Muammar Gaddafi Heaven & Hell

I'm about halfway through this book (made it to the other side of the picture section)

It's actually not as awful as I thought it was going to be. The author is a little hard to take because it's painfully obvious he has that deeply ingrained subconscious belief that Americans deserve to run the world with Britain and Israel's help and everyone else should just deal with it.

However, there's a good level of detail about incidents and events that most writers never get into, most authors are like "so that happened" whereas this guy actually goes into what led up to it and why and how it happened not just "it happened." Maybe he was some kind of political analyst dude. Caveat, I caught a few minor factual errors around events I'm super-familiar with, so that makes me unsure how accurate he is in the things I'm less familiar with, so I'm reading with caution.

😂 sensationalist propaganda created by his Western enemies. France in particular.

There might have been some actual medical clinic underground, or not, but the weird backstory about what it was used for and why is propaganda dreamed up by a French writer in late 2011 or 2012 and then parroted and added to by other Western info-tainment agencies.

My guess is that the motive for France attacking Libya to begin with had to do with Gaddafi's plan to unite Africa as a new superpower- which would make it near impossible for France to regain its old colonies and plunder Africa's resources like it used to.

America and the UK also hated Libya/Gaddafi for eroding their power and control over Africa.

Specific examples (they don't always give one) were that she giggled a lot for no reason (something they also complain about with Muammar) and that she was very reclusive and private, didn't like to be in public (of course it's a matter of opinion whether that's "odd" or not - also some dispute over whether that was her idea or Muammar's wish that she stay out of public. I personally think it was hers)

Like how most leaders in the west are married to women that aren’t even attracted to them or they aren’t even attracted to (some aren’t even heterosexual but you can’t have that no no)

He didn’t despise her or anything and he took care of their kids and all that but it’s something he had to do/ commit to for an image.

Right, and then there are additional layers of Libyan/Arab specific cultural things contributing to it.

Daad Sharab (part of Gaddafi's team) mentioned in her memoir that she always thought Muammar and Safia were an odd match and seemed to have nothing in common. She elaborated that she suspected he married her as a reward for saving his life in the hospital. (Not just the appendicitis, Safia may have discovered someone was planning to kill him or stage a coup while he was in the hospital and she warned him about it.) Daad pointed out that Gaddafi had a habit of doing drastic things like this to thank people for helping him. I'm sure that wasn't the only reason, but it could have helped sway his decision.

Another big factor is that in the Arab world (also was a thing among European royalty in the past) marriages between rival nations are a sign of a peace treaty. The union between Eastern and Western Libya has always been shaky. Safia's family is from Bayda which is closer to Benghazi (Eastern capital) while Gaddafi was from Sirte and headquartered in Tripoli (Western capital and at the time, of the whole country.) I've heard that her family is even related to the King he overthrew. Marrying Safia would have been a symbolic gesture of peace and unity between east and west Libya, and would have made the East less likely to turn against Gaddafi's fledgling government. Not saying this was the only reason, but could have factored heavily into his decision to make her his wife instead of just a mistress, and most certainly in his decision to stay with her even after things went downhill at home.

My personal theory is that she got a crush on him (a lot of girls did, I mean he was young and handsome and the hero of the whole country - except the king's tribe lol) and he felt the same because she was so pretty and young and independent and brave, and when he saw she was loyal to him and the other things, they rushed into marriage. (He was already having trouble with his first wife and her family) But remember they knew each other less than a year. I don't think either of them had the chance to really get to know each other first, and after they got married and moved in together they started having personality clashes and realizing they didn't really like each other.

My head canon being that she still loved him but on her terms. She wanted to mold him into who she thought he should be or who she thought he was when they first met before she really got to know him. She probably thought "Why can't you just be normal!"* a few times. While he just started to feel irritated around her. But he couldn't divorce her because she hadn't actually done anything wrong, and his ethics were very much against divorcing a woman for no better reason than you got tired of her. And besides, if he divorced her, he risked losing the East.

yes.

I...

Like how Hafez al-Assad and Anisa Makhlouf had a daughter named Bushra, who passed away very young, and named the next child Bushra as well

Yes he did have several facelifts and botox and all that. The facial hair and the dressing more traditionally really affect his vibe too, though. It's a combination of things.