LONDON — There ought to be many more red faces among the world leaders who used to kowtow and suck up to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, an insane megalomaniac bully. But only a minority will ever admit that they were wrong.
Sir Howard Davies, the director of the prestigious London School of Economics, had to take responsibility for some egregious errors of judgment and has resigned. LSE, one of Britain's top universities, which had accepted large sums from Libya, given the colonel's son a doctorate that was apparently ghost- written and full of plagiarism, and undertaken to train Libyan leaders, looks naive at best and, at worst, blindly greedy.
The problems of the LSE are, however, minor in comparison with the embarrassment of many political leaders of developed countries who were happy to be photographed embracing Gadhafi and to allow him to set up his tent in the most prestigious gardens in their capitals.