Sometime a picture is worth a thousand words, but everything has to have a name.
Finally, we’re in a war (well, it’s not much of a war) that we can claim rooting interest in from the sideline while reserving full rights of criticism. And it’s just our luck that the war, such as it is, is being led by none other than….the French. Aaargh! The frogs, the bullies of Bastille, the weak kneed, lilly livered, un-American, goose liver eating, citizens of the Seine river valley that we rescued twice from the Hun.
Last time around we did it on our own. Flying from bases in UK (no, that’s not the University of Kentucky) we flew to Tripoli and let loose more than a few 500 pounders, kicking up quite a bit of dust and killing a few Libyans who were standing around and skididled home to await the inevitable criticism. Now we get to criticize and let the Euros do the heavy lifting. And if you’ve got to have an enemy, who better than some guy wearing a robe and a dish towel around his head named Quadaffi, or is it Gahdafi, or I think I’ve even seen Khadafy. Come to think of it, what exactly is his name? In this morning’s New York Times, he was Muammar el Qaddafi, and, of course, we all know that the NYT is never wrong, but according to the source of all knowledge, Google, the NYT version came in third with only 57.9 thousand hits. First was Muammar Al-Gaddify followed by Moammar Gadhafy. Hmmm.
You would think that the best source would be the man himself, but he didn’t return my calls, so I did the next best thing. I went to his personal web site which had at the top in bold letters Al Gathafi, which I had not seen before, but then further into the site I noted three other versions of his name. It appears that even he is confused. In one of the web pages he was holding a falcon. Maybe that’s what caused his name to different.
Fie, you may say. What does it matter? After all, he’s now at the center of the Axis of Evil….wait I thought that was Kim il Jung, or maybe it was Osama what’s his name. Well, at least we got their names right. Here’s my point. You can’t very well beat a man on the battlefield, much less in the media wars, if you can’t even figure out how to spell his name. So here’s what I propose. Let’s get our friends across the pond to call a cease fire and create a privy counsel to study the matter of his name and come up with one we can all agree on. I suggest this counsel be composed of the Nobel Prize Committee because they are so….well, you know….good at this sort of thing. And then lets add Google and Wikipedia. If this group can’t come up with the answer in short order, I don’t know who could.
In the meantime, Muammer, Moammer or Mummar, el, al, Al, Khadafy, Gadhafi, Gaddafi, Qaddafi, Khadafi, Gadafy, or Gathafi can just cool his heals for awhile until we get this straightened out. Then the French, Belgians, and Brits can blow him to kingdom come. At least we will know who he is.
