reassesses the tragedy and its impact.
Even after a decade, Chorin writes, the aforementioned attack on two American diplomatic outposts remains “confusing” and, in some instances, “genuinely puzzling.” Not only are multiple eyewitness accounts “distorted” and some critical information is simply “missing,” he says, but the account of the terrorist incident also became more muddied by its immediate politicization. Indeed, he asserts that the attack served as a shibboleth for Republicans who accused “Democrats of covering up critical information,” with Democrats retorting that “it was drama manufactured by Republicans.” As he notes, the event continues to resonate: “Benghazi wasn’t the cause of any of America’s political dysfunctions….But it was both a symptom and accelerator of them.” As one of the few American diplomats posted in Libya in the early 2000s—and as the author of Exit the Colonel (2012), a book on Libyan history and politics, Chorin is an authority on the North African nation; his writings have also appeared in the New York Times and Foreign Policy. This book does an admirable job of analyzing the impact of Benghazi on U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics, and it’s effective at providing historical context. The greatest strength of the book, however, lies in its heart-pounding narrative, which describes Chorin’s personal experiences in Benghazi from a nearby hotel on the night of the attack. Though no longer a diplomat, he was working at the time as a coordinator for a multinational company researching port cities; despite leaving the Foreign Service, he admits, “I couldn’t leave Libya behind.”
Over the course of this book, Chorin provides a harrowing personal perspective on the fateful day, with a number of salient details readers won’t find elsewhere. These include an account of speaking with U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who invited the author to the doomed compound mere hours before his own death, and of being left behind after the first round of Benghazi evacuations. Moreover, the author draws on two decades of connections within the country, interviewing multiple non-American subjects, some of whose names have been changed in these pages in order to protect their anonymity; they’ve heretofore refused to give interviews about the events, Chorin says. The book is supported by more than 50 pages of sources and citations, and it balances remarkable depth with an engaging narrative. The complexity that surrounds Benghazi is presented in all its nuance, yet the author’s commanding prose helps to guide readers smoothly through the frenzied series of events. This effort is accompanied by an ample assortment of maps and timelines as well as a list of key figures. Admirably, the author does not engage in partisan statements, refusing to use the tragedy to score political points; Republicans, including Donald Trump, are criticized for exploiting the event to win votes, and the Obama administration is criticized for mishandling a tragedy that, according to the author, was “preventable.”An accessible and informative reassessment of an infamous terrorist incident that offers new details.