Assassination Rights? What Assassination Rights?
Melanie Brister // November 22, 2011
Few mourned Muammar Gaddafi’s death last month for justifiable reasons. He was a vicious tyrant, allowing for the furthering of chaotic tribal rivalry and the continuation of abject poverty. Gaddafi perpetuated the already existing problems in Libya, and created many new ones. Even as the graphically disturbing videos of his capture were displayed to the world, few expressed qualms about the brutality of the scene. After all, a man that did such harm deserved it.
Didn’t he?
Through a recent media monitoring assignment by the author, it was discovered that out of the 26 news stories studied, 71% of them framed Gaddafi as a villain. This framing can be supposedly justified because most accept the notion that Gaddafi was an evil man. The true problem with framing the issue as such is that it frames Gaddafi as a villain in most cases, meaning the fighters (the Libyan rebels that captured and killed him) were framed as heroes. This is where the ethics of the situation become blurred: the fighters, turned due to framing by the media into “heroes”, are praised for acting like violent barbarians. Gaddafi was not only shot, but tortured and then displayed for all the world to see. Politicians around the world offered their congratulatory words to Libya. Hillary Clinton’s words resonate in our ears: “We came, we saw, he died”. The very act of joking in the face of this situation turns Clinton’s words into a demeaning and degrading summation of any human life.
Noam Chomsky reminded us in a recent interview with respect to the Osama bin Laden mission that if a suspect can be easily apprehended then s/he should be brought to trial, and that to assassinate her/him would be a violation of international law. It was certainly possible that Gaddafi could have easily been held captive and stood trial. We know this through the videos of his death. The fighters attacking him held him captive by beating him for quite some time before shooting him.
Libya is now free, but did it not use its own tyrant’s methods against him? The media has praised the fighters for carrying out an action that Gaddafi himself would have supported. Free Libya has much progress to make if it wants to become a civilized and functional democratic nation. Philosopher A.C. Grayling discussed Gaddafi’s assassination in an article in the Independent, saying that it had a utilitarian, short-term justification. This is due to the fact that Gaddafi’s death brought satisfaction to many, as most believed that death is what he deserved. In the long-term, however, it would have been better for Gaddafi to have stood trial. Grayling goes on to state that Gaddafi’s assassination helped to “damage civilized values and set progress back”.
With all the brutality inherent in the circumstances surrounding Gaddafi’s death, it seems that society has accepted the assassination of Gaddafi as a right of the Libyan people, even though a trial was a viable option. Although never overtly stated, assassination rights appear to exist in our world. Society seems to have accepted unspoken rules regarding the taking of another human life. In J. R.R. Tolkein’s famous book series The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf speaks about why the wretched creature, Smeagol, deserves to live and why he should not be murdered. Gandalf states: “Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.” In any case, Habeus corpus still applies here. Gaddafi had the right to stand for trial. In the great effort put into preserving values, those values can at times, completely and ironically, be subverted. In the case of Gaddafi, by assassinating him without trial, the Libyans ended up achieving the opposite of a democratic goal and made a farce of the tenets of freedom they pretend to hold so dearly.
