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The end of tyrants (pre-2003)
The killing of Uday and Qusay, July 2003
The capture of Saddam, Dec 2003
The execution of Saddam, Dec 2006
|
The death of Abu Abbas, Mar 2004
The killing of Sheikh Yassin, Mar 2004
The killing of Rantissi, Apr 2004
The death of Arafat, Nov 2004
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The death of Milosevic, Mar 2006
The killing of Al-Zarqawi, June 2006
The death of Pinochet, Dec 2006
|
The end of tyrants
For me, the worst thing on earth is the existence of dictators.
The existence of dictators
and unfree regimes
is the cause of
all war,
all genocide,
all famine,
and almost all poverty on earth.
For me, the best thing on earth is the toppling of dictators.
Those
rare, glorious moments when good triumphs,
and evil is humiliated,
just like in the movies.
In real life,
evil normally wins.
Evil normally stays in power for years,
sits at the UN,
is never punished,
grows fat and rich,
and retires to the South of France.
But sometimes - all too rarely - evil loses,
and is forced to face justice on earth.
The killing of Ceausescu in 1989 was one such moment.
The capture of Saddam in 2003 is another.
This is the greatest moment on earth since
1989.
The greatest moment of the century so far -
"a moment when some kind of cosmic justice breaks through the clouds"
See hi-res version.
The photo of the capture of Saddam, Dec 2003
- This photo has now been confirmed as authentic.
- Also, the soldier pictured has
come out in public,
so I can print the unblurred version.
-
Local Man Tells Of Helping Capture Saddam, 23 July 2004.
See extra photos.
-
The soldier is Samir, an Iraqi Shiite
who fought against Saddam in the failed 1991 uprising,
fled to the US, lived there for years,
and, when he saw America was going to take down Saddam in 2003,
volunteered to go back with the U.S. military as an Arabic interpreter.
The article describes how he came
"face to face with the tyrant who killed his loved ones".
"He called me a spy. He called me a traitor.
I had to punch him in face. They had to hold me back. I got so angry I almost lost my mind.
I didn't know what to do. Choke him to death. That's really not good enough."
- Iraq the Model
- "God bless that fist Samir. That punch was from ALL Iraqis."
-
"I Punched Saddam in the Mouth", April 13, 2005,
gives an exhaustive account by Samir of the capture:
-
"He smelled bad, like a homeless person, and had the long beard and hair,
but I knew it was Saddam. I told everyone, 'It's Saddam. It's Saddam!'
...
I was so angry.
I began cussing at him, calling him a motherfucker, a son-of-a-bitch
- you name it. I told him I was Shiite from the south and was part of the revolution against him
in 1991. I said he murdered my uncles and cousins. He imprisoned my father.
All these years of anger, I couldn't stop. I tried to say the worst things I could.
I told him if he were a real man he would have killed himself.
I asked him: 'Why are you living in that dirty little hole, you bastard?
You are a rat. Your father is a rat.'"
- Earlier in 2003, Samir had returned to his hometown with the U.S. military,
to see his family for the first time since 1991:
"The next morning Samir hopped on a Humvee for the half-hour drive to his parents' home.
The entire neighborhood, some 700 residents, poured into the streets to greet him.
'It was an awesome feeling,' he says.
'I felt like I was coming with the U.S. forces to free my family. It was the best feeling of my life.'"
-
The night I caught Saddam,
The Sunday Times, October 02, 2005.
- Unblurred version of photo
is from here.
See also
here.
- There is an
extremely unconvincing dispute of the capture.
See a
thorough debunking of it.
- Apparently
pictures taken by U.S. military personnel on duty are ineligible for copyright.
- I am happy to add a proper picture credit and link, though.
Contact me here.
- Uday Hussein
- Qusay Hussein
- Bill Whittle
- "I was very happy today when I heard the news that these two murdering bastards have been wiped off the face of the earth. This is a
great victory in the ongoing battle in Iraq, and it is more than that. It is a victory for the Iraqi people, a victory for all those children
buried with their dolls in shallow graves. It is a victory for the 300,000 unmarked graves, for the unidentified skulls with a single bullet
hole in the back of the head. It is a victory for justice, and ultimately, it was a day of redemption"
-
The dismay of the BBC and the America-hating left
at the killing by heroic American soldiers
of the mass-murderers, psychopaths and rapists
Uday and
Qusay Hussein.
The BBC
were gutted that they lost the war.
