This book takes a look at the events surrounding the overrun
of the American consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the death of the
American Ambassador. However, it is written from the point of view of the
military contractors (soldiers) who were on the ground and responded to the
events. Rather than looking at the political side, it looks at the very human
side of what happened. It is essentially written as a first person point of
view story.
The author starts of by explaining the Global Response Staff
(GRS), which is the support team that was on the ground in Benghazi, outside of
the American consulate compound, as extra security. It was created after 9/11
and consists of full time CIA security staffers and former military operators. They
serve as bodyguards for spies, diplomats and other American personnel in the
field. He also explains a bit about Libya itself. Libya is a North African
country divided into 3 parts. Tripolitania (with Tripoli as the capital),
Cyrenaica (with Benghazi as the capital) and Fezzan. Most of the 6 million
Libyans live in or around Tripoli and Benghazi. 97% of the population is Sunni
Muslim. In 1951, after having traded hands multiple times and bombed often in
WWII, the allies helped establish the United Kingdom of Libya, an independent
constitutional monarchy. It was the world’s poorest country and one of its
least literate until the discovery of immense oil reserves in 1959. Muammar
al-Gaddafi, a 27 year old army officer at the time, led a bloodless coup in
1969 when the king was abroad. Benghazi suffered while Tripoli grew rich, even
though most of the oil came from the area around Benghazi. This caused a lot of
dissent, which led to the revolution in 2011. After this revolution there was
an abundance of weapons, the absence of a working Libyan government and
lingering anti-western sentiments among certain militias. Things began to
escalate in the summer of 2012, and tensions grew between the GRS staff and the
CIA’s Benghazi chief over the lack of security.
The book walks through what happened on the ground and
leaves you with a lot of questions about how the CIA handled the incident. This
isn’t helped by the fact that there were a lot of lies and controversy in the
media and in Washington. Some of the questions that were common were: Why didn’t
they allow the operators to react sooner? Why didn’t they provide backup sooner?
Why didn’t they better arm the compound in the first place? The book also does
a good job of giving life to the operators who lost their life that day,
helping to show that while we may not understand private military companies,
most of the operators are ex members of the U.S. military and still serving their
country proudly.
Reading this book also opened my eyes to the shift that has
been happening in the way countries (especially the U.S) wage wars, and left me
with some questions that merit further investigation: How prevalent is the use
of contract operators, as opposed to U.S. military soldiers? Why is this? Why
do people leave the U.S. forces to join private military forces (money?)? Why can’t
they get the same medals for serving their country? This is a very thought provoking book
that helps you form your own opinions on what happened in Benghazi and what could
have been done differently.