Every paper seems to have had one image splayed over their front pages; that of a grimacing old man with a bullet wound in his head, hair matt and sticky from blood, eyes clamped shut. Pitiful it may be, but this picture is a sign of triumph for many. But for me... it just seems outdated, jingoistic and unnecessarily gruesome.
Yes, through the lense of the media Colonel Gaddafi may have been a bloodthirsty tyrant who did unspeakable things, but then again, so have many other people. But for crimes, whether at a local or national level, there are courts. It is when 'justice' is devolved to the hands of a bloodthirsty mob that it is at its most blurred, at its most questionable.. And it is for this reason that I find myself uncomfortable with the cold-blooded killing and the subsequent media frenzy that howled for blood and photos. There was no need; no need for the murder, no matter how it was justified as 'execution', or excused as 'crossfire', no need for the ubiquity of the image of a dead man to satisfy the masses' baying for blood.
By no means am I defending Gaddafi. Of course he should have been punished. But punished by law, order and authority; not by vigilante justice. The end result would almost definitely have been the same. Gaddafi was always going to die following his being deposed, despite imprisonment probably being a preferable alternative; a way of separating us from him in terms of morals and method. The cruel-minded may even say that life imprisonment is a harsher punishment than a quick death. But if he had to die, at least death by court would have been a more modern, more appropriate way. Better that for the 21st century than the savage, archaic habit of stringing up he who opposes you so all may jeer at his bloodied corpse.
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