The Scrapbook couldn’t help but notice this little gem from today’s New York Times article, cheekily headlined “A Libyan Leader at War With Rebels, and Reality“:
What’s more, Colonel Qaddafi maintains a strong interest in American books about public affairs. In one cable, the embassy reported that Colonel Qaddafi assigned trusted aides to prepare Arabic summaries of Fareed Zakaria’s “The Post-American World,” Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat 3.0,” George Soros’s “The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror” and President Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope.” Another of Zakaria’s books, “The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad,” was said to be a Qaddafi favorite.
Qadaffi is at war with reality, and yet, he’s been filling his head with books representing the milquetoast, left-of-center consensus that dominates foreign policy thinking in Washington, D.C. Crazy is as crazy does, but perhaps it’s worth wondering if some small part of the Colonel’s delusions are collective.
