Qaddafi goes on a rant

There seems to be a bit of a media craze with Omar Qaddafi, so I thought I'd check out his speech at the UN.

Qaddafi is better known for his eccentric behavior, but (I think) there's a lot more to him then pitching bedouin tents and hiring female bodyguards. He's been in power for four decades--the longest of any African head of state--and inevitably a tenure that long is bound to be full of plenty of diplomatic ups and downs. One of the things that amazes me is he's gone from being one of the most loathed heads of state in the West (the CIA must've tried to assassinate him at some time or other) to being a huge trade partner with the US and a temporary member of the UN Security Council.

And despite his shadowy history with the Lockerbie bombing (a tragedy for the West) and the assassination of Musa al-Sadr (a tragedy for the Shi'a world), I had the impression that he had since moderated his actions and his outlook on the world. After all, he's the head of the African Union. He's received praise from some respected African politicians, and I've found some of his Pan-African ideas (United States of Africa?) striking although a bit absurd. And so I thought his speech at the 2009 UN General Assembly he would try to speak as a leader of Africa, building momentum and optimism for the century ahead.

But all I was able to find online was the first 10 minutes of his 90 minute speech. Mixed blessing. Watching those first 10 minutes was sort of painful. Qaddafi took his time, leisurely trudging from topic to topic. He jumped from a swine flu conspiracies to a close reading of the UN Charter's preamble. And to me, this slow, winding pace seemed to show an arrogance and contempt for the audience. As though his agenda is to hear his own voice rather than to speak for Libya or the AU which he heads or address global issues that require multilateralism.

Nonetheless, he raised a couple rational points (amidst the majority of totally insane ones). He argued that there should be no foreign intervention in intrastate conflicts (civil wars), but more UN intervention in interstate conflicts. He argued that the distribution of power in the UN (whereby a handful of the most powerful nations had veto power) was unfair and undemocratic. And he argued that the US and NATO forces should not be fighting the Taliban (...although he did take it a step too far, saying a Taliban-run Islamic emirate in Afghanistan would be fine...which I strongly disagree with).

All in all, from what I saw it was sort of a train wreck of a speech. Some of his points are interesting and worthy of further discussion, but he surrounds them with shock-jock inanities that make them lose their credibility.

Luckily 50 other African heads of state/foreign ministers will get to speak before the General Assembly is over.