He gives rambling incoherent speeches at places like the United Nations. His head is stuffed with oddball conspiracy theories and strange obsessions, like calling for the elimination of Switzerland or blaming the J.F.K. assassination on Israeli intelligence. He shows up in foreign countries in odd dress, with odd make-up and hair-gel preferences, once having pinned a photograph to his chest.
He has an all-female bodyguard contingent. In 2008, he announced that as part of a government shake-up, he was going to abolish all government ministries except Defense, Internal Security and a few others.
These are not the actions of a cold, calculating Machiavellian. Yet Qaddafi can’t just be dismissed as a comic loon. He’s maintained dominance in a ruthless part of the world, and he may outlast the current shambolic attempts to unseat him.
It seems that there is something advantageous in the megalomania that is his defining lifelong trait. He was kicked out of school for trying to organize a student strike. He began plotting a coup to take over the country while in college. He has repeatedly compared himself to Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad. He calls the Green Book, his book of teachings, “the new gospel.”