-
The left's sick reaction to the killing of Uday and Qusay
-
The Irish leftist David Norris objects to "gloating" over the deaths
-
Iraqi celebrations
- "My aunt's husband was killed by Saddam. That morning, she was sitting
on her own, very quietly, and she just said to me,
"Now that bastard
knows how we felt", and she cried."
- Iraq - The liberation of 2003
- The U.S. military
- Saddam Hussein
- The Mesopotamian
- 4:01 AM - PLEASE GOD LET IT BE TRUE
- If the news we are just hearing about the capture of the Monster is true then I thank God for letting me live to this day to see this. Will report to you later.
- 6:50 AM - MOTHER OF DAYS
- That I, and the Iraqi people should see this day! This, surely, is the mother of all days for us. The heroes of our valiant Pesh Mergas, and
the heroes of the U.S. Fourth division have done it.
.... I am too overwhelmed with emotion to write coherently; please excuse me. The foul mouths of the
enemies of our people everywhere and the neighboring vultures and hyenas be stuffed with dirt; we will come after you; your time will come.
Long live the great alliance of Mesopotamia and the United States of America and her allies.
....
God Bless Iraq; God Bless America; God bless the Allies.
- 9:37 AM -
you should all be here now. What fireworks! You should be here. The Baghdadis are expressing what they really think again. Can you hide this now CNN & others?
- Iraq The Model
- 18:10 -
The big brother in a small hole.
Horrraaaaa.
It's the justice day.
I'm speechless.
I'm crying.
The tyrants' hour has finally came. I went down to the streets to share the joy with my brothers.
This is our day, the day of all the oppressed and good people on earth.
Tears of joy filled the eyes of all the people.
....
It's indeed an inauspicious day for all the tyrants. Let them know that their days are near too.
This is the day of all Iraqi martyrs who were slaughtered just to please his sick lust for blood.
Rest in peace my brothers. The paradise is yours and the disgrace and hell is for all the tyrants on earth.
Thank you American, British, Spanish, Italian, Australian, Ukrainian, Japanese and all the coalition people and all the good people on earth.
God bless the 1st brigade.
God bless the 4th infantry division.
God bless Iraq.
God bless America.
God bless the coalition people and soldiers.
God bless all the freedom loving people on earth.
I wish I could hug you all.
- 18:21 -
The past 24 hours were full of joy and happiness beyond description.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis all over Iraq demonstrating and celebrating the capture of the tyrant. For as long as that monster was free, a lot of Iraqis were afraid of the tiny chance that he my make a
comeback. It seems silly and very coward to think like that. For me and you, maybe it's, but for millions of Iraqis that wasn't so hard to believe. One had to live those horrible 35 years to understand
that. Now this illusionary danger is gone forever and justice is on the way.
- 18:23 -
Dear Arab and Muslim tyrants.
Dear Bin Laden and Al-Quaeda.
Dear Ba'athists and fascists.
Dear terrorists of the world.
Dear al-Jazeera
and al-Arabia and all independent Arab media.
All the truly evil people in the world.
All those who loved Saddam.
All freedom haters.
Please accept my sincere and deepest contempt to you and your hero.
....
May you follow your Godfather through his glorious path to hell.
....
May your idol rest in hell.
God curse you all.
- 18:43 -
Some news from Baghdad..
- The GC proposes to announce the 14th of December a national anniversary and an official holiday. The idea is much welcomed by the majority of Iraqi people.
-
Joy Spreads From City Streets to Countryside
- "The millions he executed, it is like they are alive again"
-
"Hope of something better"
-
Saddam in Jail; Leftists Wail
by Greg Yardley
- The left is gutted at Saddam's capture.
-
How to deal with irritatingly good news
by Janet Daley
- The BBC tries desperately to change the subject.
- Problems with the western media
-
Ralph Peters
says this is big, much bigger than we can imagine:
-
A Tyrant Humbled
- "Americans can't quite grasp the psychological power this event holds for Iraq, for the Middle East - and for the
world. We take our freedom for granted.
Much of the world has had to take oppression for granted. For thousands of years. Now America and her allies
have changed the rules."
- All over the unfree world, "hundreds of
millions of other human beings instinctively understood
the importance of the event, even if they could not
articulate all they felt."
- This is a huge event.
"Vitally important, in ways too great to quantify or fully describe.
The effects will reverberate
for decades, if not far longer.
...
As the image of a humbled Saddam flashed on millions of screens, thousands of years of the armed few tyrannizing
the suffering masses came to a symbolic end. And America stood taller than it has since the spring of 1945.
...
The capture of Saddam was a far greater matter than any image can capture or any words can suggest. This was
a turning point in human history."
