E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

TNR: What Qaddafi’s Fall Means for His Evil Minions in S. America, Asia & Africa
Judging from the fervor of their celebrations, the Libyan people are acutely aware that they will benefit from the fall of Muammar Qaddafi. But Libya is hardly the only country that has reason to rejoice.

As committed as the dictator was to destroying his own country, he posed an equal—perhaps even greater—danger to developing countries in other parts of the world. From the time he assumed power, Qaddafi leveraged Libya’s oil money, and his own willingness to have his country become a pariah state, to support insurgencies from East Asia, to South America, to southern Africa. With any luck, a number of long-running civil wars will disappear from the world stage together with Qaddafi himself.

One of his pet projects, in fact, was the World Revolutionary Center, which he established near the city of Benghazi. Stephen Ellis referred to the institution as the “Harvard and Yale of a whole generation of African revolutionaries.” While many of his graduates shared an anti-Western ideology—which appealed to the Libyan dictator’s own self-image as one of the few statesmen willing to stand up to would-be imperialists—sometimes the rebels on his bankroll had no discernable ideology at all. Qaddafi’s ideological inclinations were often outweighed by his appetite for power, his desire to be seen as a dominant powerbroker in Africa, his fantasies of revenge against America, or simply his love of mischief.
The dapper colonel was never a friend to the West. It was only that for a brief period after 9/11 he was afraid to be seen to be on the side of the jihadis. More at the link.

Posted by: trailing wife 2011-08-28
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=328795