Simon Sebag Montefiore in today's NYT:

Western leaders and intellectuals find Colonel Qaddafi’s lynching distasteful—Bernard-Henri Lévy worried it would “pollute the essential morality of an insurrection”—yet there are sound political reasons for the public culling of the self-proclaimed king of kings. Colonel Qaddafi’s tyranny was absolutist, monarchical and personal. The problem with such dictatorships is that as long as the tyrant lives, he reigns and terrorizes. As Churchill put it, “dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount.”

Only death can end both the spell to bewitch and the prerogative to dominate—and sometimes, not even death can snuff out power. “The terror inspired by Caligula’s reign,” wrote Suetonius, “could be judged by the sequel.” Romans were so terrified of the emperor that it was not enough to assassinate him. They wanted to see him dead: fearing it was a trick and lacking cellphone footage, they had to be convinced. The mile-long line of Libyans who were keen to see Colonel Qaddafi’s cadaver in its shop-refrigerator-tomb would understand this perfectly.

It would've been nice to hear Qaddafi’s account of his meetings with John "Interesting Man" McCain, of course, but enough with the public handwringing over his death. Good riddance to bad, crazy, murderous, tyrannical rubbish.