Muammar al Qaddafi is a very dangerous man. He promotes terrorism, and
radical causes. He is committed against the U.S, and will help almost
anyone who is also against the U.S. He is very intelligent and crafty. In
1969 he led a coup against the Libyan government. He succeeded, and became
head of state. He is a devoted Muslim. Qaddafi is a person to be read about
and learned about.
As I mentioned above, one of his greatest successes was leading a
bloodless coup against the Libyan monarchy. He became head of state. He is
still in power today. Another success is that fact that most Libyans lead
good lives. All Libyans have a house or an apartment, a car, and most have
televisions, phones, and recording equipment. The young people are well
dressed and fed. He has survived many coup attempts against him. His face
and picture are in most buildings in Libya.
He always was devoted to school as a kid. He would take a long hike
from the desert to school. He would come home only every Thursday, the
beginning of the Muslim weekend. Then he would go back to school. He was
the first in his family to be well educated.
One of his first goals when he was a child was to join the Libyan
army. He slowly moved up in rank. It was surprising they even let him in
the army; he had a long police record. He eventually joined the King’s
police. This was when the idea of a coup attempt came. He did succeed.
Qaddafi was born in a tent in the desert 20 miles south of the sea.
This is a desolate place- burning hot in the summer, and freezing cold in
the winter. Most people would consider this place to be uninhabitable. His
father was at the bottom of social level in this very poor country. The
name of tribe Qaddadfa means in Arabic, ” Spitter or vomiter of blood.” In
Qaddafi’s early years, in the 1940’s there were tank battles in the desert
and thousands of bombing raids by Germans in Libya. Besides this, in the
1920’s the Italians under Mussolini had conquered Libya for the second time
and had killed large numbers of women, children and old people. They
trampled on copies of the Koran, threw men out of airplanes and raped and
disembowelled women. So the Libyans of Qaddafi generation grew up full of
hatred and misery. All this helps to explain his mental state.
In 1970 Qaddafi and his foreign minister travelled to the Arab
countries to try to get them to agree to attack Israel because he felt he
was he was a real leader for all Arabs. He supported the use of terrorism.
At that time he was friendly with the Egyptian leader Nasser, but after
Nasser died the new Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat did not like Qaddafi and
thought he was sick and possessed of the devil. When Qaddafi went to Egypt
in 1973 he lectured the Egyptians that women should stay in the home and
that everybody should behave like strict Muslims. The Egyptians didn’t like
this because they were more liberal. So the visit was a disaster. But
Qaddafi really believed that the masses of Egyptian people were with him so
he organized 20,000 Libyans to march to Cairo and he thought they would be
joined by Egyptian people. The Egyptian government blocked all the roads
between Libya and Egypt with railroad carriages, and allowed only a tiny
group to go to Cairo.
The same thing happened when Qaddafi went to Tunisia and spoke at a
rally and told the people to unite with Libya. The president of Tunisia was
listening at home on the radio and rushed to the rally, grabbed the micro
phone, and “trashed” Qaddafi’s unity idea, so to speak. These setbacks made
him pull away from dealing with established governments and deciding to
support revolutionaries including the IRA, and Black Power move- ments, and
all Palestinian terrorists.
In the beginning of his power, he used to drive around town in an old
battered-up Volkswagen, and pick up groceries. But after many coup and
assassination attempts, he gradually disappeared from public life. After
the raid of U.S troops in 1986, he was seldom heard from. There were many
rumors such as that he was dead, or deposed in a coup, or under mind-
controlling drugs. Libyans told U.S reporters that they no longer had cash
or food. Slowly Qaddafi was disappearing from everyone’s view. His big
dream of uniting all the Arab world under his power was flushed down the
tubes. He had flunked the leadership course.
His main weakness is that he thinks he conquer all the Arab world. He
doesn’t realize that he is really alone without much support. He has some
strange personal habits. The CIA reported such things as taking too many
sleeping pills, wearing make-up and carrying a teddy bear, and refusing to
sleep on hotel bed- sheets. His physical illnesses include depression,
difficulty with walking, and various pains. He is not at all faithful to
his wives. His strength is that he is able to inspire people to follow him.
He did try to provide food and shelter for the poor people of Libya. He
weaknesses far outweigh his strengths especially these days because he has
not been able to reach his goals for Libya and he seems to get more
unstable all the time.
