Secretary of State Hilary Clinton issued an official notice of thanks to embattled Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi today as part of a landmark new package called the Old World Doctrine. Mrs. Clinton extended the appreciation to the dictator for reminding the Western World what real crazy looks like.
Mr. Gaddafi, long known to Americans as the loveable buffoon behind such tragedies as the Lockerbie bombing, has recently issued a series of statements that eclipse even his previous levels of insanity. Speaking in his self-proclaimed role as king of kings of Africa, the 69-year-old colonel declared his intent to “drown the cockroach rebels in a river of blood.” Sadly, the statement was lost in a sea of less relevant claims, including ones that the Jews killed Kennedy for investigating their nuclear arsenal and that Gaddafi is a really big deal where he lives, with like ten Rolls Royces and everything. Also hidden in a 25-minute rant about the problems with orange Jell-O and how good-looking the berobed officer used to be were statements that unrestricted aerial bombing of rebel-held cities was being initiated and that militias were being armed to go house-to-house brutally butchering suspected Islamists and antisocial elements.
“It’s really incredible that [Gaddafi’s] been going for so long,” said a State Department spokesman, “I mean, the dude’s acting like this because he was around when Idi Amin was in power. He’s really the last redoubt of the unique kind of old world crazy that characterized the 20th Century. The man’s best friend is Castro, for Christ’s sake. He’s all that’s left of the unclassifiable set of egomaniacal dictators that we used to see, like some sort of batshit insane Pompeii.” The spokesman concluded his statements by saying that the United States would reverse its policies and do everything it could to preserve this historic treasure, from launching cruise missiles at the rebel capital of Benghazi to raiding Libyan oil platforms. It was made clear that the doctrine had nothing at all to do with rising oil prices or the chance to exert control over an oil-producing state.
But not all has been sunshine and roses for the oasis of Libya. Libyan propaganda officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, claimed that the recent uprising and bloodshed represented the worst public relations disaster the country had experienced since that Back to the Future movie with the Libyans in the parking lot. “That was really embarrassing,” said the official. “I always remind Colonel Gaddafi that it could be worse. There could be a Back to the Future 12 or something. That keeps him happy.”
EE ’13