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THE ROVING EYE
The Big Gaddafi
By Pepe Escobar
It's late night in Tripoli and The Big Gaddafi is sipping a White Russian, smoking some prime Maghreb produce and tuning in to a bank of plasma TVs in his tent at the Bab al-Aziziyah fortress. No luscious Ukrainian nurse could possibly appease his restless soul.
He stares in disbelief at the narrative unrolling in the digital Western alphabet soup known as "news"; they swear Muammar Gaddafi is "besieged", "exhausted", "looking for a way out", "preparing to flee" (to Tunisia) and it's "only a matter of time" before his regime "collapses".
All this because a bunch of barbarian Bedouins backed by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombs had decided to pee on his carpet.
The Big Gaddafi: That rug really tied the room together.
He can hardly picture himself as "besieged". After all his box-office appeal in Libya at least doubled in the past few months. And then some White House dude told his guys they would abide by a ceasefire where NATO would rule only some patches of Cyrenaica - yes for Benghazi, no for Misrata - and would make way for a blue helmet UN peacekeeping force.
He looks at his iPhone calendar; the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan will go on until August 29. There are still roughly 10 days for the ceasefire to go into effect. But the Americans - as usual - were greedy. They wanted all the oil and gas concessions they could lay their hands on, and they wanted him to retire. The oil and gas, that's negotiable - for a price. As for the retirement, stuff it.
Big Gaddafi sidekick: When we make the handoff, I double back, grab one of 'em and beat it out of him! Huh?
The Big Gaddafi: That's a great plan. That's fuckin' ingenious, if I understand it correctly. It's a Swiss fuckin' watch.
What kind of "popular" war was that? His intel guys had brought him on a silver plate the latest Rasmussen poll - according to which only 20% of Americans supported the US/NATO bombing scam, especially because those goons were bombing scores of civilians, even kids. The Europeans - real people, not Brussels bureaucrats - were even more disgusted.
And to believe that these European nihilists tried to sell the fiction that he, Gaddafi, was an "evil dictator" who wanted to "kill his own people"!
Big Gaddafi sidekick: Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Arab Dude, at least it's an ethos.
The European nihilists were bombing civilian infrastructure - depriving a lot of people in Western Libya of food and water, so they would "rise" to topple him. That's how a war to "protect civilians" works out in those sick Western minds: you terrorize the shit out of civilians.
The Big Gaddafi knew he was not alone. People in Tripoli were not "fearful". Students, teachers, average citizens, all fully armed with kalashnikovs, RPGs and mortars, were ready to dig in, to take over the edges of town, to man a cordon of check points, to organize house-to-house defense. The "NATO rebels" would never prevail.
Big Gaddafi sidekick: I've got information, man - new shit has come to light!
Indeed. He now knew for sure that the largest tribes - Warfa'llah, Washafana, Tarhouna, Zlitan - were all behind him. And that, contrary to "NATO rebel" propaganda, Zawiya, Gharian and Surman had not fallen.
He knew those unsavory Transitional National Council (TNC) characters would always be embroiled in their own tribal wars, in fact mini civil wars.
He couldn't believe how dumb those Americans and Europeans were, showering money on the Abu Ubaidah bin Jarrah brigade - who refuses to fight under the "rebel NATO" arm and instead maintains "internal security" - by beheading their enemies.
He was now even profiting from support by the furious Obeidi tribe - which includes the family of General Abdul Fatah Younis, his former Interior Minister turned defector and "rebel" commander-in-chief, killed by the "NATO rebels" themselves.
Those dumb Westerners that until yesterday were kissing the hem of his lavish tunics in his itinerant tents were now salivating over juicy commercial deals and the even juicier carve-up of the oilfields, believing they would later be able to contain the inevitable, monster tribal, civil war.
The Big Gaddafi: So if you could just write me my check for 10% of a half trillion … 50 billion …I'll go out and mingle.
He had always known why they came to pee on his carpet. Because he didn't hand the Brits, the Frogs and the Yanks the oil concessions they wanted. So them, and those unspeakable Saudi bastards started propping up these fanatic al-Qaeda-related types - just like they did in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Western "banksters" invented an "alternative" Central Bank - with HSBC's help - to rob Libya's money. They also invented a new, to be fully privatized, national oil company, managed by Qatar, to rob Libya's oil. Why haven't he thought about this scam before - "humanitarian war"? He could have made a killing.
The Big Gaddafi: You have your story, I have mine. I say that I entrusted the money to you, and *you* stole it!
The "coalition": As if we would ever *dream* of taking your bullshit money!
Blowback will come - and it will be a bitch.
NATO's bombs had downgraded the Libyan oil industry at least three years. But those cowards wouldn't have the guts to engage in a Battle of Tripoli - killing women and children en masse.
The Big Gaddafi: Ow! Fucking fascists!
They would have to bomb Tripoli to the stone age - just like they did to Baghdad. Or drop some crazy biological plague to void the whole city.
The Big Gaddafi: I do mind, the Dude minds. This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man.
Well, if this is the kind of paradise NATO plus those "democrat" Saudis and Qataris wanted, the Arab Dude would abide - and make their lives hell. A free market free-for-all, an Africom base in the Mediterranean, a flimsy puppet government, a Libyan Karzai - and a vicious guerrilla force fighting them till Kingdom Come. Afghanistan remixed.
The Big Gaddafi rolled The Chocolate Watchband on his iPod - I just dropped in/ to see/ what condition my condition was in - checked the perimeter and stepped out into the not so cool Northern African night. Not for long. NATO jets circled the sky above - and seven loud blasts hit Bab al-Aziziyah.
The Stranger: Darkness washed over the Dude - darker'n a black steer's tookus on a moonless prairie night. There was no bottom.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at
pepeasia@yahoo.com.
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