Hosni Mubarak lies weak and ailing in a hospital bed. They Egyptian Army, a vast proxy for the enraged Egyptian people, have put their former leader on trial for crimes against the people, including the deaths of demonstrators during the month-long protests culminating in the President's ouster.
Moammar Gadhafi, pleading like a sick dog about to be shot by cruel masters, was dragged out of a filthy culvert in his hometown, the last bastion of resistance against the Libyan rebels riding the wave of revolutionary waves of the Arab Spring.
Both dictators have now become the dictated to, the plaything of an enraged people, empowered by the toppling of the Tunisian "Presidency", galvanized by social networking, and dedicated to punishing their wicked leaders.
The people of the Arab World want revenge, and understandably so. For decades, the suffered cruel perverse privations at the hands of self-appointed leaders who very quickly revealed their false-Messiah pedigrees. From crushing dissidents to rigging elections, from sponsoring terrorist strikes to building up the military at the expense of the people, Arab autocrats have terrorized their own people and frustrated their rights and liberties with impunity.
When a nation, when an individual is harmed, they naturally demand satisfaction, to demand that the offender repair the wrongdoing or at least suffer for it. Saddam Hussein endured an extended trial at the hands of the new Iraqi government for nearly two years before his death sentence. He was not just being held accountable for the mass extermination of rival religious and ethnic groups, but the trial served as a civilized way for the Iraqi people to avenge their desolations at the hand of the brutal leader.
Yet for all the bloodshed, for all the rebellion, for all the regime changes and power shifting, no amount of rage released on the wicked dictators will ever expiate, will ever repair or recover the harm done to the people. Moammar Gadhafi was paraded around his home town on the hood of a truck, an open display of humiliation to the world that the flamboyant idiosyncratic monster was finally taken to heel. Many called for his life to be spared, that he could be held fully accountable, yet in the midst of crossfire he was shot dead. However, even if he survived the lengthy public humiliation to stand trial, what would his conviction and ultimate execution accomplish? His death, as well as the deaths of other brutal leaders, can never assuage the loss, pain, fear, and humiliation which they deluged on their own people.
Dictators as scapegoats is a sorry affair, one riddled with frustration and disappointment. Six years after the hanging of Saddam Hussein, Iraq is still a dysfunctional fledgling democracy, where sectarian violence still ravages the populace. The death of a cruel leader does not diminish the latent hatreds of warring factions and resentful ethnic groups. Nor has his removal engaged the Iraqi people to respect one another as human beings endowed with natural rights, all open and deserving of a public square where everyone can be, breathe, and believe according to the dictates of one's own conscience.
Gadhafi is dead, his body led in triumph by rebel forces to the immediate delight of many. His death leaves behind a dying, dilapidated nation, one whose binding hatred of one dictator will not last, giving way to ethnic strife and religious fanaticism fueled by Islamicists taking advantage of a failing state.
The death of Gadhafi, the trial of Mubarak, the flight of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali do not restore, but leave in their wake devastated nations and dispossessed peoples, justifiably enraged, only to be further weakened if they insist on scapegoat justice of their deposed leaders.