“I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam of Muslims, and my international status does not allow me to descend to a lower level,” he informed the King of Saudi Arabia in 2009.
--Via this outstanding Obit from the The Telegraph.
That he came off as so outstandingly peculiar takes nothing away from his all-around awfulness, and I think it is very fitting that in his last moments, he was surrounded by his own countrymen, who utterly despised him and wanted him dead. Some reports indicated that he met his death from a NATO strike, but the overthrow and ultimate end of Col. Gaddafi is very much the work of the many, many people of Libya who dreamed of a world that he was not a part of.
It is true that the US was part of the multinational effort to create a No-Fly Zone to allow the rebels the time to make this happen. Although time will tell whether this is the first step in a path towards a peaceful democracy, I think the ability of the people of Libya to take charge of their country's destiny is an important thing on its own, and the loss of Gaddafi is not especially anything to be mourned, despite the temporary manufactured relationship that existed between the US and Gaddafi's regime not all that long ago.
The decision of President Obama to engage in Operation Odyssey Dawn had me concerned how it would play out, the degree of force the US would contribute, and the degree to which the success or failure to oust Gaddafi would have political repercussions at home and abroad. But on the whole, I tentatively supported the thing on the basis of what an absolute murderous fuck Gaddafi revealed himself to be in his response to the protests against him, combined with a shock that someone so apparently brutal had a core of loyalists that would find it satisfactory to their own conscience to massacre their fellow citizens in support of him.
It is probably premature to suppose that Gaddafi's death will end all opposition to the rebellion, and even more so to guess exactly how the provisional government transforms from here. But while one wants to be cautious, I can't help also being a little optimistic that people went to the trouble of overthrowing Gaddafi in the hopes of achieving something better. I think that's pretty meaningful, and my best wishes are with the Libyan people that they do get something better for the suffering they have undergone. I also hope that this continuing fallout from the Arab Spring continues to inspire people to take charge of their governments and to continue to be optimistic that change is possible and can be good.
I may be a romantic about all this. I don't know.
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