Is it okay to celebrate death?
I don’t mean in the way that some cultures celebrate a person’s life after they’ve died, such as an Irish wake or a New Orleans funeral parade. I mean as an individual, relishing and taking pleasure in the death of another individual.
The question is on my mind with the news that Lybian dictator and all around scumbag Muammar el Qaddafi was killed by rebels.
Qadaffi’s forty-two year reign was inexcusably brutal. In addition to the seemingly endless repression, torture, and murder of unarmed civilians, some of his more notorious actions include the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland; the 1996 massacre at Abu Salim prison; and his support of two of Africa’s most murderous warlords: Charles Taylor of Liberia and Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone.
This past June 27, the International Criminal Court of the United Nations issued arrest warrants for Qaddafi, his son, and brother-in-law for crimes against humanity. It was a just act, but it also reflected the cowardice and moral bankruptcy of real politic; the warrant only came after the Arab Spring revolutions had caught up to Lybia and international institutions no longer felt inclined to pretend Qaddafi wasn’t a complete and utter monster. He deserved to be arrested, tried, convicted, and executed many, many years ago.
News of Qaddafi’s death kindles within me memories of Slobodan Milosevic’s death in 2006. The Serbian nationalist dictator had brought about not only the vicious ethnic cleansing of Muslims from Bosnia Herzegovina, but what
can also be fairly described as yet another 20th century European genocide.
I happened to be at a friend’s house for a dinner party shortly after it was reported that Milosevic had died of a heart attack. He’d been found in his jail cell at The Hague while on trial for war crimes. After a brief discussion about what an utter piece of shit he was, I raised a glass and toasted to the death of a monster. My friends, being cheery iconoclasts (they are my friends, after all), raised their glasses with me. Though in truth, some did so with more gusto than others.
Not everyone is comfortable relishing in the death of another human being, even when it’s clear that that person’s death is a positive development, a benefit to humanity and the world on the whole.
But me? I have absolutely no compunctions. For starters, funerals, in whatever form they take, are for the living. The dead just don’t care. You know why? Because they’re dead. And as an atheist, I have no conception of their consciousness persisting, of them looking down and shaming us. I am simply not ashamed to celebrate the death of someone like Qaddafi.
But beyond that I’m not a humanist, or more specifically, I’m not a specist. While I readily acknowledge the many differences between the many animal species, including our superior intelligence, I don’t think any one species is more important than any other. While I have a very strong moral code, it is not based on the idea that humans are uniquely entitled to this planet or deserving of any special considerations. If anything, we’re a bit of an abomination, wreaking far more havoc than the rest of the other animals combined despite our celebrated brains. I’d like to think I’m actually being charitable by putting us on an even moral plane with all those other species that aren’t, you know, destroying the planet and driving millions of other species extinct for no justifiable reason.
So with that, I applaud the Lybians who are celebrating the death of their dictator by dancing and singing in the street, shooting guns in the air, spitting on his picture, and 
cursing his name. Good for them. Let them mark his death in any manner that makes sense to them.
As for those who fully acknowledge how awful Qaddafi was, and that the world is better off without him, but who will not fete the occasion because they think it is undignified to celebrate the death of another human being, I fully respect that decision. But I will not be bound by it.
Later tonight, I’ll be at my weekly poker game. At some point during the evening’s playing, snacking, and yammering, I will make sure that everyone who wants to, has the opportunity to raise a glass with me as I make my toast.
To the violent death of a bloody tyrant! It was long overdue and the world is a better place for it. Fuck Muammar el Qaddafi!
I’ll drink to that.