Not The Last Tyrant

By Manuwant Choudhary

Television today brings us closer to history and how brutal...a tyrant being caught alive...is assaulted with his own shoes and you see Muammar Gaddafi being taken on a jeep, his face bleeding, a bit drowsy and pleading for mercy...as his last words were `Don't shoot'.

He was found in a highway drain trying to escape after a Nato bomb hit his carcade.

And then we see images of a dead Gaddafi being dragged on the streets of his home Sirte.

Yet, is he the same man Tony Blair had dinner with just a year ago?

I distrust governments - all governments.

And you can have a tyrant even in a democracy - people will elect him.

Hitler was elected after all.

And as I read todays newspapers there is no word from the Indian government or Dr. Manmohan Singh.

When the people of Libya were being bombed by Muammar Gaddafi and they looked east towards India, India looked the other way.

`Interests', economic, diplomatic or just plain corruption, and definitely not principles guide all governments.

Oil.

And governments get so badly involved it it all that even their Prime Ministers become lackeys of oil companies and their interests.

And I am not an `Occupy' activist or supporter.

But stop and look around the world we live in and you will realise that we are just one big cruel civilisation unable to resolve our problems.

Few individuals like beacons on light still exist amongst us who willl never take the short cut and who do not seek to dominate and they are not arrogant about their goodness.

Muammar Gaddafi was quite handsome when young...and disgustingly ugly when old.

A pencil moustache, eyes that is better with the sungalsses, a goat beard and a rock star hairstyle, but his face was so rough he did not look human.

Yet, in a CNN interview with Larry King he said he was not the Leader of Libya but Leader of the Revolution and that the revolution was still on.

And he was right, his own people revolted against him.

Gaddaffi's brand of tyranny was a combination of socialism, religious fundamentalism and his Green Book. 42 years!

Mahatma Gandhi once said, "When I despiar, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end they always fall - think of it, always.