jm wrote:You're arguments are so absurd I don't know where to start - "there were no wars in Syria and Libya" -- so Obama is responsible for the rise of popular opposition to these dictators? I'd insert a LOL but I can't take seriously a discussion peppered with them, sorry.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
Sorry Jm, I usually agree with you on matters of History (in Asia) but I can't let you say that Gaddafi was a Dictator. The killing of him and the subsequent destruction of Libya by Western-backed National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters and NATO forces was nothing short of a war crime. He was captured alive and should have been treated as prisoner of war, interrogated and put on trial.
Hillary Clinton's comments on his death, "We came, we saw, he died."
He was not a Dictator, he was the father of modern Libya.
These are some of the contributions by Gaddafi to his country and the region:
(a) He envisioned "the United States of Africa" and thus contributed to the formation of the African Union. In fact, "the African Union is basically the creation of Muammar Gaddafi, who saw it as a vessel for a stronger Africa,"
(b) He succeeded in holding Libya together, which, according to Shirin Sagedhi, was previously fragmented by different "tribes and ethnicities."
(c) He transformed Libya to have "one of the highest GDPs per capita in Africa and...to provide an extensive level of social security, particularly in the fields of housing and education," in a way that many sub-Saharan countries in Africa could only dream of.
(d) He managed to avoid being dominated by the Soviet Union or the U.S. during the Cold War by playing the Soviet Union against the U.S. without being a puppet of the former. After the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, he continued to fight against Western domination in the region and thus developed bad blood with Western powers.
(e) He overthrew the Kingdom of Libya in a bloodless military coup against King Idris in 1969 and thus brought Libya into the modern era (from monarchic feudalism).
But more important (to me and probably the citizens of Libya) was his construction of the Man-made river.
Western technicians said that Libya did not have the expertise to exploit this underground ocean; but in the early 1980s Gaddafi initiated the Great Man-Made River Authority, a 25-billion-dollar project to raise the water and pipe it across the desert.
Expertise and equipment was imported from Italy, Spain, Germany, Japan and South Korea. The first water began to flow in September 1989 and the project was completed in 2011. It was the world’s largest irrigation project and
the largest underground network of pipes and aqueducts.
It supplied 6,500,000 cubic metres of fresh water daily. From being one of the driest countries on earth,
the desert bloomed and Libya was on it's way to being self sufficient.
It is a war crime to attack essential civilian infrastructure.
All these achievements were no small feats for a ruler of a small country with only a few million people and therefore allowed Gaddafi to rule for 42 years. until...
Let's not even begin to talk about how many African migrants are flowing into Europe as a result of the chaos in Libya.
Killing him was a war crime. This is a good example of why Hillary is far more dangerous than Trump.
)
