Libyan ‘crossfire’ -Charles Krauthammer
Libyan crossfire. That’s when a pistol is applied to the head and a bullet crosses from one temple to the other.
That’s apparently what happened to Moammar Gaddafi after he was captured by Libyan rebels — died in a “crossfire,” explains Libya’s new government. This has greatly agitated ACLU types, morally unemployed ever since a Democratic administration declared Guantanamo humane. The indignation has spread to human rights groups and Western governments, deeply concerned about the manner of Gaddafi’s demise.
Let’s begin at the beginning. Early in the revolution, Gaddafi could have had due process. Indeed, he could have had something better: asylum (in Nicaragua, for example) with a free pass for his crimes. If he stepped down, thereby avoiding the subsequent civil war that killed thousands of his countrymen, he could have enjoyed a nice, fat retirement, like that of Idi Amin in Saudi Arabia.
Like Amin, Gaddafi would not have deserved a single day of untroubled repose. Such an outcome would itself have been a gross violation of justice, as he’d have gone unpunished for his uncountable crimes. But it would have spared his country much bloodshed and suffering.
Gaddafi chose to fight to the death. He got what he chose.
That fateful decision to fight — and kill — is the prism through which to judge the cruel treatment Gaddafi received in his last hours. It is his refusal to forgo those final crimes, those final shellings of civilians, those final executions of prisoners that justifies his rotten death.
He could have taken a de facto amnesty for all his previous crimes, from Pan Am 103 to the 1996 massacre of 1,200 inmates at Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison. To reject that option and proceed to create an entirely new catalogue of crimes — for that, there is no forgiveness. For that, you are sentenced to die by “crossfire.”
So he was killed by his captors. Big deal. So was Mussolini. [He] should have suffered far more, far longer. He inflicted unimaginable suffering upon thousands. What did he suffer? Perhaps an hour of torment and a shot through the head. By any standard of cosmic justice, that’s mercy.
Moreover, Gaddafi’s sorry end has one major virtue: deterrence. You are a murderous dictator with a rebellion on your hands. You have a choice. Relinquish power and spare your country further agony, and you can then live out your days like Amin — or like a more contemporary Saudi guest, Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Otherwise, you die like Gaddafi, dragged from a stinking sewer pipe, abused, taunted and shot.
It’s not pretty. But it’s a precedent. One that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, for example, might contemplate. Continue to fight and kill, and expect thereafter no belated offers of asylum...
Call it the Gaddafi Rule: Give it up and go, or one day find death by “Libyan crossfire.” Followed by a Libyan state funeral. That’s when you lie on public view for four days, half-naked in a meat locker.
[Washington Post]
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5 comments:
I think the international community felt it had to appear outraged because it could not let it slide buy, but I think it will let this go as he was not a sympathetic character. President's often find the world is not as simple as it seemed during their first campaign. I do not think the 'left' is morally unemployed because Obama did not get Gitmo closed. I think he underestimated the resistance, the complexity, and other factors we may never completely know.
On the Gitmo issue:
in other words, Obama was wrong and McCain was right.
I do not think McCain was right because he said Gitmo should remain open and used for the purposes Bush was using it for. If McCain had said Obama will not be able to close it like he believes he will then I would say McCain was right. I think what is going on in Gitmo and how it is being handled is wrong, but at this stage I am not sure how to fix it and apparently Obama is not either. It is like the economy, the Republicans screwed it up devastatingly for 8 years then slam Obama for not completely fixing it yet, and then the Republicans insist we continue their discredited tax policies or they would hold the economy hostage by not raising the debt ceiling---so Obama does it. In both instances Obama wanted to do the right thing but their are other forces and people at work. Last time I checked he was President of the United States, not a monarchy like Bush and Cheney thought they were.
I would still say that Candidate Obama failed to understand the issues facing us. We chose as President someone who needed an education before he understood that calling for closing of Gitmo was problematic.
Every President needs to learn. You cannot go into that job knowing all you need to know. Only people like Bush, Cheney, McCain, and now Perry and Cain, who think they know everything and have nothing to learn do the real damage--and this country is still paying for the last right wing know-it-alls.
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