-
Tough Times For Terrorists
-
"2003 [was] the greatest year for freedom since the Soviet Union's
collapse
...
Future historians will regard 2003
as one of the dates when history made a great turn, as a global 1776."
Rejoice, rejoice
The capture of Saddam is
a time for pure joy.
For everyone who cares about human rights,
this is a glorious day,
the best day in the world since
that fantastic day the Berlin Wall came down.
This is a day for laughing at tyranny
and laughing at all the
enemies of human rights
who are gutted today.
- What a beautiful day.
I decided to try a
celebratory post
to the anti-American hate site Indymedia Ireland.
Here is the full original
celebratory post (URLs fixed).
- It took me 4 days to find my post
since the "editor" moved it so that it appeared as a comment
in another thread.
- My post generated a storm of abuse, threats and
personal intimidation
from anonymous cowards,
some of it so bad that it was actually removed
by the time I found the thread 4 days later.
I never did find out what was in those deleted posts.
No one ever told me.
- I made a
follow-up post.
This time the "editor" deleted half of my post.
Here is the
full original
follow-up post (URLs fixed).
Mine is the only post
that gets the editor's attention.
- This was followed up by explicit threats to hack my computer,
so it was time to go before worse threats started.
- I learnt two things:
(a) These people are left-wing skinheads,
the kind that attack the police at demos.
Violence is never far from the surface.
(b) Indymedia is not (remotely) free speech.
You have no control over where your post will appear,
or if it will be cut.
I made just two posts, and the "editor" interfered with both!
Indymedia is like writing a letter to a left-wing, hate-America newspaper,
hoping the editor will print it without mangling it too much.
"We got him!"
As
Andrew Sullivan
says, this is
"a moment
when some kind of cosmic justice breaks through the clouds".
There is no God to bring justice on this earth.
But there is America, and the U.S. military.
- The trial of Saddam
-
"Look - the pimp is speaking"
- Iraqis watch the (formerly terrifying) thug Saddam on trial.
-
Whose Justice?
by John Derbyshire
- Don't put dictators on trial. Just execute them.
What is the point of a trial?
Once their identity is established, what more do we need to know?
- "My own belief is that putting Saddam up against a wall and shooting him
within hours of his apprehension would have been exactly the right thing to do
...
We have lost our chance to do the right thing with Saddam Hussein,
but there is still Osama bin Laden to dispose of. I very much hope that when
that rat is cornered, subsequent events will follow the admirable and correct Romanian model,
not the absurd Yugoslav/Iraqi one"
-
The Injustice of Saddam's Trial,
by Elan Journo,
expresses how I feel:
"A trial that presumes Hussein's innocence can achieve nothing but a travesty of justice.
Saddam Hussein is not a private citizen, whose guilt requires proof in an objective court of law,
but a dictator whose incontestable evil was manifest to any rational observer of his tyranny.
The Bush administration, after all, determined that Hussein was so vicious
that we had to go to war to topple his regime.
Once we defeat and capture a militant dictator like Hussein, he deserves to be definitively condemned as evil
and then executed - immediately, or after any valuable information is extracted from him. Prior to his execution,
there can be a legitimate reason to hold a public hearing
- not to establish his guilt,
but to fully expose his secretive dictatorship by publicly cataloguing its myriad vile deeds."
- "Allahu Akbar!"
shouts the old butcher impotently,
as he is sentenced to death, Nov 2006.
The execution of Saddam was disturbing.
This should have been a moment for universal justice.
Justice at last for the hundreds of thousands of innocents
he had
callously put in mass graves.
For the children he
raped, tortured, set on fire,
mutilated and gassed.
The execution of this monster should have been a great day for the world.
And yet the execution was attended by al-Sadrist scum,
chanting the name of the new torturer,
the heir to Saddam,
the man who by all rights should be executed next:
Muqtada al-Sadr.
Shame on the Iraqi government for this fiasco,
for turning this noble event (the killing - at last! - of a dictator)
into
a seedy, sordid Shia Islamist sectarian killing.
-
The execution of Saddam
- Video of execution:
- Comment:
"Good that they hanged him, but for the life of me I can't figure out why the Iraqi government would allow the image of a well-dressed and fairly composed Saddam getting executed by a bunch of Sadr-followers in street clothes who seemed to be improvising the execution.
It's a little like seeing Ted Bundy killed by Charles Manson
... you're glad that one bad guy got it, but there seems to be other bad guys in the room."
