A Parody of Himself: Muammar el Qaddafi had become irrelevant a long time ago. Like most tyrants, he never knew when to give it up. The graffiti on Benghazi's walls says it all. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
Until the brutal killing, it was like one of those Latin American novels of the 1970s and 80s about dictators long past their prime and power, but not yet past their illusions. He was surviving on rice and spaghetti scrounged from the homes of civilians his henchmen raided day after day, as Muammar el Qaddafi was on the run. He complained about the lack of electricity, the lack of water, according to a close aide. He was urged to leave the country, to give up. He wouldn't consider it.
Of course, he never picked up a gun. They never do. They only pretend to be warriors. Instead, he read. He made phone calls. And his lingering grasp on power cost innumerable more lives than necessary. Then again, 42 years of his rule cost innumerably more unnecessary lives. Until his own was taken by rebels too contemptuous of him, and the law, to bother with niceties.
The videos of his capture and death immediately went viral, of course. But there's been an incredible binge of hypocrisy about his killing, at least from the United States, where judgments piled up about the manner of Qaddafi's death in ways they never did when Osama bin laden was killed even though, in the end, the two killings were not significantly different. Libyan rebels killed Qaddafi more messily. The Navy Seals killed bin laden more surgically. The Libyans had cell phone cameras rolling. The Seals allegedly did not. And of course the Seals got rid of the body before anyone had time to take a closer look, to analyze the bullet wounds, to judge to what extent bin laden was, in fact, summarily executed.
We have to go on the word of nameless Seals who claim bin laden was armed, that the Seals were acting ins elf-defense. Qaddafi had his henchmen, his bodyguards. But both men were overwhelmed by force, and both, more likely than not, could have been taken alive, and judged where they should have been: in a court of law, not at the muzzle of a gun by unnamed killers.
This isn't to justify anything either did. But it does speak badly of those who killed them. I go in more details here: "Beyond Qaddafi's Death in Libya."
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I am glad the dictator is gone and his regime is all but finished. I am not happy that he is dead, I would have preferred to see him taken alive to stand trial. Gaddafi described his opponents as rats. Ironically he was caught in a sewer inhabited by rats.
What a humiliating end for an arrogant ignorant obstinate tyrant. Apparently he had been shafted (sodomised) with an iron rod by thuggish rebels before he was shot. Tha’ts why he was heard uttering the expression Haram Haram which is the exact opposite of Halal. Haram means forbidden but has deep religious connotations in Islam. Like saying Alcohol is Haram. Killing innocent people is Haram. What a brutal end which must be a lesson to Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and Bashar al Assad of Syria.
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I wanted to see Gaddafi humiliated before death. I wanted him to justify what he did.