Was Gaddafi done dirty?

The toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, part of the larger Arab Spring movement (which totally wasn’t CIA-backed), led to a devastating chain reaction that is still affecting the West to this day.

Sit tight kids, this is going to be a long one.

Gaddafi came to power in 1969. He nationalized the oil industry, taking it away from the foreign corporations. He took the vast profits, reinvesting it into the country’s social welfare programs, vastly improving the state of healthcare and education in Libya in a single generation. There was free healthcare and education up to university level for both sexes. Massive housing complexes were built in the major cities, with housing being declared a human rights and subsidies given to families. Gaddafi also heavily invested in the Great Man-Made River project, which aimed to provide a sustainable water supply for Libya. Libya had the highest human development index (HDI) in mainland Africa.

Now, obviously Gaddafi was a dictator. There was corruption and a massive cult of personality around Gaddafi. He brutally killed and tortured his enemies throughout his reign. Freedom of press? Forget about it. He started a war with neighboring Chad (and by extension France) over minerals in the 1980s, which put him on the radar as an enemy of the West. Now, remember that this was a pretty small scale war compared to Saddam invading Iran. Gaddafi’s forces were also responsible for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270 people: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103

The rural regions of his country were underdeveloped and neglected. There were constantly rebel groups in his country, at varying levels of strength, trying to overthrow him. But as far as evil African dictators go, Gaddafi doesn’t even crack the Top 20 list.

In 2009, Gaddafi made a speech at the UN, calling out Zionist Israel and the imperialist intentions of the US. I used to think he was crazy, but looking back, a lot of the things he said made sense:
https://youtu.be/PBRqqa7ZpeQ?si=ssIgF6EOoEMey1U-

In 2011, when the Arab Spring came, Gaddafi was on edge and ready to crush any rebels with force. This is after Gaddafi willingly gave up his nuclear weapons program in 2003, probably after seeing what happened with Iraq and their WMD situation. Little did Gaddafi know, but this disarming would lead to his downfall. Obama was hoping to show his tough stance in the Middle East, the Arab Spring was in full swing, and the IMF was throwing their funding behind the rebel forces. Netanyahu got up and told the UN that Libya was an “existential threat” and violator of human rights similar to Iran. Gaddafi’s reaction to the Arab Spring revolution in Libya was allegedly “crimes against humanity” according to NATO, which justified intervention: https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/22/libya-and-the-myth-of-humanitarian-intervention/

A no-fly zone was instituted by the UN, nothing goes in or out. With these conditions, Libya didn’t stand a chance. In a matter of months, Gaddafi was deposed and being sodomized by a bayonet by rebel forces in the streets. Intervention turned into regime change. The country fell into a prolonged insurgency between several factions due to the power vacuum. What happened to the massive arms caches of the Libyan military? Sold off to Al Qaeda and other Islamist groups in other parts of the Middle East, only fueling more violence in places like Syria and Iraq in the midst of their civil wars.

Fast forward to 2025. Libya is still recovering from a 9-year long civil war which devastated the country. The GDP is literally HALF of what it was in 2012. The infrastructure is crumbling, there is a coalition government that isn’t really democratic, and there are still open-air slave markets: https://www.growthinktank.org/en/the-return-of-slavery-in-libya/

Gaddafi famously said that if he was taken out that Europe would be flooded with “millions of blacks.”

What’s happened Europe? Libya, due to its proximity to mainland Europe, is now a major transfer point for migrants. Europe is being flooded with migrants from sub-Saharan Africa arriving via boat. Additionally, it was, until recently, being flooded by migrants from the Levant due to the Syrian civil war. ISIS and Al Qaeda, armed with Libyan weapons, spread terror across the region. The rebels, who expected international support on the same level of the Libyan rebels, which they never received, continued to fight on for 10+ years until Assad finally fell.


There are now over 13 million refugees in Europe. These numbers are unsustainable and the social programs in countries like France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Spain are heavily strained trying to accommodate them. During the Gaddafi years, there was tight border control and these migrants were given temporary housing within the country. Nowadays, with all the systems gone, it’s a free-for-all. This has led to numerous political crises in Europe including terror attacks, lack of assimilation, and ultranationalism.

Was Gaddafi a good guy? Nope. But if Israel, the United States, and the rest of NATO hadn’t decided to topple his regime, I feel like the world would have been a lot better off.