Blake Hounshell sees the debate over manner and cause of death as unimportant:
[A]m I troubled by the manner of Qaddafi’s death? Yes. But it’s not realistic to expect people that have been ruled for four decades by a brutal tyrant, who left no institutions left behind and called his people “rats” as he vowed to hunt them down “alley by alley” to behave like Western democrats when they finally catch him. Far more important than getting to the bottom of Qaddafi’s end is to stabilize the country itself and stand up a legitimate government as soon as possible.
Max Fisher seems to disagree:
For all the meticulous legality and diplomatic decorum of this war’s start, its end was as dirty as they come: the former leader of a nation hauled off the back of a truck and shot by an angry mob that was appointed by no one and accountable to nothing. It’s an inauspicious start for what the interim Libyan leadership also said was the same moment that formal political transition began.
More parting thoughts:
The Dish 