Sic Semper...

[poliphilo]

It's not clear exactly how Gaddafi died. The cameras were switched off at that point. Or maybe the footage has been suppressed. I think it was a case of bullying that went too far. The guys who found him were leaderless and over-excited. There was no plan, no cold-blooded cruelty. They knocked him about a bit because they could and then someone pulled the trigger. It's what happens. I don't see the point in moralising about it. 

Would it have been better if they'd turned him over to the authorities (what authorities?) and there'd been a trial and a sentencing and only then a killing? I'm not so sure. Did you see what happened to Saddam? That was ugly.

Comments

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

I guess that's what happens when a justifiably angry mob gets hold of their oppressor. Recently I was reading about how some of the prisoners in Nazi camps tore guards literally to pieces once liberation was a fact. Like you said, no point in moralizing...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Human nature being what it is, this is what was bound to happen in the circumstances.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I agree: it's impossible to see how Saddam's end was necessarily any less humiliating and dehumanizing than Gaddafi's. In the final analysis, no state likes the idea of peasants roughing up a head of state in the street before shooting him in the head, whatever the circumstances or however richly deserved might be such a reward.

As a human being, there is a part of me that feels sympathy for the bastard. Yet he spent a long time and went to a lot of trouble trying to prove that he was of a different order than the rest of us.

What I want to know is what became of his all-female bodyguard?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, the high-ups don't like the idea that peasants can go round executing their betters. It reverses what they see as the natural order (and makes them nervous).

I haven't heard anything about the bodyguards. When push came to shove they don't seem to have been a lot of use.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

A friend observed that Gaddafi was a real-life Bond villain, citing his colorful bodyguard as evidence. I kind of hoped that they were more than just a fashion accessory. Then again, there were close to a hundred killed in Gaddafi's last stand, according to what I read this morning, so maybe we don't know enough to judge just yet.

Also this morning, I was reminded of the final hours of Il Duce and how the press in those days didn't wring their hands and worry that justice was served.