Battles of Benghazi: From Gadhafi to Clinton

Benghazi is a city in eastern Libya. It is an emblem of many of the ramifications of the Arab spring from east to west. Benghazi was the cradle of the insurrection against the dictatorship of Moammar Gadhafi. The prospect of a large-scale massacre of the population by Gadhafi’s forces was the impetus and justification for Western intervention in Libya in 2011.

The dictator fell, but the liberation of Libya did not only bring the hope — perhaps too anticipated, too hasty — for a better country with increased potential; it brought the power of militant Islamists, many of whom are operating in Benghazi, the center of Islamic fundamentalism. These militants did what they could to prevent the consolidation of a new Libyan state, in fact acting as a state-stopper.*

The ramifications of Libya are felt in Syria, now under the formal power of a young dictator, Bashar al-Assad, who belongs to an old school of Arab autocracy — like Gadhafi, who rose to power in the same era as Hafez al-Assad, father of Syria’s current leader. The Damascus regime concretized what Gadhafi could not do in Benghazi. Various cities were made victims of large-scale massacres that could not be avoided because there was no intervention from the West.

Their citizens suffered hard and double. They were massacred by the army and militia of Assad, but many of them also are also now submitting to the domination of Islamist militias, which are among the most warlike combatants in the Syrian conflict. In some parts of the country, the militias in service to Assad implement ethnic cleansing of Sunnis; in other parts, Islamist militias impose Shariah law.

It is within this scenario — the fighting of militias — that many of the ramifications of the Syrian civil war play out with varying ranges of foreign intervention from Iran, Hezbollah, Russia, Israel and Turkey and Western countries. This was not the plan, especially for the West, when the intervention took place to save Benghazi from Gadhafi in 2011. There was no expectation that among the ramifications of the Arab spring there was the possibility of a regional war or much space for the al-Qaida network, which seemed to have been trampled down in the initial phase of insurrections in North Africa and the Middle East.

The original al-Qaida network was greatly weakened by the actions of the Obama administration, which emphasized operations with drones and special forces teams such as the one that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan just over two years ago. In his electoral-political narrative, Obama became a great trump card. But, more than an organization, the al-Qaida network spread as an inspiration in countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Moreover, the Arab spring made space for the actions of jihadist forces in Libya and other countries.

It was just in the final months of the electoral campaign of 2012 — and on the day of Sept. 11 — that the attacks occurred against the U.S. Embassy and the CIA annex in Benghazi. This coincided with Obama celebrating his success in the fight against terrorism and Hillary Clinton being in office as secretary of state. The ramifications of what happened in Benghazi are now seen in all their intensity in the U.S. domestic political war, with investigations pushed by Republicans in Congress putting the White House and Democrats on the defensive.

U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died on Sept. 11, 2012 in the attack on the embassy in Benghazi. There are now questions about inadequate security at the embassy and whether the attack was perpetrated by jihadists. To the beat of the issue of the permanent CPI, some Republicans are accusing the White House of a cover-up, shouting “Watergate” and calling for the impeachment of President Obama. Why not extrapolate the ramifications? The Republicans’ allegation is that the Democrats delayed in labeling this a terrorist attack — not just a spontaneous demonstration — and that they did what they could to hide the situation from the public in order to win political and electoral dividends.

The credibility of the Obama administration is tarnished. In fact, he did what he could to minimize Benghazi in the electoral campaign of 2012. But the politicization of the tragedy also occurred on the Republican side. Everything was done to maximize this tragedy, with an eye on the electoral campaign of 2016 and on tarnishing the image of Hillary Clinton, a potential Democratic candidate.

Benghazi and its ramifications become increasingly intricate — from spring to spring.

*Editor’s note: Our translation of the Portuguese word “paraestado” is “state-stopper”: something that stops the formation of a state.