Ten Years After Benghazi: Getting Past Groundhog Day

October-November 2022

Also published in Survival
About the Authors
Ben Fishman
Ben Fishman

Ben Fishman is the Steven D. Levy Senior Fellow in the Linda and Tony Rubin Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute, where he focuses on North Africa.

Articles & Testimony

Of all the conflict-riven countries in the Middle East, Libya still has the greatest potential for resolution in a way that could benefit the wider region, Europe, and the United States.

Benghazi means different things to different people. For many Libyans, it became a source of pride as the initial site of a daring revolt against Muammar Gadhafi. In 2017, General Khalifa Haftar, the head of the so-called Libyan National Army, took control of the city after years of violence. He remains the de facto ruler of Libya’s east, from which he initiated two failed civil wars and is threatening another. For Americans, Benghazi is shorthand for the tragic attacks of September 2012 in which four Americans were killed. In its aftermath, the Republican Party sought to tar President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Ambassador Susan Rice as negligent and untruthful, in the process fundamentally altering the U.S. role in Libya...

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