An uncomplicated killing?
“That man is a hero – whoever he is”, said the man from the National Transitional Council. “There is no question of prosecuting anyone even if it was a deliberate assassination”, said his colleague. The two men were explaining how Libya is answering the call to explain what happened to Colonel Gaddafi as best it can.An investigation is to be done, a report to be written. But the point, they explained, is simply to tell the Libyan people what happened not to hold anyone to account. Even these officials did not seem to believe the Prime Minister’s early claim that Gaddafi had been caught in crossfire. The pictures showing him alive, his dragging through the street and then the bullet wounds to the head all suggest the obvious – and knew it. So it seems unlikely the person who put that hole in the head will be named officially – and if he is nobody in the NTC will question why he did it.
The celebratory gunfire, the crowds,the fireworks over Green Square, the cars tooting their horns and graffiti going up around town all say the same thing. No matter how much they intended to see through “due process”, put the man on trial and make him account for his actions his death is a much simpler thing to deal with. It will let Libya move on more quickly, there will be no dragging out of a trial, no wrangling over where it should be held and under what legal system. It is not, they suggest, that Gaddafi’s continued life would have been a threat to Libya – just a drag.
If there are questions about the morality of killing – even a man so widely regarded as a cruel and exploitative tyrant – they will it seems have to wait for private moments. There still seems to be a sense of disbelief and shock, rather than internal conflict. And if your family members had disappeared, or been arrested, or beaten or if you had lived in fear who is to say what you would have done in the same moment, a gun at hand? Officially, and with wide public support it seems, it is a time to rejoice in a very public tyrannicide.
There are 13 comments on this post
Krishnan,
Shame, SHAME on Channel 4 News for dealing with the murder of Gaddafi in this way, including use of the weasel words “Extra judicial killing” by Jon Snow – he even giggled about it during an interview of two expat Libyans. I never thought to see the day when C4 News would fall to these depths. Now YOU say “uncomplicated killing.”
“Uncomplicated” by what? Rule of law? Due process? A “superior” civil system? Better morality? Why are YOU using even more weasel words?
And what of the mass murder of innocent civilians by NATO’s industrial airborne mass murder machine?
Nothing can excuse Gaddafi’s tyrannical murderous rule. But equally nothing can excuse Brit mainstream media gloating such as yours. It is disgusting and contemptible. SHAME ON ALL OF YOU.
And if you want to know what the West’s involvement was REALLY all about, check this out: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8841923/Gaddafis-death-British-businessmen-should-be-heading-to-Libya-for-contracts.html
Next time you decide to cover Murdoch’s disgusting hacking immorality you might remember this comparison and try to explain why the West now looks for a payoff as an accessory before, during and after the fact of murder.
And that is spelt M-U-R-D-E-R, in case you were wondering.
As a CH4 News fan, I have also been very disappointed with the coverage of the Libyan conflict and the simplistic goodies v. baddies approach. Gaddafi was a complex character, but he did build Libya from nothing into the most highly developed country in Africa. That now all seems to be in ruins. He had many powerful enemies and we still don’t really know who is behind the NTC. Even the mainstream US media, such as CNN and CBS, seem to have taken a more measured approach than anything from the UK.
I saw a report from Tripoli on the evening of the 20th by Dutch state news (NOS). The reporter commented that if you just go out onto the streets you get the impression that everyone is pro-NTC and anti-Gaddafi. However, he visited the home of an acquaintance who told him that: under Gaddafi we had stability, no crime and a relatively high standard of living, but what do we have now?
I have a suspicion that in five or ten years time many ordinary Libyans will look back on the events of 2011 with regret.
I suspect that if I, my family or friends, had been tortured under Gaddafi’s orders or perhaps friends or family even killed, I might have reacted in the same way in the heat of the moment. It’s easy to be holier than thou when one hasn’t lived under a regime like that or faced conditions like those in Libya over the last 6 months. And I’m sure that Gaddafi’s death is likely to help the Libyans move on quicker. (But compare Iraq – things don’t turn out as we might hope. The death of Saddam Hussein changed little). So I agree that gloating by the Western media is inappropriate – after all, we weren’t compelled to live under the Gaddafi regime & were content to trade/do political business with him (for understandable if not commendable reasons). But equally I don’t think British involvement was based on trade considerations. It was more like Kosovo (& don’t let anyone fool you into believing that we fought the Serbs to free Kosovo for economic reasons. I’ve been there!) Whether one would approve of the psychology & political calculations behind the UK Government’s decisions on this, for once it wasn’t a matter of our economic interests.(& look how well UK business has done out of our extraordinarily risky involvement in Iraq!!)
Philip E ,I feel the same. There is something very unsavoury about gloating over murder , whoever it is.
Philp ,If my family had been killed by Gadaffi though, I wouldn’t be honest if I did not say that I would have wanted to kill him myself.
That deranged man wanting to be a hero for his people for ever, dressing up in all sorts of hero’s costumes must give all who regarded him , yes, as Jon said a despot, a muderer and in fact an anti- hero. YET there is a tinge of pathos that lingers there and I cannot really rationalise it. Perhaps it is that I believe that this man thought he was in control of Libyas future as well as its past and wanted to die a heros death protecting it. To be pulled from the gutter is a shame that I hope will not be transformed into martyrdom as years pass.
