How Saif Gaddafi and Friends Fooled the Euro-Left
On Monday, Moammar Gaddafi’s wife and three adult children surfaced in Algeria, and some expect Gaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam to join them. The country is not a signatory of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court — in June, the ICC issued arrests warrants for Gaddafi, Saif, and Gaddafi’s intelligence chief.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the entire family would be held accountable:
We want to see justice and accountability for Gaddafi and those members of his family with blood on their hands and those members of his regime with blood on their hands.
For decades, this was not the sentiment towards the Gaddafi family in Washington and other Western capitals. The Gaddafi extended family, particularly the children, were feted throughout Europe and in the United States — indeed, over the past decade other family members of Arab dictators have been glamorized in Western fashion magazines, by UN bodies, and by academic institutions.
Less than a year ago Saif freely mingled with Western high society, popping up in London and Monte Carlo or on a yacht off Monaco. He was considered a playboy as well as a reformer. For Saif it wasn’t about sex or money, however: as is now clear, he was mining Europe’s naive social and political leadership to advance his family’s 40-year-old dynasty.
Saif is not unique, yet he is the poster child for a kind of “softer” face of the Arab political aristocracy. He is identified as the next generation of young, super-rich Middle Eastern family members who have tried to re-brand themselves as caring, compassionate Westernized Muslims. It has been lost in the American press, but until he issued his televised “rivers of blood” speech from Tripoli in February, Saif was the darling of Europe’s political establishment. He socialized with members of the House of Lords, Tony Blair’s cabinet, Prince Andrew, and well-heeled environmental activists. Saif had seduced Europe’s intelligentsia and the Continent’s left-leaning cognoscenti.
“The political class in this country have courted him,” said Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski, chairman of a British parliamentary group on Libya, in an interview with the UK’s Guardian.
He didn’t only trick blue-blooded royalty. Saif became close friends with famous Jewish European families, including the Rothschilds. In 2009, Jacob, 4th Baron Rothschild threw a birthday party for Saif at the Rothschild home in Buckinghamshire, Waddesdon Manor. Saif also joined the Rothschild family at their private villa in Corfu. In 2008, Lord Rothschild’s other son Nat threw a party for Saifat his chic New York townhouse in Greenwich Village.
He bestowed the London School of Economics with a $2 million gift just as he was applying for a Ph.D. His thesis was titled “The role of civil society in the democratisation of global governance institutions: from ‘soft power’ to collective decision-making?” It was later revealed that all of the 40 interviews were conducted by outside consultants, and that most of the thesis was ghostwritten or plagiarized. Saif later followed up with another $2 million donation to the LSE to “train” Libya’s government civil servants and professionals. The revelations about Saif forced the resignation of LSE’s director, Howard Davies.
Gaddafi’s money also entered the United States. As reported previously by PJMedia, Boston-based PR firm The Monitor Group received a lucrative $3 million contract to promote Saif as the new “progressive” face of Libya and the Arab world. The firm of Harvard faculty members introduced Saif and his international charity — the Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity Associations – to Washington’s political and military establishment. They recruited Francis Fukuyama and anti-Western author Benjamin Barber to endorse Saif and Libya as a forward-looking country. Clinton White House insider Joseph Nye was a cheerleader for Saif: Nye is accused of helping Saif with his Ph.D thesis — he is a proponent of the idea of using “soft power” over military force.
Republicans represented Saif in Washington, too. Former Rep. Bob Livingston’s lobbying agency, the Livingston Group, escorted Saif around Washington, meeting members of Congress, American diplomats, and human rights activists. Livingston dropped Saif in September 2009.
But the most audacious plan Saif dreamed up was to capture the hearts and minds of Europe’s environmentalists. He claimed he was interested in transforming Libya into a environmental oasis, a new “green” paradise. This promise enchanted Euro-environmentalists. Here was a progressive Mideasterner, a member of the 30-something generation who would bring environmental nirvana to a North African state.
Saif commissioned British architect Lord Foster to oversee the development of the “Green Mountain” area of Libya, near Benghazi. He invited Robert Adam, Prince Charles’ favorite architect, to attend the inauguration in 2007. It had the feel of a lavish Cannes film festival in the desert — few of the environmentalists seemed to express misgivings about the rather large carbon footprint.
If this doesn’t prove that people who are without any principle are easy to buy then there is really no hope for the West. If our leaders thought it was repugnant to deal, dine with, or doodle with a leader that refused democracy then we’d be much better off. Better yet, our government refusing visas to citizens from countries that do NOT support the First Amendment would pretty much draw the line between free and tyrannical states. NO VISAS, NO AID, NO SUPPORT using taxpayer dollars for ANYBODY coming from a country refusing the First Amendment. Simple. Principled.
That may be a reasonable approach for the top leaders of foreign nations, the ones who have the power to make their country respect the First Amendment or at least sufficient influence to push in that direction.
But this principle falls down for people from that country who simply don’t have the clout to make their country adopt something like the First Amendment.
For example, we could well use your principle to refuse to welcome Kim Jung Il of North Korea. We know he has the power to make officials in his country respect freedom of speech if he wants to do so. But a starving North Korean refugee simply can’t be held to that same standard since such a person is utterly unable to influence government policy.
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One other point. Are you proposing to abandon all diplomacy with nations that follow the First Amendment? Historically, we have typically had at least some kind of diplomatic connections with even some very appalling people even if they weren’t full diplomatic relations….
Priceless, just bloody priceless, this Saif kid wasn’t all that bad after all. What is going to be just as amusing is how the left will explain away out of this relationship. Their back sliding and slithering routine should place this gullible lot in the top ten of America’s got talent.
Well, according to the Analysts over at Stratfor.com (people who actually know what they’re talking about..
