What's the Difference Between Killing Qaddafi and Killing bin Laden?

Killing Qaddafi is "vengeance," and killing bin Laden is "justice."
It seems that "the West" (the U.S. and its White Nation allies Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) can't go a week without putting on another stunning display of hypocrisy.

Osama bin Laden was shot dead on sight, an unarmed man (it took a few days and 3 or 4 different stories before the U.S. Government admitted that) and his body taken and thrown into the sea. This was called "bringing him to justice" by the President of the U.S., Obama.

The Libyans just captured and executed Qaddafi. This execution, unlike the one Obama ordered, was apparently a spontaneous act taken on their own authority by the citizen-fighters who captured him, and who have paid a terrible price for his die-hard refusal to accept the inevitable. Since Libya lacks a legal system, clear lines of authority, or a real government, this is certainly understandable.

The U.S. has no such excuses.

Yet now "the West," in the form of its various political "leaders" and media propagandists, and its UN lackeys, is demanding an investigation and proper accounting of how Qaddafi was killed. What gall.

On NPR Saturday morning( October 22), the hack propagandist and reliable Government stooge Scott Simon pitched the whiffleball questions to Ivo Daalder, the U.S.' ambassador to NATO. Daalder spoke down from his moral high horse the following words:

"We urge [the Libyans] to be as open and transparent as possible." [Like the U.S. always is. The U.S. won't even stop lying about the CIA executions of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr, and those were decades ago.] He also illustrated his own version of transparently, claiming that Qaddafi's convoy was bombed as it fled Sirte as part of the mandate to "protect civilians," and of course they had no idea Qaddafi was in the cars and were never targeting him. (We might find out eventually if that is true.)

There are all kinds of demands for autopsies to find out if he was executed. Well obviously he was. So? If it's ok for "the West" to execute its enemies, real and perceived, why can't some Libyans kill a tyrant?

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is bent out of shape. His official mouthpiece, one Rupert Colville, harumphed: “It is unclear how (Col Gaddafi) died. There is a need for an investigation.” He found the footage of the dead Qaddafi "very disturbing." (Such delicate sensibilities. Maybe he should check out some of the photos in Rolling Stone earlier this year of U.S. troops in Afghanistan showing off their trophy body parts, including a severed head, souvenirs from their war crimes.)

Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said: “It is unclear how (Col Gaddafi) died. There is a need for an investigation.”

Colville said that if the dead dictator had indeed been executed, then “That would raise issues that a crime had been committed and we would have to look at dealing with that. It is very clear under international law that summary executions are illegal." [Except, apparently, when the U.S. does it, or Israel, or Spain, or the U.K., or Germany, all of which have executed political enemies either inside or outside their borders, or both.]

“You can’t just chuck the law out of the window. Killing someone outside a judicial procedure, even in countries where there is the death penalty, is outside the rule of law.” [Again, cf. bin Laden, etc. etc. Or for that matter the 65,000 the U.S. assassinated in Vietnam under the Phoenix Program. And maybe the UN would like to look into prosecuting the military thugs who murdered 250,000 in Guatemala, or 30,000 in Argentina, or in Brazil, or Uruguay, or Chile, or Paraguay. Maybe they'd like to check out the ongoing murders of journalists by the Governments in Colombia and Honduras. No, I guess not.]

All this tut-tutting raises the possibility that rebel soldiers could be pursued for war crimes. Wouldn't that be a kicker.

Amnesty International, meanwhile, called for “a full, independent and impartial inquiry” into the circumstances of Gaddafi’s death. Maybe someday A.I will make a peep about the U.S.' political prisoners. Don't remember them squawking about the execution of bin Laden, or the hundreds of assassinations by drone.

Gaddafi’s wife, Safia, also called on the UN to investigate the death of her husband and her son, according to a Syrian TV station. [Of course she has a sterling history as a defender of human rights, so that is to be expected.]

I just get sick of the blatant double standard, and the Orwellian way everyone pretends not to notice. Like living in the nightmare world of 1984.