Was A Questionable Rape Accusation A Convenient Excuse For Regime Change In The Middle East? The nexus of power, international politics, and rape accusations

Readers may remember one of the media’s anointed darlings of the Libyan uprising of 2011. For those who need a reminder, in 2011 Muammar Gadhafi’s Libya was convulsed by popular protests generated by the Arab Spring. When Gadhafi stupidly broadcast to the world his intention to crush the revolt by massive force, some Western nations—who had previously favored him—turned on him and used their militaries to have him deposed.

One of the propaganda stories to arise out of the uprising was the drama of Iman Al-Obeidi. On March 26, 2011, she ran into Tripoli’s Rixos Hotel, where foreign journalists were staying. She screamed and wailed that she had been raped by Gadhafi’s security forces, and bared scars and bruises as evidence.

The performance was so effective that I now wonder if it was part of some covert Western intelligence operation.

The media hailed her as a brave victim who dared to speak out against the nasty bullies of Gadhafi’s police state. Critical examination of her story was nearly nonexistent. But this mattered little, since Western nations had declared a “right to protect” (R2P, in journalist Pepe Escobar’s brilliant shorthand) Libyan citizens. This R2P quickly and cynically came to mean a right to regime change by foreign military force.

But cynicism and opportunism are the order of the day, it seems. The media gushed rivers of tears over Al-Obeidi’s (unverified) rape accusations. Hillary Clinton personally intervened to have her granted asylum in the United States, with all attendant privileges.

She described her alleged “abuse” in a 2011 CNN interview. She played the victim role to the hilt, wearing traditional dress and weeping on cue. She claimed to have been beaten, urinated on, and repeatedly violated by about 15 men.

Libyan government protested that Al-Obeidi was a liar, a prostitute, and was mentally ill. Of course, no one believed the government. The narrative played right into the American obsession with rape accusations and imperialist regime-changing. Her was the perfect story of the hour, made to order for the occasion. As a psychological operation, it was totally effective.

After Al-Obeidi arrived in the United States, the new Libyan embassy in Washington granted her a lifetime pension of $1,800 per month. How did she pull this off? She got this money by bursting into the embassy and demanding it. The embassy granted her the pension in 2012.

But it soon became clear that Al-Obeidi was not the angel she was made out to be. She now no longer has any contact with the embassy.

To the feminist ideologues, of course, she is a secular martyr. Whether her stories are true are also irrelevant. Feminist Germaine Greer shed more tears over Al-Obeidi when she lamented that accusers’ stories are called into question.

In Greer’s universe, a rape accuser should not be questioned. “Her [Al-Obeidi’s] mistake was to survive. Because she did not die for other people’s crimes, the offenses against her are now described as ‘alleged.’” So goes the thinking of the radical feminist archetype.

Al-Obeidi’s track record since arriving in the United States has caused even former supporters to doubt her story. She has been charged with assaulting a police officer. She has been ordered by a court to get mental health counseling. In short, it is now clear that she is a deeply unstable woman.

She was resettled in Denver, Colorado. Not satisfied with the pension she was getting, she was encouraged to find a job. But she soon proved have an entitlement mentality. She would not show up for job interviews. She was constantly fighting with people.

Even her case worker, a man named Mevlani, came to see the real Al-Obeidi. A recent CNN article notes:

Mevlani said he wanted to help. He has seen people who suffered all sorts of tragedy but al-Obeidi was particularly difficult. He felt it went beyond the trauma, beyond the harrowing circumstances she had escaped.

“There’s always something going on. She expects things. She has a sense of entitlement,” Mevlani said.
Her caseworker at the time felt she expected to be treated like a queen, especially after Clinton’s support.

Notice how even when it is clear that an anointed media darling is exposed as a vicious fraud, the media still contorts itself into pretzels to try to portray her as the victim.

Al-Obeidi was arrested four times in two years, and tested positive for drugs. The facts and the record are clear that she is a violent drug user. A recent CNN article goes further:

“She has some serious issues with substance abuse,” Deputy District Attorney Catrina Weigel said in court, according to the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder. “It is very concerning that she is not only on probation but on bond and continuing to use substances.”

Boulder District Judge Patrick Butler issued a stern warning [to Al-Obeidi].

“You’ve been given more chances than you probably deserve,” Butler said. “This is the last chance from me to show that you are not a danger to the community while out on bond.”

In May 2015, she was found guilty of second-degree assault. She had assaulted two men in a bar. She poured her beer over one of them, and threw a beer glass at another. The man’s wounds were serious, and required stitches. It was a felony assault. Her previous three arrests had been for disorderly conduct and assault.

Personally, I don’t believe these problems magically just “happened” after she arrived in the United States. Feminist apologists will try to massage and spin away her crimes and instability, but reasonable people know better. I believe that she has always been this type of person. Her credibility is zero. But the Western media gleefully used her as a propaganda tool.

The whole story is revealing in what it tells us about the popular culture and the political culture. Her crimes are revealing. They parallel the crimes and lies of the Western powers, who destroyed Libya in a cynical regime change operation in violation of international law.

What do we conclude from all this? Her story shows how rape accusers can be pawns in the hands of unscrupulous big players, who care nothing about truth, and only about their own purposes.

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