-
Allahpundit:
"it looks like a hit instead of a state execution"
-
Healing Iraq:
"It utterly disgusts me that Sadr's supporters have infiltrated every level of the state, and that the witnesses, including Iraqi government officials, have made this look like a sectarian issue. They were doomed to repeat Iraqi history by hanging their former oppressor and labeling it as justice. In a perfect situation, Saddam's execution would have united Iraqis, but thanks to the actions of the new Iraqi rulers, it will only serve to divide further."
-
Blowing a 'hinge moment' of history, Mark Steyn, Jan 1, 2007,
on the screw up of this great moment:
-
"At one level, this should be a great moment for the Bush administration.
All over the world, genocidal thugs ought to be staring slack-jawed at the TV and thinking:
"Wow! The cowboy did it.
He went in, kicked the President-for-Life off his solid gold toilet,
tossed him in jail and then had him tried and hanged like a common thief."
Unfortunately, when the US handed him over to the Iraqi authorities,
the "authorities" did their best to look entirely unauthorized.
Saddam was dispatched in some dingy low-ceilinged windowless room of one of his old secret-police torture joints
by a handful of goons in ski masks and black leather jackets.
It looked less like the dawn of a new Iraq than a Russian mafia mob hit.
A couple of guards gleefully yelled out, "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada"
- as in Moqtada al-Sadr - to which Saddam added a disbelieving echo: "Moqtada?"
As well he might. It's one thing to be done in by Bush
but by forces loyal to the punk son of some nickel-and-dime cleric you had murdered years ago .."
- Steyn blames both the Iraqis, and the Americans for not helping them stage it:
"How come we have a political culture that can produce a content-free party convention
down to the nano-second but gives not a thought to hinge moments of history?
The reality is that Saddam Hussein is dead because of George W. Bush
and a fledgling Iraqi justice system, not Moqtada al-Sadr.
But that's not the impression you'd get watching the final moments of this evil man's life.
And to permit some pipsqueak warlord wannabe to snaffle the credit
is a very foolish thing to do"
- "My bottom line ...
The king is dead. Moqtada al-Sadr should be, too."
- My take:
|
The execution should have been done outdoors, in daylight,
in a courtyard (not in public,
but filmed).
There should only have been disciplined, silent, government and military present.
No one should be hooded or in civilian clothes.
It should have been a solemn ceremony, with the reading of some of the names of Saddam's victims,
and a list of some of his crimes.
Perhaps a personal account by someone whose children were tortured.
Perhaps a poem, or some video or images
(e.g. of mass graves, or the Halabja poison gas attack).
Saddam should have been given a last chance to express regret and say his prayers
(though not to make political speeches).
There should have been a speech by the government,
making a commitment to ensure tyranny never returns to Iraq,
a commitment to democracy and debate,
and not militias and tribes.
Then a minute's silence for Saddam's victims,
and then his execution.
The execution should have been followed by total silence,
and then the removal of the body.
|
- If anyone has any brains in the Iraqi government, they will regret blowing this moment.
It was one of the great wasted opportunities of the century.
-
Perhaps we should be more positive.
When all is said and done, the butcher was executed.
And this almost never happens:
-
J.R. Dunn
points out that dictators almost never get executed.
He misses out some examples (e.g. Tojo)
but his basic point remains:
"Most of the great butchers of the 20th century died of old age, in their own beds, some of
them honored by millions.
...
The state of Iraq has succeeded where the rest of the civilized world has failed. It is a singular achievement, and it will stand."
- Also as a result of the successful US invasion of Iraq,
the 1980s Islamofascist killer
Abu Abbas
died Mar 2004
in US custody,
rather than in freedom.
-
Symbolising the heroism of the entire Palestinian struggle
to kill Jewish women, children and elderly,
Abu Abbas shot a wheelchair-bound Jew
in the
Achille Lauro
hijacking in 1985
(also here).
In March 2004, justice finally came calling for the evil mass murderer of innocents,
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin,
when
an IDF
Boeing AH-64 Apache
helicopter gunship
fired three
Lockheed Martin AGM-114 Hellfire missiles
at his wheelchair.
The European fascist butcher
Slobodan Milosevic
died not in freedom
but rather in custody, awaiting verdict, after 5 years in prison,
Mar 2006.
- Modern Serb fascism and genocide, 1990s
-
Shed No Tears for Milosevic
by Christopher Hitchens
- "Milosevic began and ended, as all such dictators do,
by ruining his own people and degrading his own country.
...
By the end of it, the Serbian minorities in whose name he had launched a regional war
had been ignominiously expelled from their ancient homes in the Krajina region
and in Kosovo itself. Only a Serb can truly feel the depth of
the cultural and political and economic damage that he did".
