The videos of Gaddafi's demise have been a great shock for me. The images themselves were not the most shocking, though, the real shock came from the concert of congratulations that accompanied the news of Gaddafi's death. I would have like to read consternation, outrage, condemns and reproving. Not even stopping long on such supremacist uncouthness as Clinton's "hilarity" (we came, we saw, he died [3], you can compare this impromptu spontaneous reaction to her sober official statement [4]), how can a man be lynched and all our leaders deliver victorious speeches and manifest outright satisfaction?
I do not want to delve much into the political issues, which are complex but more importantly, are really not the point. I would just summarize here what may be can be agreed upon by most.
Gaddafi was not a desirable head of state. His involvement with state terrorism, his brutal repression of dissent, his repression of Berbers, arbitrary arrests, beaten prisoners, executions and even mutilations, denied freedom of expression and corruption are but a sample of his misdeeds [5]. His ruling for over 42 years and many of his comments in interviews or reported behaviors show he was clearly a dangerous megalomaniac. He certainly was a criminal who should have answered to a court. His population overthrowing him as part of the Arab spring would have been a good news. Just to clear up possible misunderstandings, what happened in Libya was not linked to the Arab spring, which consisted in peaceful demonstrations from civilians. What happened in Libya was an armed revolt that qualifies at best as a civil war.
On the other hand, it doesn't take much work to clear up the myth that Gaddafi was the evil incarnated. Baring the difficult problem of assessing correctly his personal responsibility in all of the above (see for instance this article [in French] regarding his most famous crime [6]), some of which can also be attributed to respected occidental leaders (regarding corruption, for instance [7][8][9]), one must also consider these aspects of his political rule where he performed better than others, even when the comparison is not with countries of the third world only, where he stands first on almost all accounts, but also at an international level.
It is well documented, for instance, that Libya achieved under his regime the highest living standards in Africa [10] and that he used wealth of the country to fund free education (primary education being compulsory for both boys and girls), free healthcare and housing for all [11]. He made the world's largest irrigation project to dispense water in the desert [12] (which, by the way, was badly damaged by NATO bombings). He made unprecedented moves to integrate the black population among the Arabs. Various observers praised the high standards of education and civil rights[13][14][15], in particular for women [16], which is significant for an African country. In some aspects, he could even attract sympathy [17]. One can also find universally respected moral authorities who backed him up, such as Nelson Mandela, who breached the US embargo from a previous time when Gaddafi was out of favor with the Americans (he was getting it back even from the most conservatists [18]). Gaddafi was indeed a prominent African figure of the combat against Apartheid. In fact, his lifelong desire for African independence and rumours of unexpected moves he was planning to make in this, or some other, direction [19] might be the reason why the list I started with—of these points which discard Gaddafi as a respectable head of state—have been blown out of proportion to make him an evil incarnate, a bloodthirsty monster who murders civilians and who must be get rid off right away by all conceivable means.
In a time where many leading countries (and I believe, all those part of NATO) suffer severely from debts that plunged the world in one of its worst financial crisis to date, Libya was debt-free. Its economy was healthy and generating sure incomes, placed worldwide (now frozen). It is rumored Gaddafi wanted to establish a gold African dinar, freeing African economy from a more and more fragile occidental one.
Even if we doubt analysis from respected intellectuals in the matter—and in my case I like to consider the opinion of Noam Chomsky [20][21][22]—a former NATO general publicly admits the colonial interests of the US government into African and Middle-Easts countries [23]. These formidable confessions are backed-up by comments following the death of Gaddafi. The French minister of defense said in reply to the cost of the operation (300M€) that France would become a principal partner of Libya, in this country where the leaders know that they owe us a lot [24] (fr). One can easily find similar declarations meant to reassure that taxpayer money will come back, although most of it will in the form of benefits for privately held companies and industries.
In a nutshell, therefore, it is substantiated that Libya was attacked for its petrol and that Gaddafi has been killed on the pretence of freeing his country from its worst scourge, although as a criminal head of state, he was equal to many.
Now we come back to the main point. Gaddafi was deposed in an equally wrong—possibly worst—way than at the worst of his own transgressions. This is a violation of all international laws and civilized ways. The NATO intervention as he was escaping was already illegal, NATO did not have the UN mandate to attack a fleeing convoy but to ensure an air force exclusion area protecting civil populations. NATO, on the other hand, killed young children, those of Gaddafi among others not even guilty of their filiation . This qualifies as a war crime. Then there is the shameless lynching which turned Gaddafi the criminal into a martyr for the muslims, a hero and a legend for those who can find some respect when circumstances repay for those which caused them, and a victim for virtually everybody else.
