There Are No Innocent Ones

Do not pick up the phone when Obama calls, and start shooting on schedule — these are the two key elements of the new strategy embraced by dictators after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Colonel Gaddafi is the perfect example of how the new strategy works.

The dictator, nicknamed “the mad dog” by Ronald Reagan, has started biting. The West, though, is everything but not innocent in regard to what is happening in Libya. In exchange for pulling Muammar Gaddafi out of the isolation that had been surrounding him for years, Western democracies tried to gain access to the oil resources under his control, to put a stop to the immigration to Europe and to reinforce the fight against Islamism. However, the colonel, used by the West as a stake in that gamble, turned out to be a catastrophic choice.

The political masquerade, starring Gaddafi as a responsible world leader, ended up on the wrong side of the fence. Gesticulating in a frenzy, cursing, calling world media “bitches” and promising to die a martyr, Gaddafi let everyone who watched his speech broadcast on Libyan TV know why. The most eccentric Arab leader was the one that had much to gain from the hypocritical Gaddafi flirtation with the West, while everyone else, mainly his own people, had a lot to lose.

This time, the reaction of the U.S. is significantly different from the one that followed the development in Egypt. The response came much later, and it was clothed with general assertions, such as “fundamental human rights need to be respected.” Silvio Berlusconi, who has developed an exceptionally close relationship with Gaddafi, also remains silent. No matter what exactly was the pretext used by Western countries to support an illusive feeling of comfort toward the regimes in the Middle East, the truth exploded in their faces and caught them without a backup plan.

Using third-person singular, a characteristic of speech intrinsic to dictators’ rhetoric, the Libyan guru announced: “Gaddafi is not an ordinary person so we can poison him or arrange a demonstration against him. Gaddafi is not a president. He is a leader of a revolution. He has nothing to lose. He will fight to the death.”*

This statement is a tragedy not because he says it now, but because he has not stopped repeating it for years. The world just didn’t want to hear. Until the dictator stopped picking up the phone and started the shooting.

* Editor’s Note: Quotations of Muammar Qaddafi’s TV speech are given according to Guardian’s translation.