How many of us wanted to remember the massacres and tortures when Gaddafi's antics so added to the gaiety of life, asks Richard Spencer.
Former prime minister Tony Blair at a meeting in 2007 with Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi at his desert base outside Sirte south of Tripoli today.
By Richard Spencer
7:19AM BST 03 Oct 2011
80 Comments
Tripoli notebook
If anything positive has emerged from a decade of Middle Eastern wars, it ought to be this: that it has put paid to the glibness with which we had begun to hear news from abroad. It was easy to be cynical about the horrors when so many of their perpetrators were cartoon characters – Saddam in his homburg, Osama in his cave, Muammar in his tent. Gaddafi was the biggest clown of all, and when we sneer at Tony Blair for being taken in, with his "Dear Muammar" letters and world-leader bonhomie, we should perhaps look inside ourselves. How many of us wanted to remember the massacres and tortures when Gaddafi's antics so added to the gaiety of life?
I have spent more time in Tripoli this year than anywhere else and witnessed some of the horrors myself. Even so, I found it hard to ignore the humour in the topsy-turvy world of Gaddafi logic. I particularly remember Saif al-Islam Gaddafi ranting on about how the young men at his pro-Gaddafi rallies were ordinary citizens and not "policemen and soldiers acting under orders as the western media says".
After that, I would ask these men what they did for a living and the answer was invariably that they were policemen and soldiers.
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It took the unexpected to feel for myself a very little of the Libyan experience. Back in March, while Gaddafi had a full grip on Tripoli, I was detained by plain-clothes police for asking questions in the wrong place and locked in a cell with a pillow-case over my head.
I was then interrogated for a couple of hours by a man who accused me of the usual things – being in MI6, or the CIA, and so on. The script was so absurdly like a comic-book version of evil dictatorship that I inadvertently laughed at him.
I later discovered that the place I had been taken was the headquarters of the External Intelligence Bureau, and after the fall of Tripoli I found myself back there. Apart from the block where I had been held, every building in the large compound had been pulverised by Nato. Until then, I had thought myself as a hard-nosed reporter impervious to the sentiment of anything but the most pitiful human interest story. Instead, an unaccustomed surge of delight swept over me. How glad I was to see my prison bombed.
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It is not often that Britons can wander around streets ground to dust by the RAF and find residents thanking us for it. That is only half funny, really, and humour here is generally savage. It was a foreigner – an Israeli, of all people – who turned Gaddafi's insane speech of February 22, in which he promised to hunt down the rats who opposed him house by house, alley by alley into a YouTube rap. A Libyan response to that speech, in which he also contemptuously asked his opponents "Who are you? Who are you?", was written by an exiled poet, Abdul Jalil Saif al-Nasser.
We are your grief. We made your blood run dry
We are your pain
Do you not know who we are?
We drove you insane. We made your nightmare come true
We bloodied your nose.
Do you not know who we are?
We are the cavaliers who crushed your cowardice
We are the brave whom you dared not face
Do you not know who we are?
It is not pretty, but it is a powerful response to those who say Libya was all about oil. I never understood that, since Mr Blair had already won the oil contracts; but in any case most Libyans I have met would trade all their oil for an end to the dictatorship. Saif al-Nasser sadly died last month, but perhaps all dictators and their sympathisers should read his words to see how their subjects really feel.
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80 comments
schnauzernain
55 minutes ago Recommended by 2 people
I never forgot Gaddafi's brutality, nor the fact that members of the IRA, including those who now hold office, went to Libya to be trained in torture.
______ tox66
13 minutes agoNor me, schauzernain. The lefties astroturfed Gadaffi for all he was worth but they never fooled me.
Mind you, when they said he was an authentic socialist and that is why I hated him, they were bang right. Torture, repression, murder, insane holding onto power? Yep, authentic leftie down to his daft beanie hat.
dirtyharry
Today 01:28 PMRecommended by
1 person Maybe Gaddafi was put across as 'funny' by the media when prompted by the funders of the UK government in an attempt to diguise their dirty deals with him
OrangeMarker
Today 01:22 PMRecommended by
1 person disgusting propaganda.
______ hatebigots
Today 01:37 PMRecommended by
2 peopleSo criticizing UK for ignoring Khadafi`s crimes is propaganda? Then it must be Khadafi`s propaganda, I suppose...
ryeatley
Today 01:00 PM Recommended by 3 people
Have you any comment about the civilians who supported Gaddafi, and are now being terrorised and killed by "rebels"?
______ david_in_rome
39 minutes agoYup, the pro-Gaddafi (anti-Cameron) front is still alive and well.
It must have been hard seeing the reception and warmth that Cameron and Sarkozy received in Tripoli.
______ hatebigots
Today 01:38 PM Recommended by 1 person
What civilians?...
mks
Today 12:57 PM Recommended by 1 person
So what are we going to get now. A new government with a deep and profound respect for human rights, free markets and individual liberty?
What we will get is a Gaddafi lite regime, shorn of the theatrics and cult of personality. It will be run by grey men. It will have the same problems that the Gaddafi regime had, and will be replaced through a similar process. And everybody will be surprised at the collapse of this "rock of stability" in the Middle East. Like Egypt
ryeatley
Today 12:50 PM Recommended by 3 people
The misinformation in this article is disgraceful.
"a powerful response to those who say Libya was all about oil. I never understood that, since Mr Blair had already won the oil contracts"
Mr. Blair may have already obtained contracts - however Mt. Gaddafi was threatening to renew them with anybody except the west. That's why those who say "Libya was all about oil" are correct.
______ david_in_rome
33 minutes agoOK, and you are a foreign company that wants oil but needs to spend billions to get it out of the ground. Do you even bother to deal with someone who has just torn up his existing contracts on a whim?
And please provide evidence of Gaddafi's "threats". Anyone who has observed him for any length of time would have been used to the theatricals - mainly for home grown audiences - obviously more grown up than those who continue to think that this conflict was in any way to do with oil, rushing to accuse someone who was actually on the ground throughout the conflict of a "disgraceful" misinformation - i.e. lies
rtj1211
Today 12:44 PMRecommended by
3 peopleWhat do you think about the House of Saud? The Royal Family in Bahrain? The Emir of Kuwait?
All these have been close allies of Britain for decades.
Is this because of their principles or their oil reserves??
Do tell us.......... Report Recommend
seanoll
Today 12:23 PMRecommended by
6 peopleSorry, I don't remeber people thinking Gaddafi was funny. He supplied the IRA, Lockerbie, support for terrorism worldwide. I don't remember anyone thinking he was funny. Dangerous lunatic was closer to the truth.
______ hatebigots
Today 01:39 PMFunny in the sense of "taking and acting like a clown". He tried to convince people that he lived in a tent. :P
YvesLaPointe
Today 12:09 PM Recommended by 1 person
It all depends on how informed people are -I was never amused by the Homburgs or the Tents or the Caves; I wasn't that amused or even grateful when this country and the USA were pleased that Iraq invaded Iraq not having a positive view of either Sod'em Hussein or the Ayatollah Khomeini; Mr Blair's peace initiative in Libya was another example of his excessive belief in his own powers -odd how all of the above suffered from Hubris. Some of us can tell the difference between 'strong leaders' and megolamaniac thugs, Mr Spencer, and do not approve of political expediency. If it is the rights of the people that matter most, why did the UK so blithely ignore them for decades that led the Arabs into the impasse they are in today?
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