The Week: Most Recent Middle East:War in Libya

How important will David Petraeus' Benghazi testimony be?

The Week — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 13:50:00 -0500

Former CIA director David Petraeus has agreed to testify before House and Senate committees investigating the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, even though he stepped down last week over an increasingly complex sex scandal. Petraeus was originally scheduled to appear on Capitol Hill on Thursday. When he quit, Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike complained that the scandal shouldn't prevent them from hearing from the man who was in charge of the CIA when two of the agency's contractors, along with Ambassador Chris Stevens and another American, were killed in Libya....

Spring break in Libya

The Week — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 13:35:00 -0400

HIS PLANE TOUCHED down in Cairo on Aug. 23, 2011. School didn't start again for another month, and Chris Jeon, a 21-year-old UCLA math major, had told his parents he was going sightseeing in Egypt. What he didn't tell them was that he had decided to fight with the Libyan rebels against Muammar al-Qaddafi. He wanted to see something historic, he told friends. His $9,000-a-month internship at BlackRock, one of the world's largest asset management firms, bored him. After 12- to 18-hour days in his cubicle, Jeon felt like he was dying. He packed one pair of jeans, three shirts, a leather jacket...

Hillary Clinton takes responsibility for Benghazi security: 4 consequences

The Week — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 09:07:00 -0400

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CNN on Monday that she takes full responsibility for security at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, where terrorists launched a Sept. 11 assault that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Mitt Romney has stepped up his criticism of President Obama over the attack, suggesting Obama hasn't been up front about what happened. Vice President Joe Biden said in last week's vice-presidential debate that the White House didn't know about requests for more security ahead of the attack. Clinton said Biden and Obama wouldn't have known, because...

Congress' hyper-partisan Benghazi hearings: The fallout

The Week — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 09:15:00 -0400

With the presidential election rapidly approaching, Republicans on a House oversight committee grilled State Department officials on Wednesday about allegedly inadequate security at the Benghazi consulate on Sept. 11. Two former leaders of the U.S. security team in Libya said Obama administration officials had turned down a request for more security, and argued that given previous terrorist attacks in Benghazi, it was clear the consulate was at risk. However, one of the witnesses, former Tripoli embassy security chief Eric Nordstrom, conceded that even a beefed-up protection detail wouldn...

The White House's evolving story on the Benghazi attack: A timeline

The Week — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 12:14:00 -0400

Mitt Romney is going after President Obama's foreign policy record, long considered a feather in Obama's cap, by attacking the administration's response to the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans. Republicans first called the violence evidence that Obama's policy of trying to rebuild bridges with Muslim countries had made our enemies think we were weak. Now the Romney camp is suggesting that Obama tried to cover up evidence that this was a terrorist attack, rather than a protest against an anti-Islam...

Who's politicizing the Libya attack: The White House or the GOP?

The Week — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 09:42:00 -0400

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has returned to hammering President Obama over the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other diplomatic personnel. After being widely criticized for prematurely politicizing the attack, Romney is now saying that the Obama administration is the one playing politics, trying "their very best to keep the people of America from understanding what happened" in Benghazi. The White House initially described the attack as part of a spontaneous protest against the anti-Islam film Innocence...

What really happened in Benghazi? A guide

The Week — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 18:09:00 -0400

The first accounts of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, blamed the violence on a mob enraged over an anti-Islam video posted online. But just about every early detail reported about the assault turned out to be wrong, and now the Obama administration is looking into whether this was a planned attack by Islamist militants, not simply a riot that spun out of control. What do we know so far about what really happened in Benghazi? Here, a brief guide:

Was there, or wasn't there, a protest?
There was. As happened...

Libya's joyous election: 3 takeaways

The Week — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 09:27:00 -0400

A coalition of parties friendly to the West appears to have beaten Islamist rivals in Libya's first election since the killing last year of Moammar Gadhafi, who denied Libyans the right to go to the ballot box during his 42-year reign. Libyans celebrated in the streets on Sunday, a day after the vote, which President Obama hailed as a "milestone." If official results confirm that secularists will run the incoming parliament, Libya will have broken "an Islamist wave" that swept across neighboring Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco after the Arab Spring uprisings. What does the vote say about Libya's future...

