Libyans find out some people find it hard to quit their job after 39 years.
After getting my work sort of done, I decided to catch up on the goings-on in the world, and I see that Khadafy (I’d spell check that, but what’s the point) is still hanging on, and he still wants to be in charge. He really wants to stick around, and will do anything to do it. Not only is he raining bullets upon his enemies, but he’s also trying to buy off the people who aren’t yet actively shooting at his mercenaries. It sort of reminds me of the actions of any garden-variety passive-aggressive former lover (How dare you do this to me! Now please, baby, please come back!) who also won’t go the fuck away.
Using my degree in international affairs and having just read The War For Late Night, the problem seems fairly obvious to me: Khadafy’s afraid of not having anything to do. The man has done one and only one thing pretty much his entire adult life, run Libya. He was all of 27 when he took over the country. Sure, he made many deadly forays into terrorism and tried unsuccessfully to to lead a pan-Arab revolution, but by the late ’90s, with the help of sanctions and bombings from the West he decided to stay in his lane and run his country.
Now, the people are telling him his time is up and he doesn’t want to listen. He’s probably taking phone calls from Hosni Mubarak: “Dude, do whatever you have to do. Don’t leave. I was bored after a fucking week, you’ll be sitting around oppressing your houseplants.”
And the truth is, there is no “Old Despots Home” we can put disgraced former leaders like him in, where he can be allowed to relax, play golf, write academic tomes, second-guess other world leaders on cable television, get massages, play chess, and spend all the wealth they’ve looted from their people. So, sadly, this is probably going to take longer than we’d all like and will probably get very messy for the international community.
After all, there are only two outcomes when you’re a dictator and the people get fed up with you: You can quietly exit stage left and find yourself a confused old man in a grocery store in Geneva, holding a kumquat and mumbling to yourself, “How the fuck did I get here? Ronald Reagan used to call me the worst names, and I was somebody! Now I’m just a tired old man whose doctor has told him to eat more fiber.” Or, you load your gun, and say “Oh hell no, I ain’t going out like that!”
Unfortunately, for guys of Khadafy’s ilk, the latter is usually the move.
1 year ago