Applebaum: Time to Drop Our Mideast Dictator Buddies
Anne Applebaum writes in the Washington Post:
Every British newspaper worth its salt has written lately about Saif Gaddafi, but the Sunday Times had by far the best graphic illustration. A photograph of Moammar Gaddafi's second son - clad in a white jacket and tasteful silk tie, with a carefully pressed keffiyeh draped elegantly over his shoulders - occupies the center of a large box.
Photographs of his British friends and business partners cluster in a circle around him: Nat Rothschild, scion of the banking family, who gave a party for Saif when he completed his PhD on "civil society" and "global governance" at the London School of Economics; Sir Howard Davies, director of the LSE and one of Tony Blair's economic envoys to Libya; Lord Peter Mandelson, a former Blair adviser, cabinet minister and European commissioner, who now advises "companies hoping to expand markets overseas"; Prince Andrew, who promotes British trade abroad; and, last but not least, Blair himself.
Saif was popular: He went to parties in St. James's Palace and sailed in yachts off Corfu. He was also rich. Thanks to his contacts, he became the conduit through which British companies invested in Libya - and through which the Libyan Investment Authority invested in British companies. At least that was what he was doing until last week, when he appeared on Libyan television vowing that his father's bloody regime would fight "to the last man, the last woman, the last bullet." Suddenly, the acceptable face of Libyan tyranny became unacceptable: Underneath that Western-educated veneer, it seems there lurks a ranting psychopath.
Saif was not the only dubious character to inhabit the space where money meets politics in London, the city that has become the true capital of global capitalism. Any list of, say, people with whom Prince Andrew has recently dined will reveal dozens of similarly polished thugs: more Libyans, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, and of course, the ubiquitous Saudis.
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