Can Qaddafi Survive Libya's Revolt?
After some 42 years of erratic rule – the longest in Africa - Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi deserves to be bounced. But it won’t be easy or bloodless.
Will Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi be the next dictator to bite the dust?
After some 42 years of erratic rule – the longest in Africa - he certainly deserves to be bounced. But it won’t be easy or bloodless.
Libya is one of the African domino countries experiencing street demonstrations, after the overthrow of regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. Of all Arab countries, Qaddafi’s doesn’t hesitate to kill its own people.
Qaddafi has got to be one of the strangest leaders in the world today.
North Korea’s Kim Jong Il is the nuttiest, but Qaddafi is infinitely more entertaining and, in his way, just as lethal – even though he now has adopted the mantle of being a self-proclaimed humanitarian.
As of this writing, some 250 demonstrators have been killed in Libya—mostly in Benghazi, which has never been too friendly towards the self-styled “King of Kings.”
Qaddafi was a lean, fit, handsome 27-year-old army captain in 1969 when he led the coup that deposed King Idris. He accepted promotion to colonel, but rejected being a general, as if emulating his idol, Egypt’s President Nasser.
Qaddafi sought to unite all Arabs, and wanted to lead the U.S.A. – United States of Africa. No way. He couldn’t bring either Egypt or Libya into his pan-Arabic fold.
He called his regime “government by the masses” and outlawed booze and gambling – but he, himself, was a consummate gambler on the world stage, invariably going too far and alienating the U.S. and Britain which imposed sanctions against him (since lifted).
British patience with him evaporated in 1984 when a woman police constable (Yvonne Fletcher) outside the Libyan embassy in London was gunned down and killed by someone shooting from inside the building.
As if to upstage Mao Zedung’s “Little Red Book” of Chinese communist orthodoxy, Qaddafi produced his “Green Book” of Islamic socialism – in three volumes.
As years passed, the smart young soldier that was Qaddafi evolved into the curious manikin man in golden robes, funny hair, weird hats and those perpetual sunglasses that became his hallmark.
Under him, Libya became the financier of international terrorism – “Black September” and the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympics, the Lockerbie sabotage of Pan Am 103 (270 killed), the Berlin nightclub bombing deaths of U.S. servicemen. He sent hit-squads overseas to kill Libyan dissidents.
He is said to have bankrolled “Carlos the Jackal” who managed to terrorize the world while winning the grudging admiration of the world’s media.
President Ronald Reagan called him a “Mad Dog” and okayed an air attack in 1986 that shut him up for a while.
At his most recent UN performance in 2009, Qaddafi extended his allotted 15-minute speech into 95 minutes of incoherent but entertaining ranting, during which he accused Israel of having assassinated President John Kennedy, and declared his support for both the Taliban and Somali pirates – all the while dressed in costumes that no one has ever before seen. Not even Johnny Depp.
As if to enhance his reputation for weirdness, Qaddafi boasts a 40-member bodyguard composed of women – his Amazonian Guard – all of whom are supposedly virgins.
Another oddity of Qaddafi is that there are 30 to 35 different ways to spell his name. This has caused concern among the world’s newspaper editors who like consistency in spelling.
Of the riots now underway in Libya, there are reports of army defections to the side of protestors. If so, it’s an ominous sign for Qaddafi and his seven sons and daughter – all of whom have key spots in the regime.
Maybe Libya, 4th biggest oil producer in the Mideast, is about to change.
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