The west wrings its hands over dead Gaddafi photos, but war is always hell

by Jonathan Jones -

Amplify’d from www.guardian.co.uk

The grisly spectacle of Muammar Gaddafi's death and posthumous career as Misrata's most popular body art exhibit may not have been very edifying

But nothing in the photographs of Gaddafi wounded, dead, dragged through the streets, and finally on display, rotting in public, has been anything like as disgusting as the thoroughly hypocritical and self-deceiving international reaction to these pictures.

To get upset by photographs of the dead Gaddafi is to pretend we did not know we went to war at all. It is to fantasise that our own role is so just and proper and decent that it is not bloody at all.

It's complete nonsense. We totally forget the fact that Nato planes blasted his Tripoli control centres with every chance of killing him. If a French or British raid just happened to have blown him to bits, would we be wringing our hands?

The stench of doublethink is more noxious than any vapour emerging from the meat store in Misrata.

. If we don't like what we see we must stop this foolish pretence that war, however "just", can ever be anything but a brutal mess. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk

 

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