Colonel Gadaffi - Good or Bad?

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Gadaffi has been dead almost a year now, but what are peoples views on him?

I personally hold the view that his rule was mostly a good thing. Before his takeover, 80% of Libyans could not read and write. Now 80% can.

The Jamahiriya provided free education, healthcare, utilities and housing to all Libyan nationals. As well as money to start up farmers who wanted to start their own businesses. The state also managed to reclaim much of the land from the desert.

I am worried that the Royalist government are undoing much of his good work.

A bad, bad man. Just because a brutal regime brought benefits doesn't mean the man responsible for it was good. I mean, come on, Hitler did wonders to industrialize Germany, and Nazi scientists contributed a lot to for example space science...

The comparison between Gadaffi's Libya and Nazi Germany is a flawed one.

While he did many bad things, I still think Gadaffi genuinely left Libya in a better state than he found it. Hitler exploited the economic status quo to turn one race against another. Considering the mess Germany was in at the time of his death, its difficult to say that he even benefitted his followers that much either.

Put it this way would they have been better of under King Idris?

Last edited by thomas81 on 06 Aug 2012, 5:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No, they would not. But they would be far better now if Gaddafi hadn't been such an idiot.

Gadaffi socialised all education, healthcare, utilities and housing.

If David Cameron did that tomorrow, I would not be calling him an 'idiot'.

There are African leaders who are treating their people far worse, but some strange reason we aren't sending jet bombers there or arming opposition insurgents with enough arms to start a coup de' etat

He was evil (though like Hitler or Palpatine, a great leader, and he did improve Libya in many ways), but I think his successors are worse.

I'm not referring to his economic actions, but rather to his brutal repression of everyone, and his extremely extravagant and erratic personal life.

As for African leaders who're not deposed, that's because they're the West's friends. And the funny thing? So was Gaddafi. He was a very close of the West in recent years. Notice that the West didn't start arming and supporting the opposition until it became obvious that they had a definite chance of winning. They don't care who's in power - they just want the new regime to be friendly.

He was an evil bastard. We are best off without him.

ruveyn

Colonel Gaddafi was a necessary evil for Libya. He was rather bloodthirsty and erratic, but he greatly improved the general quality of life for most of Libya's inhabitants. Until the fighting started, Libya was the most developed country in Africa, and it had a commitment to help sub-saharan Africa develop. However, during a period of unrest, they decided to overthrow him. It wasn't really the people of Libya who overthrew him. The rebels were initially from Benghazi, largely from one tribe, and were about to be easily defeated by Gaddafi when NATO decided to intervene and practically declare war on Libya.

Now, we can see the results. Libya is deeply-divided and suffers from chronic tribal, ethnic and sectarian violence. The national government isn't even able to bribe a nearby militia to hand them over Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, let alone govern the country. It's said that extremists have stolen large amounts of weapons during the conflict, and that those weapons have now been smuggled either to caches in the desert or to nearby conflict zones such as Mali and Sudan. The bands of rebels who fought against Gaddafi's army are now Libya's practical controllers, and they've used that privilege to sabotage the elections and to systematically harrass and murder black Africans.

Thank you, NATO.

It's not like this is the first time NATO/USA/the West has deeply f****d up a country/region.

The Middle East would be screwed up with or without interference from the industrialized nations. They adhere to a bad and regressive religious dogma which dooms them to poverty, desolation, pain, violence and death.

The western nations should learn not to depend on Middle East oil and gas. Then they could let the Middle East nations perish in their backwardness and stupidity.

ruveyn

He did good on improving his own land and keeping it in a thing you can call order. He did bad by supporting and approving terrorism and his nefarious ruling. But he was bad, just as Hitler and Stalin were. They all did good and evil things alike. Hitler motorised the workers, Stalin was one of the people that stopped Hitler. But their victims are counted in millions.

He was a bad man, the successor regime just might be worse.

thomas81: Well, he supplied the Provos with weapons, didn't he?

Should the Italians consider re-colonizing?

There might just be some sense in that - the foundations are in place, of course. Even though it would constitute the worst human rights violations in recent history, it would probably benefit Italy if there were no international consequences. Italy would be able to access Libya's oil, which is a lot of precious liquid gold on today's markets. A lot of Libya's oil seems to be going to Italy at the moment, so they'd just cut out the middleman. Furthermore, Italy would be able to halt refugees trying to pour into Italy by the thousands before they embark on trips in poorly-built boats to force the Italians to rescue them and take them in.