Exit the Colonel Read Online Free PDF Page A

set, that is, Libya’s giving up WMDs and terrorism for the lifting of sanctions, some of the secondary rationalizations for engagement came into
relief. Accordingly, US and Western business leaders were to serve as a “force multiplier,” setting the stage for deeper reforms by spreading the gospel of American-style capitalism. Among the earliest advocates of this view was Representative Curt Weldon, mentioned in the previous chapter. After a 2004 CODEL of which he was a member, Weldon announced that his aim was to “promote engagement between American and Libyan business interests, and thus foster the country’s free market.” 7 The subtext was that commercial deals might accomplish what diplomacy and/or military threats could not: change from within, a velvet revolution, perhaps led by the regime’s reformist mouthpiece and Gaddafi’s son, Saif Al Islam. The attractiveness of this approach was due presumably to the weakness (or limitations) of the original narrative, which held that, while the US had commercial and strategic interests in Libya, there were no levers with which to compel reform. In retrospect, one has to question whether this was really the case.
    So the US and other Western countries were determined to proceed with the opening on the basis of so-called “soft” negotiation, untrammeled by requirements and boundaries. As Wyn Bowen of King’s College London noted, “The Bush administration’s incremental provision of rewards to Libya in response to the passage of key milestones further smoothed the dismantlement effort, despite the fact that this linkage was not deliberately established at the start and that there was some initial opposition within the administration to ‘rewarding’ Libya at all .” 8 As time passed, Libyans with resources who had been uncertain about whether to support the reform efforts began to believe that they had been offered a fait accompli, this time backed by the US and the Western countries. If the US was not willing to push political reform or human rights, they too might as well participate in the process or leave the spoils to others.

Exceptionality
    Lurking deep beneath the surface of US-Libya interactions was an interesting, counterintuitive, and potentially useful notion of American “exceptionality” within Libya’s worldview. To paraphrase, the idea was that in spite of their history of exaggerated “anti-other” rhetoric, the US and Libya had an odd affinity, built through shared past experiences—those of the Libyan business community in the 1960s and recipients of US educational fellowships are cases in point. 9

    For Gaddafi, exceptionality sprang from a stark reality: the US was the sole (and most important) Western power yet to reestablish diplomatic relations with Libya after the lifting of UN sanctions in 1999. Despite his anti-imperialist rhetoric, Gaddafi was absolutely obsessed with attracting the attention of the US and bringing US leaders to Libya, on terms of quasi-parity. US sanction was the one thing Gaddafi wanted desperately but remained out of reach, tantalizingly so given that the US (as per its historical tendency) did not seem in any rush to consummate the relationship.
    Less psychologically complex were latent affinities that a surprisingly high number of Gaddafi’s senior advisers, ministers, and National Oil Company (NOC) executives would evince for the US. After dispensing with requisite pro-Gaddafi sloganeering, X or Y minister or his assistant would frequently confide that his years at the University of Arizona or Louisiana State University were “the best of his life.” Prime Minister and NOC head Shukri Ghanem was an example of this group, having received his PhD from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Musa Kusa, the feared head of internal security, held a master’s in sociology from the University of Michigan. A large number of these