Moammar Gaddafi

How the mighty are fallen! A tyrant was killed yesterday by his own countrymen whom he had oppressed for 42 long years. All the bravado and bluster of this despot came to naught when he was flushed out like a rat from a drain not far from his hometown, that after he had unleashed so much of terror and caused untold bloodshed in the previous eight months and had vowed to hunt down his opponents like vermin. Libya's "King of Kings," the "Imam of the Muslims," and "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Libyan Revolution" is dead and gone, like all the other tyrants before him. History is rife with tales of dictators who all fell eventually because of their sadistic and boundless appetite for power. Gaddafi was an eccentric narcissist who could be cunning, cruel, charming, and charismatic by turns. His death-hold on Libya had gone way too long, almost to the point of psychopathy, and now Libya is free at last.

Stories of Nero and Caligula and Hitler and Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin, to name a few, have and are still being revisited by the world over and over again, and for Gaddafi not to have seen his ignominious end coming is quite pathetic and reflective of the denial that all despots are subject to. His Third Universal Theory postulated in The Green Book and made as compulsory study material for all Libyan school children stands testimony to his weird philosophy of a welfare state without laws, money, government, or private enterprise. "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely," said Orwell, and so was it with Gaddafi who got high on power and did not hesitate to murder in cold blood anyone who dared oppose him. He believed in his destiny as the ultimate ruler of Libya, and all the brutality of his regime was a justification in his head to keep that destiny alive. It did not matter to him that so many people would have to die a bloody death because of his maniacal clinging on to power.

"The dark shadow of tyranny has been lifted and with this enormous promise the Libyan people now have a great responsibility to build an inclusive and tolerant and democratic Libya that stands as the ultimate rebuke to Gaddafi's dictatorship," said President Obama on the news of Gaddafi's killing. It remains to be seen how Libya succeeds in its attempts to redeem and rebuild itself into a stronger nation. In the meantime, a dictator is gone, and the world rejoices with the Libyan people!