one follow-up point on Seif al-Qaddafi

Bill at NEW SAVANNA takes a different and quite reasonable line on Seif al-Qaddafi, which was initially my own line back in March.

Namely, Bill suggests that Seif actually was an honest pro-democracy and reform advocate, but that “blood is thicker than water” and seeing his family and livelihood under threat spun him in a nasty direction.

Yes, that was my initial take on it too. As I said, I thought Saif gave a very impressive, likable speech about Libya’s future when he spoke in Cairo (on our campus, even) in May 2010.

The reasons I changed my mind about his basic character were:

(1) The full-blown ugliness of his warning speech to protestors. But even more importantly…

(2) Back in March, after his crazy televised speech, I started Googling around for his past speeches to see if there was any precedent. And yes, I found a few pretty nasty remarks buried in his “democratic” period. I can no longer remember exactly what they were, nor can I find them now for some reason, but whatever they were, they were enough to make me conclude that his “Pro-Democracy Heir” act was mostly just a masquerade. (The plagiarism at the LSE didn’t increase my confidence in him either.)