In an article in the Egyptian daily Al-Dustour, Magdi Khalil, an Egyptian-American Coptic liberal whose articles appear frequently in the Arab media, described Libyan ruler Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi and his bizarre personality. According to Khalil, without Western assistance to the Libyan rebels, the Qadhafi regime would have survived the uprising.
Following are excerpts from the article:[1]
Al-Qadhafi Is a Disturbed, Delusional Man Who Suffers From an Inferiority Complex
"Qadhafi was the most veteran [Arab] leader on earth when his regime fell... He is a psychopath, a narcissist, extraordinarily deranged, and suffers from an inferiority complex. His head is full of delusions that he calls thoughts. He is the first leader in history who built a monument to a book [the constitution he formulated in 1976, known as The Green Book] which he forced on the people – intellectuals, politicians, students, and the distinguished. He was the first ruler who gave his daughter the country's highest military rank – that of field marshal – though she only cared about clothes, makeup, leisure, parties, and perversion like her father.
"[Qadhafi] boasts having given the longest speech [ever] at the U.N. General Assembly, [so long] that the translator fainted from excess of words and the Japanese delegation fell into a deep slumber. He also distinguished himself by tearing up the U.N. charter while on the podium, and surrounding himself with some 4,000 shapely female bodyguards and pretty nurses, out of a longing for the era of Harun Al-Rashid.[2] [These bodyguards and nurses] resided in a tent he erected in the heart of Paris, Rome, and Amsterdam. He was also known for his ridiculous outfits, which attest to his madness, his bizarre nature, and his fickle personality.
"He is the first ruler in modern times to have called on the heads of [other] religious communities to adopt Islam, as he did when the [Coptic] Patriarch Shenouda visited him. He also seduced beautiful women and bribed them to convert to Islam, as though the invitation [to join] Islam were reserved only for beautiful Western women.
"He is also the world's richest man, with a fortune that exceeds $131 billion, as the WikiLeaks cables indicate. And finally, he is the only ruler in history who invented a calendar, naming one of the months after his son, and another after his friend...
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"[Even] his titles require psychological analysis. He [named himself] commander of the 'Mighty Conqueror Revolution,' 'Head of the African Union,' the 'African King of Kings,' the 'Imam of the Muslims,' 'Emir of the Believers,' 'Secretary-General of Arab Nationalism,' the 'First of the Arab Rulers,' 'Commander of the Revolution,' the 'Spiritual Father of the Mighty Popular Socialist Arab Republic of Libya,' 'Herald of the Third World Theory,' [a political theory proposed by Qadhafi to Third World countries as an alternative to capitalism and communism], and the 'Wise Thinker.' But he calls his own people rats, deluded, lice, germs, stray dogs, and lowlifes, Allah's curse upon them, because they took 36 million sips of hallucinogenic drugs before launching a revolution against him, as his sick imagination suggested."
There Is No Crime that Qadhafi Has Not Committed
"As for Qadhafi's crimes – there is no crime according to international law that he has not committed, and there has been no terrorist organization over the last four decades that Qadhafi did not support – aside, perhaps, from Al-Qaeda. He is the leader of a gang that carries out any illegal activity and a psychopath of the most rare and dangerous order, who specializes in causing damage to his opponents. He has an aggressive mentality that desires only ruin and destruction.
"Despite all this, Qadhafi is not ashamed to accuse Arabs of treason simply because some of them refuse to accept his massacres of his own people. And this is the same person who stood by Saddam [Hussein] against the Iraqis and supported him in his invasion of Kuwait; he is the one who invaded Chad and killed the Shi'ite Imam Musa Al-Sadr; he is the one who ordered the assassination of the Saudi king and supported the Polisario [Front, a rebel national liberation movement fighting for the Western Sahara's independence from Morocco]; he is the one who spoke out against the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions; and he is the one who supported various terrorist movements in Arab countries and interfered in the matters of Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, and Palestine."
"Decades After the Departure Of Western Colonialism, the Citizens [Of Libya Were Forced] To Request Assistance From [It]"
"Decades after the departure of Western colonialism, the citizens [of Libya were forced] to request assistance from the old [Western] colonialism in order to rid themselves of domestic colonialism, whose extremism surpasses imagination.
"Western conquest did not subject the people to invasions like Saddam Hussein did. It cannot be compared to the conquest of villages with tanks and artillery, like that of Hafez Al-Assad in Hama. The [colonial] conquest did not attack the people with all forms of light weaponry like Qadhafi, who killed 1,200 unarmed prisoners in one day in the Abu Salim prison in 1996, and over 20,000 citizens in other incidents. [The colonial conquest] did not use heavy weapons and artillery against unarmed civilians, as Bashar Al-Assad has done in Syria, and did not destroy entire regions, as 'Omar Al-Bashir has done in Darfur. It did not destroy everything in the country like the Taliban, and did not harass peoples and waste their fortune on supporting global terrorism, as Khamenei and Ahmadinejad have done [in Iran]..."
Without NATO Intervention, the Al-Qadhafi Regime Would Not Have Fallen
"The [Arab] peoples lacked the ability to rid themselves of their lowly [leaders] without foreign support. And in came the West, the 'infidel,' and ousted these lowlifes. [The West] transferred [Bashir's] case to the [International] Criminal Court, and is also expected to oust [Khamenei and Ahmadinejad] in Iran. Without the intervention of NATO, which conducted some 7,500 concentrated sorties on military targets full of weapons and ammunition, and which provided the rebels with sensitive information – the Qadhafi regime would not have fallen...
"In conclusion: The world is better off without Qadhafi."
Endnotes:
[1] Al-Dustour (Egypt), August 26, 2011.
[2] During the rule of Harun Al-Rashid, the fifth Abbasid Caliph, more than 2,000 female singers and servants resided in his palace.
