who blogs at Dirigo Blue and Kennebec Blues.
Should Muammar Gaddafi have been put on trial?
In a country enveloped by revolution and a sheer desire now to move beyond four decades of dictatorship, the answer is likely less controversial on the street than other impending concerns at least at the moment. But the question is something people need to ponder.
It seems we are living more and more in a world of extrajudicial death sentencing with “kill or capture” orders appearing to emphasize the first half of the command. External missiles, drone weapons, special teams, and armed elements internal to countries all deliver death sentences to specific targeted individuals without trial.
There is no doubt bin Laden, Gaddafi, and many operatives like al-Awlaki have committed grave crimes and can represent an extreme danger to society as either active operative or powerful figurehead. Each represents a threat of destruction to not only people and property but to the norms of a lawful society. People of all governments and societies and especially their lawful leaders should consider the moral hazard to the concept of law when extrajudicial action is contemplated.
A response, especially by those committed to waging the United States’ war on terror, would be to challenge critics with possessing an unrealistic and impractical view of war. While some may believe the response to terror needs to be in more of a war-waging basis than a policing phase, there is cause to consider historical precedents on the matter.
World War Two was fought as an all out war and the Nazi leadership engaged in the greatest atrocities known in modern times and the militant Japanese government committed terrible war crimes as well. Yet the final disposition of many of these enemies was determined by due process trials in Nuremburg or Tokyo. These trials exposed the depravity and the utter folly of those on trial, placed their accusers and victims in front of them, handed out sentences, and most importantly used the force of law as the ultimate arbitrator of justice for all and to tell criminals that it was society’s laws that in the end determined their fates, not their rationalizations or other motivations.
Extrajudicial death sentences likely will not go away soon nor will many necessarily even want to discuss matters of vengeance or threat elimination versus the rule of law. But the celebratory moods or satisfaction of the moment evoked by these sudden events and their impact on the broader progressing of the world’s societies to toward legal justice, an institution that can be considered either under attack or in harm’s way of these individuals, should be carefully considered. The greater the application of the rule of law and by extension its establishment of relevance to the lawless, the more likely these individuals will have been seen as truly and thoroughly diminished by the momentous triumph of law and not simply the sword.