Muammar Gaddafi is dead. Every dictator meets his destiny someday. And the end is usually bloody.
Though it is amazing, how every brutal dictator/ruler is somewhere a human…thephotos of Gaddafi playing with his grandchildren, or posing with friends and family, gives rise to an absurd, almost surreal and eerie feeling. And questions remain. It is so hard to believe…was he a dictator? Or was he just another typical Middle eastern warlord, fighting and destroying rival tribal groups? How does he have so many supporters still? How does his Ukrainian nurses still feel sympathy for him? Where is his daughter? And how do they remember him? Is he a “mad dog of Middle east” for them too?
The World is a funny place…I wrote in Washington Examiner quite a long time back, as how Gaddafi is meeting his downfall, when he actually changed for good.
I don’t know, who will fill the power vacuum in Libya. Maybe Iran, maybe communists, maybe Al Qaeda. Maybe there will be more civil war between rival tribes. One thing is for sure. From the way the Gaddafi was dragged through the streets, from the way Gaddafi loyalists were butchered, we can be sure of the fact, that Democracy and civility is not returning there for a LONG time…
Meanwhile, Lockerbie bomb victim’s families say that justice is served with the death of Gaddafi. I guess that proves the point. It is not about any ideology, or democracy. It is much more old and pure than that. Revenge. As the World’s oldest epic poem, The Mahabharata said…Revenge is the purest of all emotions.
Still true. And absolute. And constant. Such is life.
Thomas L. Blair is a sociologist and political blogger on the Chronicleworld 'for creative renewal in Black Britain and Afro-Europe'. His work is honoured in the British Library's archive of "social, historic and culturally significant web-based material from the UK domain". He won top prize in the blogging competition on The-Latest.
Sumantra Maitra is a freelance journalist from Mumbai, India. He is a correspondent for All Sports magazine, and a foreign affairs blogger for the Washington Examiner. He has written articles for news website Merinews.com and other regional publications. Sumantra runs a blog at DailyWorldWatch.wordpress.com. He provided exclusive eyewitness reports for The-Latest on the Mumbai bombings of 2008.
Brian Usher is photography consultant for The-Latest.Com. He is a highly experienced editorial and commercial photographer whose work has been published throughout the world, appearing in many well known magazines and newspapers. Brian has featured in several books and has been a writer for the Royal Photographic Society magazine.
Heidi Kingstone has spent time in Afghanistan reporting for a number of publications. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Spectator, The Sunday Times and other international journals. She has also reported from places like Iraq, Rwanda, Lebanon, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya. Heidi is The-Latest's Editor at large.
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