Is this how "spring" looks?

Moammar Gadhafi was far from being a timid lamb. It is enough to remember the frightening terror attacks on two passenger planes: the Boeing 747 operated by Pan Am that blew up over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people in 1988 and the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 aircraft operated by the French airline UTA that exploded over Chad, Africa, killing 171 people in 1989. These were Gadhafi's responsibility and through them we can understand the man.

Regardless of this, the images of Gadhafi's lynching on Thursday were just as intolerable as those of the Libyan "pilgrims" that arrived en masse to the local "Tunisian Market" where the body of the fallen dictator was being kept in a refrigerator together with the body of his son, Mutassim Gadhafi. Everyone wanted to be photographed in celebration with the body, specifically turning the head toward the camera. This was not exactly the scene of a renewed Libya with its face turned toward the future.

We can assume that NATO commanders in Washington, Paris and London felt uncomfortable looking at these pictures. After all, they are the ones who campaigned against Gadhafi, trying to sell a sane alternative to the dictator. These recent photos from Libya only prove to what extent this "alternative" is far from being an actuality, even if the people were expressing their frustration over being oppressed for four decades.

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There will be those who say the West also needed to go through atrocities before achieving democracy, for example France and its revolution. But it is not Jan. 21, 1793, the day that Louis XVI was executed. On July 14, 1958, the same day of the year as the 1789 storming of the Bastille, when the last Iraqi king, Faisal II, was hanged in Baghdad. Here too, the nation wanted blood and they got it. Nicolae Ceausescu, secretary-general of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, was executed, by shooting, along with his wife. The firing squad, however, did not perform before an audience. We seem to have advanced to some extent, or at least we hoped so.

Just a few weeks ago, I was wandering around Libya. The rebels had grown beards and proclaimed "Allehu Akbar" [God is Great]. More than 100 tribes are vying for part of the Libyan inheritance; the British and the French will apparently ensure the signing of fat oil contracts before they leave, just as the U.S. has done in Iraq. Of course they promise elections in another eight months. There will be elections, but not democratic ones. A civil war is definitely a possibility.

The funny part is that Gadhafi acquiesced his American benefactor and gave up on his nuclear plans after seeing what happened to Saddam. In the latter part of the winter of 2003, he could not have guessed that his fate would be even more brutal than Saddam's.

Meanwhile, Bashar Assad, like his friends, the other leaders in the Arab world, is trembling with fear. If there is one man I would not switch places with today it is Assad. He is living on borrowed time, and the pictures from Libya only encourage the rebels on Syria's streets. Deposed Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is likely delighted by his decision to flee to Saudi Arabia, even if at the time people accused him of not taking it like a man. Only poor Mubarak does not really know what to think, at least not yet.

Today Tunisians will go out to vote. These are the first elections to come out of the "Arab Spring." The Islamist Al Nahda (Renaissance) party is leading in the polls. This party's potential victory, together with the recent "head shots" of Gadhafi, only increase fears that this whole Spring will lead to a "renaissance" not of good and deserving people, but rather one that unleashes the forces of evil.

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