08/01/2021
[See Also: Inevitable Re-Colonization? EU Weighs Occupying Libya, May 13, 2015]
On the list of recent American interventions, Libya is clearly among the most catastrophic. It led to state breakdown, literal slavery (with almost total indifference from "civil rights groups" here), de-facto territorial bifurcation, and of course, the European migrant crisis. The sickening lynching of Gaddafi didn’t exactly position America as a moral exemplar.
Obviously, the man was a killer, and a killer of Americans. Ronald Reagan did nothing wrong in handling him. However, times had changed. He had recently made a deal in good faith with the American government, which promptly overthrew him [Chronology of Libya’s Disarmament and Relations with the United States, by Kelsey Davenport, Arms Control Association, March 2021]. Regimes like Iran, North Korea, and others would be crazy to take the American government at its word ever again. The example of Libya has almost certainly accelerated the growth of nuclear proliferation.
Of most concern to us at VDARE.com was the breakdown of the deal between Muammar Gaddafi and Silvio Berlusconi to keep a lid on African immigration to Italy. It led to political crisis and, in the long run, may have been the opening act of the final stage of the Death of the West. One wonders if that was one of the reasons Western policymakers decided Gaddafi had to go. Perhaps they wanted to accelerate The Great Replacement of the indigenous people of Europe.
Still, it didn’t do much good for the Libyan people. However, this story is not over. The most charismatic and famous of Gaddafi’s sons is still alive and has managed to win over his own guards. He may end up Libya’s next president. If you haven’t already, meet Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi.
Until the Libyan uprising began, in February 2011, Seif was widely seen in the West as the country’s best hope for incremental reform. With his clean-cut good looks, rimless glasses and impeccable English, he seemed utterly different from his flamboyant, erratic father. Seif had studied at the London School of Economics and spoke the language of democracy and human rights. He cultivated respected political scientists and lectured young Libyans on civics. Some of his Western friends even spoke of him as Libya’s potential savior.
But when the revolution came, Seif enthusiastically joined the Qaddafi regime’s brutal crackdown. The rebels who triumphed nine months later might easily have rewarded him with a summary execution, as they did his father and other high-ranking officials. Instead, Seif had the good luck to be captured by an independent-minded brigade that guarded him from other rebel factions and flew him to Zintan, their home region in the mountains southwest of the capital. Seif was also wanted by the International Criminal Court, and that made him a valuable hostage. The Zintanis kept him as their prisoner even after Libya held elections in 2012.
In the years that followed, Libya fractured into warring militias. Terrorists ransacked the country’s weapons depots, fueling insurgencies and wars across Northern Africa and the Middle East. Human trafficking thrived, sending waves of migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe. ISIS set up a mini-caliphate on the Libyan coast. Slowly, Libyans began to think differently of Seif al-Islam, who prophesied Libya’s fragmentation in the early days of the 2011 revolt. There were reports that he had been freed by his captors, and even that he was planning to run for president. But no one knew where he was …
[The journalist makes contact with Seif]
After an awkward silence, I asked Seif if he was still a prisoner. He told me he was a free man and was organizing a political return. The rebels who arrested him a decade ago became disenchanted with the revolution, he said, and eventually realized that he could be a powerful ally. Seif smiled as he described his transformation from captive to prince in waiting. “Can you imagine?” he said. “The men who used to be my guards are now my friends.”
[Qaddafi’s Son Is Alive. And He Wants To Take Libya Back, by Robert F. Worth, The New York Times Magazine, July 30, 2021]
I, for one, welcome Libya’s neo-Qaddafi overlords. Assuming Seif can pull it off and assuming Western leaders aren’t knowingly committed to the Continent’s self-destruction, cutting a deal with competent and united Libyan leadership would be item one on the agenda. This would be the best way to contain the immigration crisis as well as strike a blow against the Islamist terrorists who have been running wild in the country since the glorious triumph of democracy [United Nations in Libya statement on the ISIS-claimed attack in Sebha city, ReliefWeb, June 7, 2021].
There might be shades of "colonialism" in such an arrangement. Qaddafi could be accused of making peace with the very people who overthrew his father. However, if anyone in the world as anti-colonialist street credibility, it is Qaddafi.
Such arrangements are also going to be increasingly necessary if the First World is able to defend its borders while it struggles to regain its soul domestically. It’s an alternative to outright imperialism. We saw successful examples of this with President Donald Trump’s arrangements with the governments of Mexico and Guatemala.
They have been unconscionably abandoned by the treasonous Biden Administration. Needless to say, this is also spreading COVID-19 within our country, not as if the federal government actually cares about stopping the disease.
The result is a human tragedy. Immigration patriots are often accused of being cold-hearted, but we haven’t inflicted anything close to the human suffering that so-called liberal idealists have on peoples from Central America to North Africa. The blood on their limp-wirsted, effete hands is incalculable.
We need to cut deals with competent leaders who can control their nations. That’s more humane than smashing apart nation-states and dumping the chaos on our own people as well as powerless foreigners. Vladimir Putin was able to do it by cutting a deal with the admittedly authoritarian government of Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya. I certainly wouldn’t want to be on Kadyrov’s bad side. However, his fiefdom is certainly preferable to another civil war [International terrorism fully eradicated in Chechnya, Kadyrov claims, Russian News Agency, June 23, 2021].
To control immigration and terrorism, Europe, regardless of what the Globalist American Empire has to say about it, should cut a deal with Qaddafi if he can reclaim his country. Qaddafi will probably be far more humane than the status quo. However, even if he is somewhat authoritarian, almost anything is better than the anarchy unleashed today.
Is there any prospect of this? Well, the country that would be most involved in cutting such a deal (and the country that has arguably suffered most from African immigration after the Libyan Revolution) is Italy. And the political signs look promising there. Matteo Salvini may be the moderate as the Brothers of Italy party continues to gain in strength [Analysis: Italy’s Salvini struggles as rightest ally grows stronger, by Angelo Amante and Crispian Balmer, Reuters, May 10, 2021].
Let’s hope that if the Italian Right can unite, solving the Libyan problem will be at the top of the new agenda.
📊 Sondaggio @swg_research per @TgLa7: Fratelli d’Italia supera la Lega e diventa il primo partito del centrodestra e del Paese pic.twitter.com/SFcHYHCYFQ
— Youtrend (@you_trend) June 28, 2021
It’s time for Italy to reclaim Mare Nostrum and the key lies in Tripoli. This isn’t about empire building, but stopping an immigration invasion and saving European nations from the reckless decisions of their own supposed leaders.
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