Ask Tony Blair whether diplomacy works ? I think it works in strange but double edged ways, don’t you?
I’ve not seen tv news for the last few days so i cannot say if the media are gloating or just reporting the facts as they currently appear. Yes, Gaddafi was murdered but in a country where torture and murder was ongoing for 40 odd years and a civil war in progress it is neither surprising nor shocking. Prisoners of war have historically been killed in many wars for various reasons including convenience. It is much more convenient for the new Libya that Gaddafi has been dispatched and his trial cannot distract from rebuilding the country.
The only reason we in the west are all wringing our hands about it is because rather than a stark report of him being killed during an ‘attempt to capture him’, today’s technology allowed us to see exactly what really happened in disgusting, graphic detail.
In some ways that may be a good thing but I did find it appalling that pretty much all the newspapers gloried in making cash from this by putting the images of the injured and bloody Gaddafi on the front page. Totally inappropriate – newspapers are sold next to comics and sweets – I heard a pre-school age child asking his mother what ‘has happened to that man’. A skilled editor could have hooked us with a headline and put the more horrifying detail inside the paper. So perhaps we should wring our hands over whether we also want our kids to see the kind of things Libyan kids have been unavoidably exposed to for the last few months, rather than whether a tyrant was killed before a court decided to kill him anyway.
An extra judicial killing is understandable from the Libyan perspective. But it is not right.
Those who had witnessed and experienced the brutal regime may well have felt justified in their retalliation.
But it does not bode well for the presumed cause
of democracy that the rebel cause stood to represent. Presumably there are many who have anger and cause for revenge after the conflict. But law and order should prevail if democracy is to be realised. The killers should stand trial as there is a danger of similar justification by others who have suffered against the regime.
So saying it has prevented a prolongued trial and all the machinations of justification for a brutal despotic man.Let us hope that the new administration is able to build a new democratic state with little rebellion or insurgence from former disputing factions.
Another question occured to me . What was Nato’s position on the capture of Gadaffi ? Or was Nato not involved in strategic policy on the capture? I can hardly believe that.If so was that advice ignored in the heat of the moment.?
The Arab Spring has unleashed in its quest for liberty ,unparallelled killings on a scale that is quite mind boggling with involvement by ordinary citizens.Will it be possible to put aside the hatred and desire for revenge as the tyrant is now dead.
Rebuilding will be long hard work and the transition from civil war to peaceful co-existence is never easy. Democracy is the buzz word with motivation and hatred fuelled it seems by mobile phones and the media.
Comparison of murders and slaughter here, there and everywhere in the world I find ascerbic to the point of wanting to assert my individuality .
The individual slaughter of one by another, the slaughter of hundreds by a few or a few by hundreds … NO.. this is not justifiable by anyone. Yes of course I am naive and would probably kill to protect my own with the vehemence of any other mother threatening her nest , but I cannot separate it into ‘ its alright for them but not for me mode’ from all stances in a stand point analysis field.
I was watching an interesting programme on the Dinosaurs who lived amorally, for the sake of survival and not retribution. They lived on the earth for 160 million years. I bet we can’t ;even with all our morals and justified deaths.
Whether or not most of the Libyans wanted Gaddafi dead is difficult for we outside observers to judge, fed as we are with only a distant diet of manipulated news.
We may, however, conclude that some of the Western powers involved in the NATO ‘civilian security’ process, particularly the UK, would go to almost any lengths to preclude the possibility of a captured Gaddafi gaining the public platform of a show-trial, where he could hold forth on all the various ‘relations’ conducted over the past 42 years. With nothing more to lose, he would almost certainly have implicated many.
Perhaps it’s a good thing that no forensic analysis was undertaken on the fatal bullet – who knows which precise ‘special forces’ weapon may have propelled it ?
I don’t understand what the international community is talking about with regards to an inquiry in to Gadaffi’s death. Firstly, this is the business of the Libyan People and from the comments I have seen, the consensus seems to be relief that he is dead and they don’t really care how. Secondly, when will the international community learn to keep their nose out of things that don’t concern them. We should leave the Libyans to get on with the job of rebuilding their country and leave the past firmly in the past.
If the Libyan nation wishes to build its new “democracy” on the murder and assault of their former (at one time admired) leader, of course they are free to do so. Just don’t expect people like me to to show any respect for their new regime. It would appear to be very little improvement on the previous one.
They are not looking for our respect! It is a little premature to be branding it a regime. The fighters (we have been supporting through NATO) were not part of a single army but brigades formed from different regions and tribes. What we (the international community) feel about Gaddaffi’s final demise really doesn’t matter. Surely it must be about what the people of Libya feel!
As bashersal implies, those ‘rebels’ were simply a temporary collective of different groups who happened to share a common enemy. Now that unifying factor is gone.
Regardless of any wishful-thinking by the West to see a stable democracy in Libya, those separate groups all have different agendas and there’s not an ice-cube in the Sahara’s chance of their forming any coherent democracy.
In practice, the only common feature they share is religion, hence this will dominate in any form of popularly-elected government, it being the one thing on which they can all agree.
So when the West leapt enthusiastically onto the anti-Gadaffi bandwagon, maybe they should have been a tad more careful what they wished for.
But when dealing with those Arabic nations built from old colonial map-lines, they never learn, do they ?