Following these developments, I now feel personally concerned with Knuth's infrequently asked questions [25], which he raised in connection with country number one in the list of Wesley Clark:
As I said at the beginning, I have been shocked by the videos of what I can now call Gaddafi's murder. And again, what shocks me is not so much the video itself, it is that this is the result of our governments actions. They went to war, for over seven months, and this culminates with this barbarism. Once Gaddafi was pronounced dead, NATO quickly confirmed the operation was over.
This was not the will of the international community [26]. Chinese, Russians, Indians did not back it up. I don't include Iran, Syria or even Venezuela who might be next on the list. Even not all of Europe was accomplice. Germany marked a beautiful and proud difference, in fact, it behaved as France would have in these times where, remembering its Gaullist heritage, it would have stayed aside of NATO's onslaughts.
But there is a notable difference in the Libyan case. Gaddafi's calvary, this affliction of a muslim martyr on his way to the Cross, it is a terrible blunder, it should have been kept secret, in much the same was as the, possibly likewise, execution of bin Laden was kept classified.
It leaked from idiot madmen who saw some virtue and heroism in their savagery, some accomplishment in their ferocity. That one the first mistake. The second mistake was for the head of states not to react outright to it, not to play the game of the great mystification that turned their equal in political brutality into the worst living infamy that had to be eradicated at all costs and in all urgency. They should have vomited, not laughed. They should have be angered and cried, not congratulate themselves and make proses of better futures for the beasts that slaughtered a badly hurt captive.
Someone who's usually blessing his google+ circles with news on space travels came to post one of the famous essays of Orwell, Politics and the English Language. This made me realize that this is what happens with Gaddafi's demise, and what makes it particularly interesting. The leaked videos turned the bad prose into crystal clear one.
Political language is all the highly codified terminology to turn someone, anyone, into a dangerous evil, all the brainwashing that mixes "democracy", "human rights", "civil populations", "rebels", "dictatorship" and other buzzwords to justify more concrete objectives such as "petrol" or "putsch", what Michel Collon calls the Médiamensonge ("media-lie"). Let me quote Orwell again:
One could write an entire monograph on the topic. What I did not realize as I was jolting down my first reactions where I was complaining that we can be given the most dreadful criminal scene as something to approve of and consider positive, is that the images speak for themselves. There is no vacuity of the twisted language to turn this lynching into some "victorious disposal of the tyran" or some "exercing of a long-due justice from the hands of the people". It looks what it is: a criminal, inhumane, atrocious murder of an inoffensive prisoner by a horde of savage brutes.
As I was writing a couple of days ago, there was little, if any, disapproval of this summary execution from those ultimately responsible of it, the NATO officers and the occidental leaders. Protests came rather quickly from non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and also, notably, from the internet community (bloggers, forums, commentators in youTube or related platforms, etc.)
It's a new exercise for our politicians, to distort the images as they distort the content, the make the horrendous trivial, the monstrous necessary and the murder natural. In my yesterday post I was wondering, if such a video can still be followed by their satisfaction of a job well done, why don't they say the slaughter of Gaddafi marks a great day for civilization, the bloodshed of this morning is a major step forward, People in Libya today have an even greater chance after this slaying of building themselves a strong and democratic future. These are real sentences uttered by our victorious leaders where I have replaced by more vivid words their "disappearance", "ending", "recent events". What I had not realized is that they were merely exerting the Politics & Language Orwellian paradigm, distorting our understanding with evasive, ready-made, codified empty metaphors. The clash came because, not thinking themselves, as Orwell described, being essentially poor-communicants, who just munch already digested sentences, they failed to connect with the most basic reality, a connection that any one with a bit of empathy and some resistance to indoctrination, will have made right away. This is a few excerpts of such comments made in reaction to one of the videos:
So what now if, say, China, Brasil or Russia decide to wage a war anywhere to recriminate what they consider is a war crime? Never mind if this is not exactly true, the motives against Libya were even more far-fetched. What if they invade a sovereign country so as to cover up a colonial attack to steal its natural resources? What if the newly born daughter of Sarkozy dies from Iranian or South Korean bombers? What if a Pakistani or Afghan helicopter, as Chomsky imagined, raids the Élysée and the body of a freshly shot Sarkozy is dumped into the med sea? Is it because it is Africa or the Middle East that it seems somehow natural that we can intervene here, despite the disapproval of the international community and in violations of UN resolutions, to settle what we deem is a violation of civil rights? Clearly, if we lower the standards that low, we not only invite, but almost compel others to follow us in our fall.