4 ms·
Qaddafi was not a serious pan-Africanist, and the rest of Africa knew that. He was sometimes an Arab nationalist, sometimes an Islamic nationalist, sometimes an
by rafram 4y ago
Qaddafi was not a serious pan-Africanist, and the rest of Africa knew that. He was sometimes an Arab nationalist, sometimes an Islamic nationalist, sometimes an African nationalist, sometimes a socialist, and his only consistent ideological position was military dictatorship. He provided a venue for the founding of the AU, but both it and its predecessor organization are/were based in Ethiopia. The US intervention in Libya didn’t go very well, but it’s silly to pretend that Qaddafi was a hero by any measure.
- simple-thoughts 4y agoWhich policy killed more Libyans - Obama’s or Qaddafi’s? Considering many people consider Obama a hero, the bar is quite low to jump.
- mjfl 4y agoat least there weren't slave markets in Libya while he was a dictator....
- pokepim 4y ago[dead]
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoNo he just had his own harem of literal sex slaves. Who were abducted as children and tortured into sexual servitude.
- throwntoday 4y agoIs there any evidence for this or are you parroting western talking points meant to vilify/justify deposing him? I'm more inclined to disbelieve the statement given the west's track record for fabricating reasons to invade foreign nations.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoBased on testimony from his all-female "amazonian guard" and an in-depth book by a french investigative journalist including one detailed testimony of one of the victims. There is far too much smoke from independent sources for there not to have been any fire.
- mjfl 4y agoit's still a fundamentally non-utilitarian argument because you're talking about the sins of one man vs an entire country full of chaos and disorder.
- orangepurple 4y agoHe was killed because of his speech on 23 Sep 2009 at the United Nations General Assembly
- einpoklum 4y agoThat's why I said "semi-kidding". Of course he was no here. TBH I have very little grasp of how Libya was managed with him as the ruler, they appear to have had a rather strange system there which on the one hand had this strong-man leader and harsh prisons, but on the other hand had distribution-of-power mechanisms. Anyway, certainly no hero, and had Libya been serious about pan-Africanism we would have seen a lot more serious work and investment of resources to that end. But - Libya was not willing to play along well enough with the interests of NATO members (US? France? Some combination of those?) so they offed him.