Despots

It's been a momentous weekend, just a day or two after the anniversary (April 29th) of the death of Adolf Hitler, now comes the world's other great bogeyman.

Many years ago, I was asked in R.E. class the hypothetical question if ever Colonel Gaddafi came on a school visit: would I shoot him if I had the opportunity? Given some due thought towards self-preservation and security, I honestly answered that yes, I would. With Gaddafi and his kind very much in the limelight once again, I feel the tiniest amount of pleasure, and the far greater sense of relief, to hear that Osama Bin Laden is reported to have been shot.

There are other dictators floating around (Robert Mugabe's controversial presence at the Vatican is a case in point), but in the case of Bin Laden, and I say this in all sincerity: God rest his soul. I fear also those dreaded reprisals, but they could surely not be so much as the awfulness of September 11th.

I also note that today - in the 2011 Christian calendar - is St. George's Day; in the grounds of the United Nations in New York is an allegorical sculpture of St. George - the figure of good - slaying evil, in the shape of a double headed nuclear missile dragon. The imagery is appropriate.