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Comment by einpoklum | Hacker News Reader

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Qaddafi was not a serious pan-Africanist, and the rest of Africa knew that. He was sometimes an Arab nationalist, sometimes an Islamic nationalist, sometimes an African nationalist, sometimes a socialist, and his only consistent ideological position was military dictatorship. He provided a venue for the founding of the AU, but both it and its predecessor organization are/were based in Ethiopia. The US intervention in Libya didn’t go very well, but it’s silly to pretend that Qaddafi was a hero by any measure.

Which policy killed more Libyans - Obama’s or Qaddafi’s? Considering many people consider Obama a hero, the bar is quite low to jump.

That's why I said "semi-kidding". Of course he was no here. TBH I have very little grasp of how Libya was managed with him as the ruler, they appear to have had a rather strange system there which on the one hand had this strong-man leader and harsh prisons, but on the other hand had distribution-of-power mechanisms.

Anyway, certainly no hero, and had Libya been serious about pan-Africanism we would have seen a lot more serious work and investment of resources to that end. But - Libya was not willing to play along well enough with the interests of NATO members (US? France? Some combination of those?) so they offed him.

at least there weren't slave markets in Libya while he was a dictator....

No he just had his own harem of literal sex slaves. Who were abducted as children and tortured into sexual servitude.

Is there any evidence for this or are you parroting western talking points meant to vilify/justify deposing him? I'm more inclined to disbelieve the statement given the west's track record for fabricating reasons to invade foreign nations.

Based on testimony from his all-female "amazonian guard" and an in-depth book by a french investigative journalist including one detailed testimony of one of the victims.

There is far too much smoke from independent sources for there not to have been any fire.

it's still a fundamentally non-utilitarian argument because you're talking about the sins of one man vs an entire country full of chaos and disorder.

He was killed because of his speech on 23 Sep 2009 at the United Nations General Assembly

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