The enduring failure of democracy promotion abroad

The Week — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:15:00 -0400

Since the end of the Cold War, democracy promotion has been one of the default elements of U.S. foreign policy. Spreading democracy became a particularly important part of the Bush administration's rhetoric in support of its so-called "freedom agenda," which was at the same time far more selective and inconsistent than its universalistic assumptions would suggest. And since the beginning of popular uprisings in North Africa and the Near East last year, democracy promotion has also figured more prominently in the public rhetoric and policies of the Obama administration. But let's face it: While...

A year later, Libya is still a mess

The Week — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:25:00 -0400

One year after the U.S., Britain, and France began their war in Libya, the harmful consequences of Western intervention are readily apparent. The internal disorder and regional instability that the West's assault created were foreseen by many critics. And yet, Western governments made no meaningful efforts to prepare for them. No one planned to stabilize Libya once Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown, and the National Transitional Council (NTC) rejected the idea of an outside stabilization force, which has left Libya at serious risk of fragmentation and renewed conflict. Intervention "on the cheap...

Is Libya worse off without Gadhafi?

The Week — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 13:10:00 -0500

Friday marks the one-year anniversary of the uprising that ousted Libya's longtime leader, Moammar Gadhafi — and ultimately led to his death at the hands of rebel soldiers in October. Today, the new Libya isn't exactly a model of democratic stability. Militias still control huge swaths of the country. Islamist groups recently desecrated war graves in anger over the burning of Korans at a U.S.-run military base in Afghanistan. And this week, tribal leaders and militia commanders in Benghazi declared the country's oil-rich east a semi-autonomous state, a move the national government...

Saif al-Islam Gadhafi's arrest: 4 key questions

The Week — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 11:43:00 -0500

Libyan militia members captured Moammar Gadhafi's son and one-time heir apparent, Saif al-Islam, on Saturday, as he reportedly tried to make his way to Libya's southern border. The arrest of the 39-year-old Gadhafi eliminated the best hope the old regime's loyalists had for finding a new leader, and sparked celebrations across Libya. What will happen to Saif al-Islam now, and what does his capture mean for the country? Here, four central questions:

1. First off, will Saif even survive?
It's "not necessarily a foregone conclusion" that Saif al-Islam will live to face trial, says Jon Lee Anderson at...

Moammar Gadhafi's 'unlikely' Brooklyn pen pal

The Week — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:47:00 -0400

Moammar Gadhafi may have been a brutal dictator, but "he was a good pen pal," says Louis Schlamowitz, 81, a retired Brooklyn, N.Y., florist and longtime letter-swapper with the recently slain Libyan leader. Locally famous as an accomplished autograph hound, Schlamowitz kept up a sporadic correspondence with Gadhafi dating back to 1969 when the Libyan seized power. "I... congratulated him on being the new leader of Libya, hoping for many more years ahead of him," Schlamowitz tells the New York Post. Here, a brief look at the "unlikely pen-pal relationship" between the Jewish florist and the Israel...

Gadhafi's son's surrender request: What should Libya do?

The Week — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:16:00 -0400

Moammar Gadhafi's one-time heir, Saif al-Islam, has escaped Libya into neighboring Niger, according to reports early Friday. Once considered a reformer, Saif had vowed to fight and die on Libyan soil, but now apparently wants to avoid the fate of his father and brother Mutassim, who were captured before dying in rebel custody. Saif is the only one of Gadhafi's eight children who is still on the lam, and sources within Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) say Saif is negotiating to turn himself into the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which has indicted him for war crimes...

Should NATO stay longer in Libya?

The Week — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:44:00 -0400

The United Nations Security Council on Thursday passed a resolution dissolving NATO's mandate to intervene in Libya as of Oct. 31. The lifting of the no-fly zone implemented in March came despite pleas from Libya's interim leader, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, to keep a NATO presence through the end of the year to protect civilians and the new government from attacks by the late Moammar Gadhafi's loyalists. Is it a mistake for NATO to leave so soon?

It's about time NATO stopped meddling: Libya needs NATO out of its affairs, John Rees of the Stop the War Coalition tells RT.com. The fact that the country's...

Should rebel fighters pay for torturing Gadhafi before his death?

The Week — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:30:00 -0400

The latest video of the capture of Moammar Gadhafi appears to show him being tortured by rebel fighters shortly before his death. One Libyan rebel appears to have sodomized Gadhafi with a stick or knife, Global Post reports. Human rights activists say it looks like the rebels who finally caught up with Gadhafi may have violated the rules of war. Libya's interim government, bowing to international pressure, promised to investigate whether the deposed Libyan dictator died from battle wounds or was summarily executed. How important is it to hold someone accountable for the way Gadhafi died?

If this...