The Libyan civil war apparently ended today with the collapse of the last loyalist stronghold and the death of Muammar Qaddafi, all around weird guy and former president/leader/king of kings/dictator of Libya.

It was a weird afternoon, in the offices of The National, in Abu Dhabi. Early in the day came reports that the last stronghold of Qaddafi had fallen … and then talk that Qaddafi himself might have been among the final loyalists (which would explain why they fought so hard till a bitter end) … and then about 4 p.m. I looked up at the bank of televisions above the round table where editorial meetings are held, and there was an apparently dead man, has face covered with blood … and Al Jazeera or CNN or both held that image for a long time, till I said, “Hey, that looks a lot like Qaddafi.”

I have been around long enough now to see a variety of despots come a’cropper at the hands of their own people. Qaddafi went out the hard way, cornered and almost pathetic, killed by his own people.

In the realm of uprisings, that’s the worst possible result.

For a couple of reasons.

It shows a society brutalized to the point that “justice” is dispensed by fighting men in the field, without bothering to hold a real trial. In this Facebook video that went viral, Qaddafi can be seen wounded but not dead … a status that was about to change without aid of police or prosecutors or a judge. His captors are mocking him. He looks dazed and confused. It’s a bit twadry.

(I don’t think Fred Armisen will reprise this for Saturday Night Live.)

It also does not allow for any sort of historical-record closure, in which charges are leveled and the despot is allowed to give his version of events, no matter how twisted. That was the triumph of Nuremberg, the careful process of law.

I am reminded of the execution, by Romanian soldiers, of the despot Nicolae Ceausescu. His death was another instance in modern history when a despot was executed after what is generously described as a “show trial.”

What executions of the sort employed with Ceasescu and Qaddafi tend to show is a country that is an absolute mess. A New York Times story summed up Libya under Qaddafi: “By the time he was done, Libya had no parliament, no unified military command, no political parties, no unions, no civil society and no nongovernmental organizations.”

Romania was in much the same shape when it overthrew and killed Ceausescu. Dire.

And Romania still hasn’t quite come around, more than two decades later.

Libya may suffer the same fate.

It has been duly noted here in the Arabian Peninsula that of all the revolutions during the Arab Spring … none has yet ended with a representative government with democratically elected leaders.

Tunisia is close to running some elections, but the army in Egypt keeps postponing things, and Libya is a shambles, and Assad if Syria and Saleh in Yemen are still hanging on.

Maybe one-person one-votes come to these countries, eventually. It may, however, be a very long process. Especially in the Libya, where the opposition killed the despot within hours of getting their hands on him.