Gaddafi: What Africa needs is more dictators, and pirates

[speaker-to-trolls]

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Gaddafi wants Caribbean in Africa

Col Gaddafi also raised eyebrows with another AU speech last week
Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has said he would like a United States of Africa to include "Caribbean islands with African populations".

Col Gaddafi, speaking in Tripoli as the African Union's (AU) new chairman, said this could include Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.

The Libyan leader also sympathised with Somali pirates, describing their actions as self-defence.

Last week he said that multi-party democracy was not right for Africa.

The BBC's Rana Jawad in the Libyan capital says Col Gaddafi's critics believe he is too erratic to be chairman of the 53-nation AU.

A week into his appointment his agenda for Africa is expanding and his views remain as controversial as ever to some people, she says.

Praise for pirates

Celebrating his new role at his compound in Tripoli on Tuesday, Col Gaddafi suggested Caribbean islands should join the AU and become a bridge between Africa and Latin America.

He went on to tell a gathering of some 400 guests that Somali pirates were only hitting back against other countries stealing marine wealth from the region's waters.

Col Gaddafi said the United Nations should protect Somali waters from the piracy of other countries.

He also said he would use his 12 months at the helm of the AU to try to resolve Africa's conflicts, including Darfur and Somalia.

Last week, the Libyan leader used his inaugural address as rotating head of the AU in Ethiopia to push his long-cherished pet project of a United States of Africa.

He envisages a single African military force, a single currency and a single passport for Africans to move freely around the continent.

But the response from many of his fellow African leaders was lukewarm, with some saying the proposal would add an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.

He also raised eyebrows by saying that multi-party democracy only led to bloodshed in Africa and that the best model for Africa was his own country, where opposition parties are not allowed.

I honestly don't know much about Gadaffi or why he was on the Wests shit list for so long, was this kind of madcap idealism part of it? Does he honestly think that making one state out of a continent wracked with innumerable socio-economic problems and inhabited by people of dozens of different cultures and languages is at all reasonable? A nice idea, yes, for the people and countries of Africa to impose some kind of stability, but it doesn't seem likely.

I don't think his comments about multi vs one party systems are that surprising or noteworthy, a lot of people say the same thing with regards to Africa (I don't really agree since there are plenty of examples of places gone horribly wrong under a 1 party system). But his praise for the pirates seems not only illogical in principle but like shooting himself in the foot as far as relations with the developed world go.

[Beowulf]

I honestly don't know much about Gadaffi or why he was on the Wests shit list for so long

Support for terrorists (Lockerbie airliner bombing et al), as well as attempts to close the Gulf of Sidra to shipping. It's mostly the terrorism though.

[Bilbo]

But his praise for the pirates seems not only illogical in principle but like shooting himself in the foot as far as relations with the developed world go.

It is also dead wrong. The Somali pirates are not attacking foreign fishing boats that are fishing within African nation territorial waters. They are attacking large cargo ships passing through international waters near their coast. So the good old Colonel is spinning like he always does.

[K. A. Pital]

He's just attention whoring. He's not the worst national leader though. Making one state out of Africa is mostly populism, right - but didn't the African Union recently spout something similar, about making an "African EU" or something?

[Guardsman Bass]

This has pretty much been Gaddafi's pet project ever since he gave up the idea of creating a unified Arab state. Before becoming head of the AU, he even got a bunch of tribal kings from all over Africa to crown him "King of Kings".

[Darth Wong]

I honestly don't know much about Gadaffi or why he was on the Wests shit list for so long

Support for terrorists (Lockerbie airliner bombing et al), as well as attempts to close the Gulf of Sidra to shipping. It's mostly the terrorism though.

I will always remember Gaddafi for his "Line of Death", and the fact that he was involved in one of the few incidents in living memory where American carrier aircraft actually got into a real fight. It was a pair of Tomcats against a pair of Libyan MiGs, IIRC.

[Kanastrous]

Calling it 'a real fight' is overly complimentary to the Libyan Air Force. But, yeah.

[[R_H]]

Why did the embargo end again? Not that doing so has put an end to his petty douchehole antics. And for some reason, Switzerland keeps buying oil and gas from him.

[Kanastrous]

The Libyan government made nice over Lockerbie, paid (or promised to pay) agreed-upon reparations, and had turned over a couple of their agents who purportedly helped execute the bombing (who IIRC are now free because the cases against them weren't conclusive, even at that). Also reportedly purchased some nuclear-use equipment which they then turned over the the US (or IAEA) with great fanfare over how they were 'abandoning their nuclear program' (which supposedly existed in order to be publicly abandoned, for PR effect).

[[R_H]]

The Libyan government made nice over Lockerbie, paid (or promised to pay) agreed-upon reparations, and had turned over a couple of their agents who purportedly helped execute the bombing (who IIRC are now free because the cases against them weren't conclusive, even at that). Also reportedly purchased some nuclear-use equipment which they then turned over the the US (or IAEA) with great fanfare over how they were 'abandoning their nuclear program' (which supposedly existed in order to be publicly abandoned, for PR effect).

So...a whole lot of nothing?

[Beowulf]

The Libyan government made nice over Lockerbie, paid (or promised to pay) agreed-upon reparations, and had turned over a couple of their agents who purportedly helped execute the bombing (who IIRC are now free because the cases against them weren't conclusive, even at that). Also reportedly purchased some nuclear-use equipment which they then turned over the the US (or IAEA) with great fanfare over how they were 'abandoning their nuclear program' (which supposedly existed in order to be publicly abandoned, for PR effect).

So...a whole lot of nothing?

By appearing to turn over a new leaf. Something the Cubans haven't done. And in politics, appearance is 90% of reality.

