To start with, I believe it is wrong to kill period. Having said that there are somethings that may be more wrong and not all killings are equal. Just to clarify I will use to extreme examples: The killing of someone to take something they have you like = horrible and this person should be locked away for a very very long time; the other extreme a person driving there car at or below posted speed limit and a person falls or jumps in front of the vehicle = a very horrible situation that the person will have to live with for the rest of their lives but the driver should not be punished.
Defending someone from harm is the most likely scenario that I can see where someone kills another person and I do not believe they should be punished because they are preventing a worse wrong from being done (such as happens with military and law enforcement).
But all the above is just background on where I stand for my next comments. Since Gaddafi was captured and killed there has been talk amongst the news commentators and high level politicians about how wrong it would be if it turns out he was killed after being captured.
This irritates me and strikes me as Monday morning quarterbacking or the worst kind. I agree that it would be wrong if he was executed (not assassinated as I think I have heard on the news he was already captured which in my mind makes it an execution) but what did people think was going to happen when he was captured? A man who has ruled for 42 years in a totalitarian government, making broadcast after broadcast that he would fight to the end and everyone one of his supporters would lay down their life for him and that those supporters should kill the people coming after him, and then a group of men who are part of a revolution which by definition is not organized and is breaking at least some laws finds him. These men have been fighting for a long time, don’t have a organized command structure and years of training that a group like the U.S. military does. These men blame him personally for all the wrong that has been going on and the men they have been around have been killed do to what he has said. They, I would guess, blame him for their deaths. They have been in combat within the last few hours at the very most and have been in it for awhile. We spend a lot of effort training our troops to behave correctly in stressful situations and it does not always work. We have command structures in place to augment this training and it still does not always work. We hopefully have developed and strong sense of right and wrong in our society that life is worth protecting no matter who they are and this does not always help. What did the fighters who captured him have? I don’t have all the facts but I would guess with reasonable certainty that they did not have the training or command support U.S. troops have and even they sometimes do not live up to the highest ideals. Combat is arguably the most stressful situation anyone will endure and we are human and sometimes fail to live up to the highest of ideals.
We need to hold people accountable for their actions but we need to understand that there may be more going on then we know or may even understand.
This interview is the first time I have heard anyone acknowledge this situation at all.
