GLOATING OVER GADDAFI'S GRUESOME MURDER

Sunday 06 November 2011

Gloating over Gaddafi’s Gruesome Murder

Hameed Abdul Karim

In days gone by we were taught to respect the dead even if they happened to be evil like Gaddafi was. Anyone’s death is supposed to remind us of our own inevitable end. But obviously in the post modern world that we are living in, with its materialism and failing economies, there is no space for such human values.

No Western leader exemplified this sad state of affairs more than US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton as they competed with one another for the best gloat over Gaddafi’s gruesome murder.   Clinton beat them all when she said over CBS TV ‘We came, we saw, he died’ in a pathetic attempt to paraphrase Julius Caesar whilst laughing away in jubilation over the  latest murder of yet another third world leader. Sickeningly, her host couldn’t hide her glee either as she too joined in the fun laughing away like a kid who had been given a box of candies by Santa Claus. And this on a TV network that brags about journalistic values and all the hogwash that goes along with such snow-white claims.  So much for an unbiased American media!  

But there was a slip. CBS was conducting a formal interview with Clinton when her aides interrupted the recording to convey the ‘breaking news’ of Gaddafi’s murder. As she, her aides and the TV crew joked about Gaddafi’s murder the reporter slipped in a question. ‘Did your recent surprise visit to Libya have anything to do with Gaddafi’s death?”  ‘No’ replied Clinton. Then she rolled her eyes adjusted her jacket and confessed ‘I am sure it did’.

This raises a question. Was there a sense of relief in Clinton’s gloating? Did she or her fellow politicians in the US have something to hide? After all it was not so long ago that President Barack Obama gave Gaddafi a firm handshake. Was Gaddafi more dangerous as a prisoner of war than head of state? Would he have spilled the beans on Western leaders when he had nothing to lose? Apart from Obama we had Tony Blair grinning from ear to ear in Gaddafi’s tent not many moons ago and Prime Minister Berlusconi was captured on camera kissing his hand when on a visit to Italy. Has Gaddafi taken his secrets to his unmarked and unknown grave? Is there someone who knows the secrets that Gaddafi knew?

Actually there is one and he’s on the run. Saif ul Islam Gaddafi is his name. Apart from aiding and abetting his father in his crimes against his own people, he was at one time doing the rounds in Western capitals boosting his image with the aid of heavily paid PR companies  as a ‘Western educated economist who has plans to bring his backward African nation to the modern world’. That is the world of banksters, conglomerates, the war industry and corrupt politicians. But will he be allowed to live to tell the tale?

To their credit no non-Western leader gloated over Gaddafi’s ghastly murder and murder it was no matter what we hear in the media. Not even the leaders of Libya’s NTC said a word that smacked of triumphalism though they had suffered much during Gaddafi’s tyranny.

Meanwhile the NTC must find itself in a catch 22 situation. They have got rid of Gaddafi’s tyranny but by virtue of that ‘victory’ they now find themselves at the mercy of the US-NATO alliance. Have they exchanged one master for another?

Already the NTC is in a bind. The UN has called for investigations into the murder of Gaddafi and about 56 others who were executed by an overzealous mob of ‘rebels’. If the NTC doesn’t conduct an investigation the West, along with its media, will go after them like a pack of hounds. If they were to conduct an investigation there will have to be someone who will have to pay for the crime. Therein lies the rub. Punishing those who killed Gaddafi and his ‘loyalists’ might break the fragile unity that has withstood the entire ‘revolution’. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Besides, the West has got an ace up their sleeve already.  If the NTC refuses to obey their dictates they might bring in sanctions on them using Gaddafi’s murder as a pretext. That would be the supreme irony.