How "Mad Dog" Became Top Dog

For quite a while now we knew this day would come, but it was still hard to believe your eyes seeing an American secretary of state--George Bush's secretary of state, no less-- in Libya meeting with Colonel Gaddafi. The about-face on both the American and Libyan sides is breathtaking.

Enjoy a little slideshow from my most recent visit to Libya, while I mention a few things about the U.S.-Libyan rapprochement.

You can argue that it was a disgraceful sell-out to the memories of the victims of Libyan terror down the years. You can claim that it's a disgraceful sell-out to Libyans who seek freedom and democracy--despite Gaddafi's reforms thus far, Libya remains an authoritarian state and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

But I think bringing Gaddafi back into the international fold has merit as well as some lessons for U.S. policy makers in the Middle East when it comes to issues like Iran, the Palestinians, etc.

The rapprochement with Libya highlights the folly of demonizing political leaders.

Reagan called Gaddafi the "mad dog of the Middle East." He bombed Gaddafi's house in Tripoli with the evident intention of killing him. Has Gaddafi fundamentally changed since those days? Hardly. Indeed, he is the first one to say that he has not changed. He doesn't apologize for his past actions. He rationalizes his turnabout in behavior on the grounds that times have changed, and Libya's interests (and his own) are served by adapting to them. Demonizing leaders (or, conversely, cozying up to them) is the way lazy politicians ignore the need to address societies as a whole in foreign relations. Not that leaders aren't important, but history clearly shows that they can be swayed. In the long run, being friends or enemies with this or that leader is not as important as the political, economic and cultural relationships between peoples.

The rapprochement also shows the foolishness of becoming obsessed with a political opponent's ideology.

Be it based on secular concepts or religious ones, ideology has proved less important in Middle East politics than basic issues like power, money and justice. Gaddafi authored the Green Book explaining and justifying Libya's eccentric mix of religious, socialist and revolutionary policies. As with Chairman Mao's more famous so-called Little Red Book, the rigid ideology of the Green Book has given way through time to pragmatism. That's not to say ideology isn't important. But despite periodic ultra-radical currents of ideological fervor, such as nowadays with al-Qaeda, the vast majority of leaders and citizens in the Middle East including Islamic fundamentalists are driven more by the basics of life than by their rigid ideological rules.

It's the people, stupid.

Until now, the U.S. has spent far too much time demonizing some Middle East leaders and deifying others. Long ago there was Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nasser, father of Arab nationalism. After Arab nationalism failed in the '60s, the next devil was Ayatullah Khomeini, leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. We loved Saddam Hussein of Iraq when he was fighting Khomeini, but we turned on him when he got too big for his britches. For decades, the U.S. refused to deal with Yasser Arafat on the grounds that he was a terrorist. Then after the suffering Palestinians rose up in a revolt, we agreed to negotiate with him if the Palestinians would talk to Israel. When those negotiations failed to achieve quick results, the U.S. was backing to calling Arafat a terrorist again. Who's our favorite Palestinian leader now? Well, it's Arafat's successor as chairman of the P.L.O. Does he have different demands? Not at all, but he's all Washington has left, because the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalists of Hamas are beating on the door now.

As the saying goes, in politics there is no such thing as permanent friends or permanent enemies. Just permanent interests. That's exactly what Condi Rice told reporters traveling with her to Tripoli on Friday:

"This demonstrates that the U.S. doesn't have permanent enemies. It demonstrates that when countries are prepared to make strategic changes in direction, the United States is prepared to respond. Quite frankly I never thought I would be visiting Libya and so it is quite something.

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No, that's not to say that our foreign policy should be guided only by strategy and not by principles. To the contrary, principles should be part of our strategy. We should strongly advocate principles including democracy, freedom, equality and justice--and we should advocate them, and abide by them ourselves, consistently. What we should not do is pretend that all the problems are caused by this or that political leader, and that going on military rampages to overthrow them or kill them--or both--is the easy solution. The Bush administration's handling of the "mad dog" suggests that even a certain ideologically driven White House is capable of being pragmatic, too.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo