I just want to mention that Gaddafi brought a lot of development to Libya and his death did nothing for his people. It's easy to say "oh he was a dictator and dictators are bad" but it's not so simple.
I've found that the west has a democracy bias. It assumes that democracy is intrinsic to people and it's only a matter of "liberating" them from tyranny.
But as history is proof, there is nothing intrinsic about democracy. Democratic revolutions were hardly organic in much of the world. Most countries have known nothing but monarchy and/or dictatorships. To impose democracy on them would perhaps be as cruel as letting them be ruled by dictators.
I know this isn't a popular opinion, but I'd say that people should be allowed to manage their own affairs. If a country is better off with a dictator, then so be it.
But when external forces try to impose democracy on a society not ready for it, typically all you get is a civil war netween local mini-dictators. E.g. Lybia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, countless African nations, etc.
Well-meaning Westerners like to imagine that all one has to do is put on a fair election, get the "good people" in power, and all will be well thereafter. This can be effected by Western occupiers when they want to wash their hands as they exit some troubled spot.
The occupiers don't want to hear that democracy is sustained by values and habits taught by parents to children who are still young enough to listen. Once the boys are old enough to hold a gun, that kind of learning is pretty much over.
Doesn't help that in any democratic setup, the people with the means to fight elections are usually the people who are already close to, or embedded in the previous dictatorial setup.
This is the post-colonial story across the world. The people who came into power after the colonizers left were direct beneficiaries of the colonial rule
Gaddafi's rise to power was a bloodless Coup [1], from the little understanding that I have, he was beloved by many Libyans, you should question where these "militias" that took him down came from, his dying words were 'What did I do to you?' [2], and you should question for what reasons should he be considered "tyrannical". Should you look at Libya today, it is ran by territorial gangs, which is antithetical to the idea that they rid themselves of a great evil. Finally I haven't fully educated myself on this, but it's very interesting, just reading the "Background" part of the Libyan Civil War wiki article makes you wonder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Civil_War_(2011)#Backgr...
"Evidence gathered by Reuters in the provincial town of Khoms shows an organised system of repression with methods including delivering electric shocks to suspects' genitals, keeping them for weeks in baking heat with only a few sips of water a day, and whipping them with an electrical cable while their hands were bound with plastic ties."
Although he was never tried, the sheer number of witnesses detailing his systematic rape of young girls, murder of opponents and starvation of civilians for example, lends a lot of credibility to him being very much tyrannical.
A few summaries:
"Victims and witnesses state in the documentary that Gadhafi would choose his targets on visits to schools or colleges, patting on the head those who caught his eye.
His security officials would then take the victim to one of several specially designed suites of rooms, where they would be abused and raped by the dictator. In one such suite at Tripoli University, there is a fully-equipped gynecological examination room, where victims were tested for sexually transmitted diseases before being sexually abused.
"Some were only 14," recalled one teacher at a Tripoli school. "They would simply take the girl they wanted. They had no conscience, no morals, not an iota of mercy, even though she was a mere child."
Some of the girls were held for years, while others were dumped with appalling injuries."
"The women would first be raped by the dictator then passed on, like used objects, to one of his sons and eventually to high-ranking officials for more abuse," said Benghazi-based psychologist Seham Sergewa, who interviewed victims for the International Criminal Court.
"Gaddafi had a harem of women kept in the basement of his residence, in little rooms or apartments. These women, obligated to appear before him in their underwear, could be called at any time of day or night. They were raped, beaten, subjected to the worst kinds of sexual humiliation. For Gaddafi, rape was a weapon … a way of dominating others -- women, obviously, because it was easy, but also men, by possessing their wives and daughters."
Haaretz, France24 and the Guardian are hardly unbiased sources. Frankly, these tales seem fantastic and made up to me, much like the stories about Kuwaiti babies being ripped from incubators and left to die on hospital floors. Remember those ?
Obviously a functional democratic society will stomp a dictatorial one on pretty much any axis you care to think of.
Having acknowledged that central point, we can't just say "dictators are bad". We can say "democracy is better", but there are instances where democracy doesn't work.
For a realpolitic example, great powers have a long history of quietly corrupting and overthrowing democracies where their interests conflict with our interests. It might be that a country has their democratically elected government toppled by the CIA/Russian version of the CIA/Chinese version of the CIA and then ends up as a dictatorship.
It is far too simplistic to then say "well, the dictator is at fault". Maybe the dictator isn't very nice, but there are political realities to attend to.
“stomp” is a bit exaggerated... Democracies are usually more economically efficient, whinch in the long run means more productive power for tech progress or weapons/munitions manufacture. But the catch is “the long run” there is some history of tribal/ dictatorial states distabalizing democracies and “winning” if they do it quickly and ferociously enough. Or even just ferociously.
A very good source of info about a lot of the powers and incentives in something like this is the “rules for rules” youtube video from cgp grey https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs
That depends on how you reckon things. It sounds like an extremely unwarranted axiom routinely disproven by normal world events.
I don't see the semi-functional United States outcompeting dictatorial slave labor economies. If your metric is how much value you can offer to huge multinational companies, it's plain that democratic societies are completely rejected and not even in the running.
'your investors' may very well demand completely inhuman behavior, because there's a cost to humanity, ethics and decency. If you insist on being decent and the flow of capital is completely frictionless it will all bypass you without a second thought. You will be actively choosing to not be the lowest-cost, highest-return option.
This is so contrary to facts that I'm confused about where to even start rebutting.
I guess I would just encourage people to look at where multinational companies tend to be created, tend to be headquartered, and tend to get most of their revenue.
> Obviously a functional democratic society will stomp a dictatorial one on pretty much any axis you care to think of.
A lot of Singaporeans might disagree there. Enlightened dictatorship can be really good however the probability of a having a great dictator is extremely low.
> a functional democratic society will stomp a dictatorial one on pretty much any axis you care to think of
That's correlation, not causation. A lot of the "best" democracies were functioning well before democracy arrived. The main issues that make countries "bad" (bad blood between groups, mistrust of authority, warlords, force majeurs, etc) are not directly related to the form of government.
> We can say "democracy is better", but there are instances where democracy doesn't work.
Just a book recommendation, but for people interested in learning more about these kinds of situations, I'd really recommend Amy Chua's "World on Fire."
