Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi
Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi ranks among the worst, most brutal despots on our planet. Dictator of a huge multi-ethnic nation glued together from multiple cities & tribal regions, he is loyal first to his own family, then to his own tribe. His megalomaniac statements about himself & revolutionary reform are utterly bogus. But he has oil. So European nations & the United States have rarely treated him with the contempt he deserves. In the past, we had to cut some slack to former colonies ruled by European puppet kings & given independence with no framework for democratic government, but this evil man has been in power since 1969 &, like Hosni in Egypt, has every intention of handing over Libya to his son. He was so suspicious of rival powers that he kept a divided military without a unified command structure. He supported terrorists.
He's already lost control of Tobruk & Eastern Libya, & there's a slight possibility the Egyptian army won't let him retake that region. The Egyptian miliary is well-equipped but bored. His hold on the oil fields is tenuous at best. Of all the tyrants he's the one I'd most like to see go now. Unfortunately, some regions of Libya will probably descend into chaos, which can happen when good leaders have been suppressed, jailed, tortured & executed for 40 years.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
He's already lost control of Tobruk & Eastern Libya, & there's a slight possibility the Egyptian army won't let him retake that region. The Egyptian miliary is well-equipped but bored. His hold on the oil fields is tenuous at best. Of all the tyrants he's the one I'd most like to see go now. Unfortunately, some regions of Libya will probably descend into chaos, which can happen when good leaders have been suppressed, jailed, tortured & executed for 40 years.
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