Mad Dogs

So unfair, after all, to canines, but the appellation "mad dog" is granted on occasion to individuals with highly unstable personalities, those who somehow manage to wreak grave damage in the wake of their chaotic decision-making and vile actions. In the instance of a nomadic-tribal dictator like Moammar Gadhafi, the descriptive alluded to his quirkily demonic behaviours, pronouncements and dabbling-in-disasters abroad.

But look here, Mr. Gadhafi has reinvented himself as a friend of the West. He no longer fulminates and froths against the intentions of the West to unseat him and destabilize his country. Accusations he launched while busily training and arming terrorists and cooking up plots with them to murder and main Westerners, including more ambitiously successful projects such as planting bombs on Western-based airliners in flight.

However, he has seen the light, agreeing to give up his lifelong aspirations to being the Big Bad Wolf of Islamic Africa, creating chaos wherever his nefarious plans were carried through to fruition and death. No longer ostracized, but feted as a new member of the civilized countries of the world, world leaders have gradually accustomed themselves to making rare pilgrimages to his palatial desert tents. Nothing quite like the combination of oil and trade.

He did it by realizing the utility of mea culpas and resignation in favour of acceptance. So, yes, he was once culpable in the deaths of hundreds of innocent people, and sigh, he very much regrets that phase in his life's career path. And, how nice, he has forsworn his search for nuclear weapons of mass destruction. No longer will he use his oil wealth to sponsor terrorist attacks; those funds latterly used instead to compensate for mass murders.

Which, one supposes, is the weary explanation and acceptance that leads to Libya transferring a whole lot of greasy wealth to France for the purchase of a nuclear-powered desalinization plant, Airbus planes, fighter jets, and who knows what else? Besides, the world now has another "mad dog"; none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran's Ayatollahs who have embraced the burden of antagonists to the world in general; Israel and the West in particular.

All is forgiven.