Terminally Conflicted

Posing as an urbane intellectual, a reasonable man straddling two worlds, he appeared to have little trouble making influential friends at various courts. Money and power do confer a special status on those who can wield them both, and the man most certainly did. The scion of a man who ruled a kingdom, but modestly, as a benevolent despot who only occasionally permitted himself the luxury of exacting his wrath upon his unruly subjects.

Mostly, the illustrious father of this talented son contented himself with sending out his emissaries far and wide to covertly wreak havoc abroad. The father was widely feared and respected as well, but all can be forgiven for business opportunities. With wealthy societies eager to forge alliances and to come away with mutually beneficial agreements that were certain to fulsomely reward their industry and their investments in the desert sands of Libya.

The father who rose to the rank of Colonel in this corner of the Maghreb, took control in a military coup of a country comprised of nomadic tribes, of opposing Bedouin clans, and his palatial palace was in fact, a palatial tent for he was at heart a Bedouin, and proud of it. His loving son had other aspirations which the father encouraged, and he achieved a doctorate in political philosophy.

So far is the apple capable of falling from the tree under opportunistically salubrious circumstances. Saif al-Islam Gadhafi was greatly admired "as someone who looks to democracy, civil society and deep liberal values for the core of his inspiration." A mere $2.3-million of pocket change to the London School of Economics was sufficient to buy that unctuous encomium.

But he did indeed impress upon his informal academic adviser at the redoubtable London School of Economics the extent of his civilized world view, who spoke of his former pupil quite fondly: "The funny, witty man who, while always guarded about his family, was always willing to talk frankly with me about the fundamental questions about his own country and the Middle East in general."

That funny, witty man is now quite publicly speaking frankly on the fundamental questions about his country, appearing on television to warn that rivers of blood would run through Libya. "You must fight, until the last minute, until the last bullet. This is your country! We will show them what we're capable of. They can do nothing against us. They are just children."

Those 'children', the young men of Libya who are no longer willing to allow themselves and their country to be ruled by a brutal tyrant who suppresses the will of the people, who hugely benefits himself through the sales of the country's petrochemicals while the infrastructure of a civil society is denied his countrymen, have been targeted by the military that the "sword of Islam" commands.

Responding to the slaughter of protesters by the military, Saif al-Islam explained that the thousands who died were themselves responsible for the carnage. "The army was under stress, it is not used to crowd control, so they shot." So they did. One imagines that the military training specifically geared toward crowd control that Britain so graciously exposed them to simply did not take.

This man, son of the father, who displayed such a deep commitment to liberal democratic reform of his country, that he moved in highly respected, elite circles, a guest of British royalty, American social elite, celebrities, had written his thesis arguing in it against autocratic governments that are "authoritarian, abusive and unrepresentative."

Purportedly written it, that is, for which he received his doctorate. Suspicions have since arisen that it was ghost-written, plagiarized, improperly documented, alas. Not only is it likely he did not in fact write the 429-page tome, but it is also quite likely he never got around to reading it thoroughly.

No matter, the dashing desert warrior has overtaken the persona of the urbane, witty charmer.