Lynch in Libya

The brutal lynching of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi did not shock anyone - neither in Libya, nor in Europe nor the U.S. On the contrary, the country's new leaders, who ousted Gadhafi and replaced him, reaped congratulations on the start of a new chapter in Libya's history. When it comes to interests like oil, for example, it is convenient for world leaders to have someone else do the dirty work for them, without international courts and human rights organizations, while their hands remain clean.

One by one Arab dictators find themselves falling from grace, from the height of power and its comforts to a degrading and humiliating end. The first of these was Saddam Hussein, the former ruler of Iraq, who was apprehended by U.S. forces in December 2003 while hiding out in the depths of a hole at a farmhouse in his hometown of Tikrit. American troops removed Saddam, who looked more like a homeless man than a leader, from his hideout and then subjected him to a degrading medical examination that was broadcast worldwide on television. He was later tried by the Iraqi government, sentenced to death and hanged. One of Saddam's hangmen went out of his way to capture the moment of his death on a cell phone, much as Gadhafi's killers did. Several years later came Hosni Mubarak's turn. He found himself being led to court on his sickbed along with his sons. And Thursday, as I already mentioned, was Gadhafi's end.

Gadhafi picked the fruits of his tyranny and repression, of his corrupt rule that squandered his country's natural resources. It goes without saying that during his reign hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Libyans were killed.

The Arab world practically ignored the elimination of Gadhafi. In Syria, images of Gadhafi's demise were not shown, while elsewhere the reports were minor, seemingly in an effort to prevent others from implementing similar ideas in their own countries.

However, Thursday's lynching brings down to Earth those who had hoped that Libya would soon become a flourishing democracy. It turns out the gangs in power in Libya are Gadhafi's flesh and blood, an essential part of that country's traditional, some would say backward, society. Libya's path, and the path of the Middle East toward stability and democracy, remain as distant as ever.

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