[Sea Skimmer]

I will always remember Gaddafi for his "Line of Death", and the fact that he was involved in one of the few incidents in living memory where American carrier aircraft actually got into a real fight. It was a pair of Tomcats against a pair of Libyan MiGs, IIRC.

Much more then that happened. Libya declared the line of death 1973, after which the USN made a routine point of crossing it. For a while, Libya was very weak at the time having only found oil in the 1960s, nothing happened. But then first in 1981 when after a protracted period of aerial confrontations the previous day, two Libyan Su-22s came upon a pair of F-14s, fired first, missed and got blown away. The in 1986 after another abortive air battle, the Libyan MiGs fled after F-14s gained an advantage over them, the Libyans fired SA-5 SAMs at the US fighters. The US response was to immediately attacked all Libyan forces within an arms reach, carrier aircraft and an AEGIS cruiser sank or damage several Libyan corvettes and missile boats. We also silenced the SAM site, but permission was denied for wider strikes to sink the rest of the Libyan fleet in port.

Just two weeks later Libyan agents planted a bomb in a night club in West Germany which killed two Americans, a local citizen and wounding hundreds of others. The US response was a mass F-111 and carrier plane raid on Libya aimed at airfields and Gaddafi’s presidential guard barracks.

Libya sponsored a number of aircraft hijackings, something they’d already been doing, in reltation, and ultimately, the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. However without clear proof at the time and a presidential election in the works, the US made no specific retaliation. The final shooting incident came in 1989 when F-14s shot down a pair of MiGs.

A key part of the background of all this is not only the terrorism, but also the Libyan nerve gas plant at Rabta. The plant was built with surprise surprise, West German assistance, the same band of former Nazi assholes who gave Saddam nerve gas capability. Gaddafi at one point tried to ‘prove’ it was not a weapons plant by inviting in foreign journalists. The journalists saw that the plant was literally ringed with surface to air missile sites, and then when they got inside the gates the Libyans would let them see nothing but the workers cafeteria! Not the most brilliant move. Concern mounted when after the 1986 bombing, Libya began building a tunnel complex at Tarhunah to house a new chemical weapons plant, which would have been so massive that at the time, only US nuclear weapons could have destroyed it.

Howver after the Gulf War and collapse of the Soviet Union, Libya went quiet on terrorsium pretty fast, and the chemical weapons facilities were mothballed. Then around 2000-2001 Libya started making motions about reparations for Lockerbie and about openly scrapping its WMDs. That ultimately all did happen, leading to the present day in which Gaddafi is still nuts, but a relatively friendly kind of nuts. Libya handed over all its nuclear equipment, and demolished the chemical weapons plant, as well as a huge stockpile of bombs and artillery shells designed for chemical agents the US didnt even know existed (they hid them under a giant chicken farm!) under US supervision.

[Darth Wong]

Thanks for the refresher, Skimmer. I had forgotten quite a bit of that. I don't know why that incident with the two Tomcats sticks in my mind while the others didn't.

[Pelranius]

Well, I've heard theories that Lockerbie was either engineered by the South Africans (the Pan Am flight carried the UN team on Namibia) or the Iranians in retaliation for the USS Vicennes fiasco.

[Sea Skimmer]

The South African ‘theory’ is patently preposterous, the Iranian theory was given credit at the time and its part of the reason why Libya wasn’t bombed again. Conspiracy theories also commonly blame the Palestinians, IRA, CIA (always, the CIA is all terrorist attacks ever). You’d have to be insane though, not to accept Libya’s formal acceptance of responsibility for ‘the actions of its agents’ and 2 billion dollar reparations as the truth.

Thanks for the refresher, Skimmer. I had forgotten quite a bit of that. I don't know why that incident with the two Tomcats sticks in my mind while the others didn't.

Because they made the movie Top Gun with nothing else but that as the plot?

[Questor]

Because they made the movie Top Gun with nothing else but that as the plot?

Top Gun had a plot? I thought it was all about Tom Cruise trying to look teh awsome?

On Topic, what was the engagement profile? Did the F-14s use their cameras and AIM-54s or did they close?

[Samuel]

Because they made the movie Top Gun with nothing else but that as the plot?

Top Gun had a plot? I thought it was all about Tom Cruise trying to look teh awsome?

On Topic, what was the engagement profile? Did the F-14s use their cameras and AIM-54s or did they close?

Killing russian backed arabs while finding the traitor in the ranks ad getting tail. At least, that was the plot of the parody.

[Sea Skimmer]

In the 1981 battle the Libyans fired at pointblank range, which is why they missed, missile shot didn’t even have time to arm; the F-14s then quickly a pair of tail chase kills with AIM-9. The 1989 battle opened after a period of maneuvering at long range, in which the Libyans matched American maneuvers (using CGI support) five times to continue to close to an attack position. By the rules of engagement in force at the time, if the enemy made five such manuvers it could be assumed an attack was underway even if no weapons were fired. One F-14 fired Sparrows which missed at about the limit of visual range, like 15-20 miles, then both aircraft closed and claimed one kill with Sidewinders.

In neither case was an F-14 so much as carrying an AIM-54 missile. That weapon would really only be loaded if the threat was expected to be big bombers and long range cruise missiles. Its too big and draggy to make sense for routine ‘peacetime’ combat air patrol missions. ROE would certainly not have allowed its rnage to be exploited at all. Its also a tad undesirable to unleash a weapon with active terminal homing in such a situation, when it might go blasting off to hit an airliner. Carriage of AMRAAM has also been restricted at times (well, usually mixed with Sparrows so the pilot has options) for similar reasons.