“The assault appears to have consisted of three parts. The first was the insertion of NATO special operations troops (in the low hundreds, not thousands) who, guided by intelligence operatives in Tripoli, attacked and destabilized the government forces in the city. The second part was an information operation in which NATO made it appear that the battle was over. The bizarre incident in which Gadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, announced as being captured only to show up in an SUV looking very un-captured, was part of this game. NATO wanted it to appear that the leadership had been reduced and Gadhafi’s forces broken to convince those same forces to capitulate. Seif al-Islam’s appearance was designed to signal his troops that the war was still on.”
While “Eurosocialists” and “liberal American activists” may have been duped by Saif Gadhafi, they were at least in good company. In August of 2009 John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman traveled to Tripoli to meet with Gadhafi himself and other members of his regime. Ever mindful of our interests, the three discussed delivery of LM aircraft which had previously been sold to Libya. Raising the issue of public relations in light of the release of the Libyan terrorist responsible for the Lockerbie bombing, they stressed it was in the “strongest spirit of friendship and respect”. Unfortunately our guys didn’t do a very good job, Italy got the oil.
How did Saif, et. al. fool them? They wanted to be fooled.
Mr. Crawford hit the nail on the head. Too many people wanted to see something that wasn’t really there.
Nobody wants to think of exactly how a dictator maintains grip on power. They would much rather believe the hype and propaganda. And of course the dictators want to be portrayed that way so that people will like them, when they’re not busy being feared.
Self delusion is easy. Thinking is hard. That’s why this happened.
Since when has there ever been anything but corruption, cruelty, and tyranny coming from a Muslim head of state? They’re ALL that way.
“Democratization” (or more properly, the installation of a civil society built upon a republican form of government) cannot work without first going through de-Islamization. Until we can figure out how to do that, our policy toward Muslim countries should be quarantine and containment.
I’ve been blogging about this for years, and before that, I ran an email list. All of this pandering to Muslim dictators keeps happening over and over. Part of it is simple greed, and part of it is because our self-anointed Western political elites want to feel important and to be invited to all the parties with the “cool kids” (who are actually third-world Muslim bullies and nothing more). Shame on them.
Roses are red,
violets are blue,
It’s “do as I say,
not as I do”….
Good grief! Now David Welch (ex-Bush Administration State department official and now with Bechtel) met with senior Libyan officials a month ago (while we were already bombing the Gaddafi regime as part of NATO) reassuring them that he would advocate on their behalf in the US. Does this make Mr. Welch a foreign agent…or a traitor? No, I don’t think so, he is now just a private citizen acting on his own (and Bechtel’s) behalf. Just what we need, multiple foreign policy tracks by both governmental and private industry actors. Pity he didn’t get the oil either.
I bet it wasn’t a hard sell at all. Just like the Soviets when they would go “Ha, ha. We like the jazz and the scotch, so we are civilized and reasonable,” all Saif and Friends would have to do is put on some of the trappings that the EuroLeft like – the SWPL markers – and mouth the right platitudes and they would swoon.
Libya–the Mideast Cuba?
I was just a teenager back in 1959 but I can still recall the great hullabaloo, predominantly positive hulabaloo, over Fidel Castro, with the media referring to him as the “George Washington of Cuba” and exulting over their darling’s victory over the evil Fulgencio Batista, with teachers all a-bubble with excitement since Cuba was finally free.
Not only was Batista, El Hombre, a dictator but he had illegally seized power, had consorted with gamblers and known criminals, and suffered from the severe liability (to American leftists) of being friendly toward the United States.
Similar to the 2008 hype for Barack Hussein Obama, his successor, Fidel Castro was hailed a a savior, a man of the people who would bring joy and prosperity to his island nation. Fidel couldn’t quite walk on water as Obama could but he seemed to share most other Obama qualities and oratorical skills, sans teleprompters.
Not known at the time, with the able assistance of his fellow Marxist revolutionary, Che Guevara, Fidel would imprison and murder tens of thousands of his countrymen, come close to initiating World War III, and reduce Cuba to an economic basket case.
An added bonus for leftist Castrophiles is that, unlike Batista, Fidel hates America.
Although they may not smoke cigars because Islam and Allah frown on tobacco products, the Libyan rebels now on the verge of deposing Muammar Khadaffi and hopefully doing unto him what Iraqis did unto Saddam Hussein may very well turn out to be far worse for U.S. interests than both “mad dog of the Middle East” and the mad dog of the Caribbean.
Khadaffi was certainly not one of America’s best buddies and continued to support international Islamic terrorism yet he, allegedly, abandoned his efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction in 2003, after America massively visited mass destruction on Afghanistan and Hussein’s regime.
Nevertheless, “The devil you know . . . ” and Libyan rebel devils may soon make the United States yearn for the good, old Muammar days.
Our president, peace-lover that he is, refused to concede that our war in Libya was even a war.
The White House opted to describe the conflict as a “kinetic military action” while we kinetically led NATO forces against Khadaffi loyalists, launched hundreds of kinetic Tomahawk cruise missiles against Tripoli and loyalist strongholds, and gave Syria’s equally-treacherous Bashar al-Assad a free pass.
You see, war bad, kinetic military action good in Obamaese. As for Assad, the Obamians haven’t a clue what to do.
Like Fidel Castro who was deemed good contrasted with Fulgencio Batista, the Libyan rebels are likewise considered the good guys compared to Khadaffi. Like Castro, they are likely to bite America on its collective arse, only more severely. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5353.)
The Gaddafi regime did not “fool” the left (either in Europe or the United States – where Rev. J. Wright and so on, were supporters of the regime).
Gaddafi was a life long socialist – his supporters in the “Euro” (and American) left were socialists also.
So no “fooling” anyone.