Free Exit the Colonel by Ethan Chorin Page A

parse it. Thus, historical factors and other pressing policy issues blinded both sides to potential discontinuities. Gaddafi, by accounts, was briefly surprised by his success in springing his country from sanctions, but was too enamored of himself (and paranoid) to consider that his future might be brighter if he actually went faster with a reform plan, rather than sticking to the superficial makeover. The United States and the West were, generally, too distracted by the apparent low-cost media distractions and financial benefits to think beyond the short term.
    Halfway measures on both sides and, equally important, the absence of any precise commitments to actuate or (more importantly) enforce reform, in the form of a unified Western approach to sanctions, led to a situation in which each party—the West and Libya—could (and did, loudly) claim the other had reneged on original terms of the deal, whether these had to do with Lockerbie payments, the disposal of parts related to Libya’s WMD efforts, the disposition of convicted Pan Am bomber Megrahi, and so on, thus effectively invalidating the deal and creating opportunities for new kinds of side deals and creative misunderstandings. Gaddafi, further, was (perhaps literally) like a schizophrenic who had gone off his medications—without a strong structure to enforce good behavior, relapse was practically assured.
    One moment Gaddafi was celebrating his amazing success and a few new titles (King of Kings of Africa, for one), and the next he was face to
face with a major catastrophe. True to his nature, and to history, instead of doing something different, he offered a knee-jerk reaction, when a more progressive touch might still have saved him (or at least bought the regime time to make more considered decisions). The window for a potential resolution in favor of a live exit for Gaddafi appeared to have been open for some months. When he was finally pulled from a drainpipe in Sirte in October, Gaddafi was Neihoum’s Sultan, facing the black dog, cast as a Misuratan militia, twice-victimized: once by Gaddafi’s past policies, and a second time by relentless loyalist shelling of their hometown. One of the most intriguing cases in the Libyan saga of history conditioning the present lives in the Leader’s self-styled diplomat son, Saif Al Islam, his role in the rapprochement and remake of Gaddafi’s Libya, and subsequent turn against a process he claimed to champion. Saif may, or may not, have been a reformist at heart. Some who knew him insist he was, and would have done great things for Libya had he been given the chance. Others (themselves not in a position to cast stones) claim to have seen evidence of a dark side, years before February 2011: simmering anger and resentment at the position his father (and History, with a capital H) had put him in and a proclivity for violence that may have, until that point, been sublimated to a far greater extent than in his brothers, but was not fully under control, either.
    While most commentators attributed Saif ’s dramatic transformation to the circumstance of war and the possibility of the loss of privilege, one might just as well tie his change in behavior to a sudden, twisted change in psychological orientation vis-à-vis his father. As we have seen, Saif was not able, over the course of several years (though he appeared willing at various points), to push reform into the realm of politics. He was certainly not able to convince his father or brothers to ease up on the uprising once it began, whether or not he tried. Once Gaddafi had made the decision to fight to the last man, Saif went from what former Assistant Secretary David Welch called “somewhat soft,” to exhibiting exactly the kind of qualities that might have enabled him to retain the Gaddafi dynasty, had it not been too late—decisiveness, perhaps ruthlessness, a clear vision of what he wanted, or needed, to accomplish. From