Good riddance, Gaddafi

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or hiding out in a sewer for the last week, you’ll know that everyone’s favourite Northern African whack job Muammar Gaddafi is dead. To this I say – good riddance. I shall miss you about as much as I do my ingrown toenail.

Now, unless you’re a Libyan rebel, you might find this viewpoint somewhat offensive. ‘Surely’, I see you write in the comments section, ‘this man should have been put on trial? Does this not mark the beginning of a doomed, blood-thirsty Libyan government?’ Well, no, it doesn’t.

‘But surely an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?’ I’ll come to this point later, but Gandhi’s argument isn’t going to sway me on this issue. Gaddafi’s dead; and I, for one, will not be shedding any tears or laying down criticism against either the National Transitional Council or the rebels that captured Sirte.

An eye for an eye does make the whole world blind, it’s true. But in this case, I firmly believe that a bullet to the head was the correct medicine to prescribe.

This man was one of the monsters who ruled over Libya for over four decades. One should appreciate that he was not alone; no one human can run a country without advisors, and Gaddafi had a lot of them. At the end of the day though, the buck stopped with him. He was, in effect, the system, and all the atrocities committed both in Libya and throughout the world via Libya-sponsored terrorism lead back to him.

With a pained expression I read the comments on the BBC page when it was announced that Gaddafi had died in crossfire: ‘So this is how Libya wishes to start its new era of freedom... with a murder and a lie. Interesting’, ‘So we liberate Libya for a Government which is blatantly lying despite all the evidence on the Internet? This is not a good start to a free Libya.’ Oh God, stop being so white and middle class, it’s hurting my brain. I will say that it’s blatantly obvious that Gaddafi was deliberately shot by rebels and not caught in crossfire; his autopsy revealed he was killed by a bullet to the head, and this would have occurred whilst in the midst of some rather angry Libyans. The NTC should have just gone ahead and admitted that passions had run wild – no one with a shred of intelligence would begrudge them.

This was not the killing of a tyrant by a truly organised fighting force. This was the killing of a tyrant by the very people he’d oppressed and beaten down, people whose emotions were running sky-high when they found him hiding like a rat in a sewer (oh the irony). Many of these rebels would have lost family and friends to the man now begging for mercy at their feet. If I’d have been in their shoes, I can’t say I’d have been prepared to argue for his life.

An eye for an eye does make the whole world blind, it’s true. But in this case, I firmly believe that a bullet to the head was the correct medicine to prescribe. No court he could have been tried in would have been fair. You are a fool to think anyone would pass a completely impartial, unbiased judgement on him if he remained in Libya. Guilty was the only judgement that could ever have been passed, and the whole thing would have been a complete and utter farce – one only has to look at Mubarak’s trial to see what would happen. A protracted trial would have only delayed progress; a clean kill immediately cleared the way. No Gaddafi, no old system, simple as. He died before he could leave another impression; he did not die a martyr. The whole world, including his old supporters, saw him hide like a rat and killed like a dog – so much for fighting to the last. On 20 October 2011 his former government was completely and utterly annihilated.

Am I trying to promote violence and capital punishment? No. In general, I oppose any unnecessary wars and fighting, and I waver when it comes to execution by the state. But I am not so morally inflexible that I can’t see that sometimes war is a painful necessity, as it has been throughout the Arab Spring. Change for the good would have never occurred otherwise. And whilst many might see Gaddafi’s death as something that ought to have been avoided, I can’t. His death marked a clear-cut end to the war, and now Libya can rise up with a clean slate and begin anew. Our hopes will be with them.