Molly Davis of the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said Friday that the United States lacks the moral authority to attack the forces of embattled Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi.
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The 78-year-old leader of the Chicago-based organization received cheers Friday night from a packed crowd at a civil rights conference at Jackson State University. Farrakhan said his friend Qaddafi has played the role of a forceful parent in postcolonial Libya.
“When you come out of a colonial past where you have lost the value of your own self-interest, God raises somebody from among you that can instill in you the value of yourself again, and that person dictates the path until you have grown into your own self-interest,” Farrakhan said of Qaddafi. Farrakhan did not address Qaddafi's alleged role in the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Farrakhan gave several reasons why the U.S. lacks the moral authority to intervene in the Libyan conflict, including the deaths of black people at the hands of law enforcement during the Rodney King protests in 1991 and the unhealthy food that the federal government allows into the marketplace.
"The American people are dying, and the Food and Drug Administration is complicit," he said. "Greed is more important than the lives of the American people."
Farrakhan has a point, but refusing to address Qaddafi's questionable choices, including murdering the same people over whom he had taken a "parental role," is problematic at best. How do you not talk about the civil rights of the people of Libya relative to Qaddafi's power at a conference on civil rights? We're just saying.
Read more at the Chicago Sun-Times.
In other news: Obama Speaks: Will Hold Town Hall on Libya.
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