Two years after the failed NATO
intervention, Libyan society is in chaos. Over 50,000 were killed in a mission
that was meant to protect civilians, and there are reportedly more than 1,700
competing militias marauding the streets. One outcome of this chaos was the
attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi which led to the death of U.S. Ambassador J.
Christopher Stevens on September 11, 2012. There have been Congressional
hearings on this attack, and on May 8, U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, the
California Republican who heads the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee, called another inquiry into the September 11, 2012 event. At this
inquiry, Greg Hicks, the deputy chief of mission in Libya who became the top
U.S. diplomat in the country after Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed,
testified that the U.S. government did not do enough to intervene to rescue
Ambassador Stevens.
What Greg Hicks and Representative
Darrell Issa did not probe was the role of the CIA and Petraeus in the use of
Benghazi as the largest CIA station in North Africa, where they ran militias
into Syria. When the information about the attack on the US ‘facility’ in
Benghazi was first brought to light, there was confusion because this
information had the potential of putting the vaunted military in its proper
perspective. Was the space that was attacked a consulate, a State Department
facility, a CIA safe house, or indeed a prison for captured militias? This
confusion took attention away from the reality that elements in the military/intelligence
hierarchy had formulated a policy to align with certain militia groups in
Eastern Libya and that these militias (sometimes called jihadists) had in the
past been linked to groups that the U.S. called ‘terrorist organizations.’
France, the CIA, and the U.S. Africa Command had aligned with these jihadists
to destabilize Libya, freeze billions of dollars of assets, execute Gaddafi,
and use Libya as a rear base in the drive for regime change in Syria.
The Republicans had sought to
benefit from the confusion and disinformation that had been spun by the
intelligence and the military about the real causes of the death of the
Ambassador in Benghazi. The hearings called before the Republican-controlled
Congress did reveal that the private military establishments had a prime place in the protection of U.S.
legations around the world. But these hearings did not come close to the real
questions that should be posed to David Petraeus: what role did the use of
Benghazi as a CIA station for the training of Jihadists play in the attack?
Now that the conservative media is
calling the revelations of the CIA revision of the ‘talking points’ a cover up,
it may be instructive to obtain a clearer picture of the role of Petraeus and
the CIA in Benghazi. Why did Petraeus travel to Benghazi? What was the nature
of his report? These questions have not been properly addressed and although
the Accountability and Review Board, which was headed by Thomas Pickering with
retired Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did
issue a scathing report about the absence of leadership, the issues of Petraeus
and the Jihadists have been buried in the hearings.
Pickering and Mullen’s scathing
report released in December found that “systematic failures and leadership and
management deficiencies at senior levels” of the State Department meant that
security was “inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the
attack that took place.”
What this review and these hearings
are obfuscating are the real issues that emanate from the role of the CIA in
recruiting Jihadists in Benghazi. On Monday at a press conference, Obama called
the continued discussions on Benghazi a “side show.” However, for the millions
of persons in North Africa that have been negatively affected by the NATO
intervention and the role of the CIA, private militias and private military contractors, the debates in the USA can
be viewed as another diversion to cover up the CIA operations in North Africa.
Ethan Chorin, one of the operators in Libya and close ally of Ambassador
Stevens, has weighed in with an op-ed piece in the New York Times that stated,
“The biggest American failure wasn’t
in the tactical mistakes about security at the diplomatic mission where
Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died. It lay in
thinking that an intervention in Libya would be easier or less costly than it
has proved to be — a judgment that led the United States to think it could go
in light, get out fast and focus on the capital, Tripoli, without paying enough
attention to Libya’s eastern provinces, where the rebellion began as a call for
a constitution and increased civil liberties.”
Chorin, who was an insider in
Benghazi, continues to insist that the NATO intervention was “inspired and
skillfully executed, and had the potential to do more good than harm.”
In my book, Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya,
I have challenged this verdict that the intervention did more good than harm.
Some other supporters of the Libya intervention are now calculating the costs
as embassies rush to leave the people to the mercy of the militias.
According to the British newspaper the Guardian, “the fear of further
violence has led to the British and US embassies withdrawing some staff, the
European Union closing its mission in Tripoli and BP announcing it was pulling
out non-essential staff.” France had already scaled back its operations after a
military attack on its mission in Tripoli. What Daryl Issa and the forces
calling the issues of Benghazi a cover-up are refusing to deal with is the
deceptions and lies that led to the catastrophic situation in Libya and North
Africa today.
