The Foreign Service Journal, December 2022

98 DECEMBER 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Benghazi’s Lingering Effects Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco That Pushed America and Its World to the Brink Ethan Chorin, 2022, Hachette Books, $30/hardcover, e-book available, 432 pages. Reviewed by Charles O. Cecil Anyone with a serious interest in Libya, or anyone looking for examples of how partisan politics has affected our conduct of foreign relations in the cur- rent century, will find Ethan Chorin’s Benghazi! an excellent case study. This book is not just a recounting of events preceding the tragic deaths of four U.S. officials—including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens—in Benghazi Sept. 11, 2012, and of the attack itself, but also of the subsequent metamorphosis of the event into a domestic political issue in the U.S. In Chorin’s words, “Benghazi” became “shorthand for any kind of event that can be blown up for partisan advantage”—a tool for domestic politi- cal warfare. Chorin is well qualified to undertake this evaluation. He was in Benghazi the night of the attack on the U.S. mission, neither his first nor his last visit to that city. Already near-fluent in Arabic, he had an earlier two-year assignment as eco- nomic-commercial officer at our embassy in Tripoli (2004-2006) that allowed him to acquire an in-depth knowledge of Libya and its political and social environment— knowledge he has cultivated by producing a variety of publications since leaving the Foreign Service. He has written a very personal account, but in the process has identi- fied several issues of interest to anyone dealing with our nation’s foreign affairs who is concerned with our reputation and influence in the world. Chorin builds a strong case that the U.S. government failed to under- stand the interrelationships of various Islamist organizations, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ansar al- Sharia, and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. This, combined with Washington’s failure to take seriously Ambassador Chris Stevens’ requests for enhanced security in both Tripoli and Benghazi, largely accounts for the lack of prepara- tion for what happened in Benghazi the night of Sept. 11, 2012. Chorin’s account illustrates the value of full language competency (4/4 or better) and why one-year, even two-year assignments rarely result in solid under- standing of the cultures and political environments we are tasked to interpret. The book gives a condensed but sufficient account of the attack itself and its precursors, explaining also the initial incorrect linking of the Benghazi attack with popular demonstrations in other Arab countries (beginning in Cairo on Sept. 11) in protest against an anti-Muslim video that had been posted on YouTube in Arabic on Sept. 4. (There was no such demonstration in Benghazi; the attack was preplanned. The Obama administration’s initial talking points conflated these events.) Endnotes direct interested readers to the more complete accounts contained in the State Department’s Accountability Review Board report and in the reports of multiple House and Senate commit- tees. The final third of the book deals with the domestic partisan efforts to turn the Benghazi deaths into an attack on the Obama administration and on Hillary Clinton personally as she positioned herself to run for the presidency in 2016. Ten congressional committees held hearings to review the Benghazi events and their precursors. Further, partisan media exaggerated and distorted accounts of the attack, insinuating or inventing bad judgments made by responsible officials. Fox News alleged that Clinton and senior Wash- ington officials denied requests for military assistance during the attack (the “stand-down” controversy). Neither the committees nor hearings investigating the Benghazi events found any evidence to support such claims. In Chorin’s words: “Partisanship was reconfiguring American bureaucracies to fight domestic political battles rather BOOKS Chorin is well qualified to undertake this evaluation. He was in Benghazi the night of the attack on the U.S. mission.