Hello Qaddafi!

By Michael Gilson De Lemos

For many years I've been an interested observer of Libya's leader, Omar Qaddafi. On one level he’s some crazy desert thug who keeps people perplexed with contrarian rhetoric that makes Stalin look like a stutterer.

But, Qaddafi is ruthlessly presented in the American press and political establishment as someone to be ignored, a political buffoon, a Charlie Chaplin as the Great Dictator in sinister African robes, constantly intriguing against all freedom and supporting spectacular, if ultimately futile terrorist ventures. Unlike dictators that the US government lavishly supports with vast foreign aid schemes, naturally.

Meanwhile, we free Americans were until recently denied the opportunity to see for ourselves thanks to US Government travel embargos.

Reason enough to be skeptics. Perhaps the man is bad and his country has gone nuts--but comparatively that bad, that nuts? Or has something else been going on as well?

Or is some of the problem that he utters some good sense from time to time, from a political position that the political machine is useless?

Qaddafi came to power in a US supported coup. He then annoyed the US by declaring the ownership of foreign business combines as questionable seizures of Libya's oil wealth and their contracts with the previous monarch invalid. He then really began to worry people in Washington when he declared his revolution aimed at a social anarchist utopia. Socialist they could stand. But…anarchist?

Now, every time you hear for a few months about what a bad, bad, bad regime they have there, he or his anarchist government utter some confounding statement or foreign travelers issue some favorable and startling—or simply unremarkable-- report, such as the old "Lonely Planet" guides.

Organizations like the American-Libyan Freedom Alliance want you to know that life isn't perfect in Libya, but it doesn't seem to be to the right of Nazi Germany; or considering the regimes Washington was supporting when it started denouncing Libya, a clear target for special criticism.

Nor does Qaddafi seem entirely mad or stupid in a dictator sort of way. As noted in the movie “Broadcast News”, interviewers find him 'presidential' and sometimes profound.

He even wrote a fascinating set of surrealist stories and essays for his supporters, "Escape To Hell" satirizing power and authority. The quirky stories would do credit to a science fiction writer in the US. None other than JFK advisor Pierre Salinger wrote a favorable introduction to the English edition.

It's true that the sharia system of common law in Libya has resulted in cases that have brought outcries from Amnesty International. Yet under his influence, it’s improved over 2 generations--compared to 800 years of Anglo-American common law, which now seems to be going backward, as in the shocking treatment of divorced fathers, our draconian prison terms, government officials implying a little judicious torture is All-American, and the US Supreme Court declaring that property can be expropriated to raise taxes. Meanwhile Qaddafi states that he thinks communism stinks.


ANARCHIST MANQUE

There is more.

Qaddafi and his followers created a set-up presented as wild-eyed national Arabic socialism—called Jamahiriya-- but suspiciously similar to New England town meetings to run the country on a local level. It is creaky and sometimes brings out the worst in people's conformism, and there are reports of spying and secret police up there with Cuba, but according to many people who have left Libya, it overall works and educates people on making decisions and finding out facts for themselves.

Some say that considering people were cutting each other's throats before Qaddafi, it was just the thing.

Then Qaddafi announced he was resigning all but honorary positions. He warned people that democratic government to oppress each other was an illusion. He didn’t even promote himself to general. He went to live in a tent. There his family was bombed by US planes for a terrorist attack that has since been admitted to likely have had nothing to do with him.

Meanwhile wave two of his anarchist revolution is responding to the empowered population’s cry for free enterprise. This anarchist urge with a low-key libertarian whiff keeps popping up. Qaddafi's suggested the ideal form of society is a mix of free-enterprise, tolerance, and no government.

To this end he's declared the government abolished 3 times, urging the people to complain to themselves and solve problems on their own. Alas, it keeps creeping back, but in the process he's abolished more of the government, than, say, any US President in the last 150 years.

Even REASON magazine has begun to wonder, noting satirically in a 2003 article that at least he cut more intrusive programs than, say, futurist and small-government proponent manque Newt Gingrich, despite enjoying a strongly positioned Republican Congress. After all, as Nancy Reagan is given to saying about other addictions, they could have just said "No."

Just when you think it's safe to make fun of him, in fact, there he goes again. He's proposed, instead of expanding the UN, arbitrators composed of international elder statesmen to mediate international disputes. Something like that certainly worked for the Roman Empire, whose former consuls, called consulars, traveled the empire and beyond as arbitrators for many years. A grandfatherly chat with Gorbachev and other free-lance arbitrators roving about instead of expanding UN armies? It sounds somewhat reasonable in an anarchist sort of way.

He's urged his people to give up nuclear weapons, which is more than we can say for other bigger countries.

Is Qaddafi a secret hero, a liberty lover born in a backward land and struggling to break free? Well, at worst he won't be the first ruler to learn from his mistakes.

AFRICA WITHOUT AID?

And now, we're witnessing an orgy of feel-good promises on more programs from the governments of industrialized countries that will more or less end up in the pockets of the real causes of Africa's woes. These are not famine, not locust plagues, not debt, not some mysterious need for infrastructure of superhighways to sleepy tribal villages, but the dictators. Real Dictators, who don't even pretend to hold town-meetings, all using the latest socialist thinking of 1930, and the local intellectuals who excuse them...and suddenly, why Qaddafi says it's stupid.

What Africa needs, says Qaddafi, is to get rid of trade barriers and open its government borders, become a United States of Africa confederation, and get rid of tariffs, get rid of import taxes, paralyzing to business controls, and all that planning garbage. All these aid programs, he implies, are Trojan horses for more government and international, not local, control. True, he did say that any unity model was worth looking at, but his preference seemed clear. Naturally, international opinion is appalled, and the African dictators were very dismayed, though polite.

What is worse, in a continent riven by invasions and obscure-sounding tribal wars that become mass genocides, he suggested that as trade expands, peace will "break out."

Lest anyone think he’s fooling, after a process of local debate, The English-Language Bahrain Tribune announces Libya is abolishing its import duties—all of them—except on cigarettes (which, given the policy of its neighbor Spain, is comprehensible). Considering that in the US often over half of what we pay for products such as sugar is due to the influence of import duties, this is something.

Plus, while they’re at it, they’re going to try to abolish the government-- again—this time by privatizing remaining government agencies, including handover to popular co-ops, not just somebody’s friend.

Qaddafi claiming free trade means establishing harmony… and making government wars, taxes, and borders irrelevant? A United States of Abolished States? The nerve.

Or perhaps the politics of the surreal, from a surrealist writer, in a surreal age.

One thing is for certain, if the UN trade czars and leaders of world governments didn't think he was crazy, they're surely thinking about it now.

Michael Gilson-De Lemos is a founder of the Libertarian International Organization and co-hosts FreedomWorks!, a weekly radio show on 3 stations in the Tampa, Florida area webcast worldwide.