By Donu Kogbara
I WAS in the United States when Moammar Gaddafi finally went to meet his Maker last week. And even though Americans have been his staunchest adversaries over the years, the Americans around me did not jubilate because they were so profoundly shocked by the savage manner in which he passed away.

As one lady quietly put it: “What an awful way to go!”

The horribly graphic film footage of his anguished last minutes on earth and his bloodied and battered corpse will forever be etched on my mind. And I don’t buy the claim that he died accidentally in crossfire. I am convinced that he was summarily executed. And so is everyone with whom I have discussed this issue.

I know that Gaddafi doesn’t deserve pity because any good thing he did for his country on the development front have been totally eclipsed by the fact that he caused so much pain, destruction and death, both to blameless fellow Libyans and to innocent foreigners like the 259 passengers and crew members who perished when he wickedly engineered the Lockerbie plane bombing in l988.

Physical damage

But some of us find it extremely difficult to watch any human being, no matter how bad, dying like a dog. I even get upset when I see animals being tormented or slaughtered…and often feel guilty about eating meat and have to say that I think that the kind of cruelty Gaddafi went through in his final hour spiritually damages perpetrators as much as it physically damages recipients.

I started off believing in capital punishment and once vigorously supported those who say that if you deliberately take someone’s life, you should pay for your evil deed with your own life. But I decided, years ago, that only God and people who need to defend themselves against attacks have a right to take life.

It is easy to be sanctimonious when you have never suffered at the hands of a heartless murderer. But I would like to think that if I had been in Gaddafi’s captors’ shoes, I would have avoided the temptation to match the homicidal barbarism that my prisoner had displayed when he was absolutely powerful.

OK, so I may be deluded. OK, so I am not a saint and may also have lost my temper and lashed out at Gaddafi if my family or friends had been wiped out because of him. Or if my home had been reduced to rubble because of him.

But I hope that I would have controlled my fury and done the civilised thing and handed him over to the authorities to be tried for his crimes. I hope that my desire for vengeance would not have gone beyond heavy verbal abuse.

But I don’t agree with the international organisations that are insisting that Libya’s new rulers investigate Gaddafi’s demise. I feel that it’s one of these unfortunate incidents that occur in the heat of battle and are best forgotten.

And I guess that I should save my lily-livered compassion – which I might not, in all honesty, be able to sustain if I ever find myself in an emotional pressure cooker – for the thousands of Gaddafi victims who also died like dogs.

In the meantime, something has been puzzling me for a while:

Ruthless dictators like Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein spend decades posturing, adorning themselves with military paraphernalia, inflicting reigns of terror on all and sundry, claiming to be macho heroes and flatly refusing to climb down when they are challenged. Even when reasonable reforms are requested, they fly into psycho rages and do away with anyone who has dared to express dissatisfaction.

They could have conducted themselves in ways that would have earned them genuine popularity. They could have been adored leaders and inspirational reformers rather than bullies who attracted hatred and traded in terror.

But they chose to listen to Machiavelli and to be feared rather than loved. And let’s face it: Their methods served them well for significant periods of time.

However, nothing lasts forever. And a day came when almost everyone finally got sick of being afraid of them. A day came when there were enough rebels. A day came when outsiders were ready to work with anti-regime indigenes. A day came when the despots had no choice but to flee their presidential palaces.

Conquering opponents

And what I want to know is this: Why, when it becomes obvious that they can no longer conquer their opponents, do they allow themselves to be captured alive?

If you have preferred Machiavelli over more wholesome role models in nations within which most folks are not softie forgiving Western-style liberals, why don’t you stoically accept the fact that your compatriots WILL treat you as nastily as you have treated them if they ever get a chance to lord it over you?

Why didn’t Saddam and Gaddafi behave like REAL strongmen and put bullets through their own heads when it became obvious that they were about to be defeated and humiliated? They must surely have known that even if they survived beyond the capture phase, they would ultimately be dragged to courtrooms and sentenced to death. So why did they hang on?

Saddam Hussein desperately took refuge in a deep dark hole and was hauled out like a cowardly sewer rat in a filthy and disorientated state. Ditto Gaddafi.

One would have thought that former quasi emperors like them would have had too much pride to expose themselves to such chronic indignities for the sake of a few more seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years on this planet.

Suicide is hard. But when the going gets tough, the tough gets going; and there are MANY worse things than exiting this mortal sphere on your own terms.

Emiliano Zapata, a Mexican revolutionary, once said that it is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. And I share this viewpoint 100 percent.