C.S. Lewis wrote that a virtuous patriotism becomes “militant only to protect what it loves.” This theme animates 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, the story of heavily outnumbered CIA security contractors who in 2012 defended the USA facilities in Libya under attack by Islamist militants. Two of them were killed, along with the USA ambassador and one foreign service officer.
Libya then, as now, was anarchic and a metaphor for the brutal state of nature resulting from the absence of lawful government. The CIA contractors voluntarily and dutifully leave a more defensible CIA annex to rescue the lightly defended USA consulate besieged by swarms of al Qaeda aligned militia. Unable to save the ambassador or his colleague, whom the militants had tried to incinerate, the doughty security team retreats to its annex, which they defend against a night-long assault. Continuous pleas to Washington for military help elicit no substantive response. Instead, only a handful of additional security personnel, at their own initiative, fly in from Tripoli on a rented private jet.
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