The religious psychopath
and butcher of Iraq
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
was killed by the
U.S. Military
in June 2006.
He was killed by two 500-pound laser-guided bombs,
dropped by two U.S.
F-16
jets,
laser-guided home by awesomely brave U.S. special forces on the ground.
- The Iraqi "resistance"
- The butcher of Muslims
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
is best summed up in his own words:
- Al Zarqawi, Jan 2004:
- "after much inquiry and discussion, we have narrowed our enemy to four groups:"
- "Americans"
- "Kurds these are a pain and a thorn,
and it is not time yet to deal with them. They are last on our list"
- "The Iraqi troops, police, and agents"
- "The Shi'a in our opinion, these are the key to change.
Targeting and striking their religious, political, and
military symbols .."
- "the only solution is to strike the religious, military, and other cadres of the Shi'a
so that they revolt against the Sunnis.
... Souls will perish and
blood will be spilled. This is, however, exactly what we want
... the religion of God is worth more than lives.
... we have to make sacrifices for this religion, and blood has to be spilled. For those who are good,
we will speed up their trip to paradise, and the others, we will get rid of them."
-
He describes the Shia Muslims as "vile infidels":
"If we are able to deal them blow after painful blow so that they engage in a battle, we will be able to reshuffle
the cards
...
This is what we want. Then, the Sunni will have no choice but to
support us ...
When the Mujahidin would have secured a land they can use as a base
to hit the Shi'a inside their own lands
...
As far as the Shi'a, we will undertake suicide operations and use car bombs to harm them.
...
So if you agree with it and are
convinced of the idea of killing the perverse sects,
we stand ready as an army for you"
- Abu Musab al Zarqawi: In His Own Words
- "We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy
and all those who seek to enact it."
- "democracy is also based on the right to choose your religion
and that is against the rule of God"
- "The killing of infidels by any method including martyrdom (suicide) operations has been sanctified by many scholars"
- "Al Qaeda organisation in Iraq ... has declared war against Shi'ites in all of Iraq"
- Video of the bombing:
- Screenshots of the bombing
here.
- Pictures of dead Zarqawi
here,
here,
here,
here.
-
Zarqawi was alive when U.S. forces arrived at the bomb site
(and here).
Iraqi police dug him out of the rubble and put him on a gurney.
He tried to escape once he saw he was being taken into custody by U.S. troops.
They provided medical care to him
but he died of his wounds.
"He mumbled something, but it was indistinguishable and it was very short"
Reaction
- Video by Allahpundit:
(The song is
"Sabotage"
by the Beastie Boys.)
- Video by Michelle Malkin and Bryan Preston:
(The song is
"Song 2"
by Blur.)
- Video by bandit.three.six
(a US soldier serving in Iraq)
(The song is
"Sick"
by dope.)
- Video by
The Political Pit Bull:
(The song is the parody
"America, Fuck Yeah"
from the movie
Team America: World Police.
"America, Fuck Yeah!
Comin again to save the motherfucking day yeah.")
- Video: "USA 2 - Terrorists 0"
(The song at the end is
"Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American)"
by
Toby Keith.
"you'll be sorry that you messed with
The U.S. of A.
'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass.
It's the American way.")
- Hilarious video by
pointfiveblog.com:
"Brokeback al Zarqawi"
- The Zarqawi - Bin Laden love story.
"It was a cause that brought them together ..
It was a war that tore them apart .."
Aftermath
-
Zarqawi's wife and child were killed
(also here)
- This is very sad. Zarqawi must take moral responsibility for bringing his wife and child
into a war zone, and having them stay in a house full of terrorists.
(No doubt his wife had no say in the matter,
given what we know about Zarqawi's fanatical conservative religious beliefs.)
- Zarqawi is to blame.
His people even
opened fire
from the house,
without trying to remove his wife and child from it first.
Zarqawi is to blame.
But still, this puts a damper on celebrations.
- Ethics
- It is very hard knowing what the rules of engagement in war should be.
I do not think the Americans did anything wrong in destroying Zarqawi's house,
but it is hard to work out the principles we should use in all situations.
- Richard Fernandez
gives no neat answers,
but demands that we face the questions:
-
"There's no need for a hypothetical like "what if you could save Europe by targeting Hitler?"
or "what if you could save the lives of hundreds of children by torturing a terrorist?"
In this case the hypothetical is actual. ...
Would it be justified not to resort to unlimited measures in order to hunt down a person
responsible for killing thousands of individuals?
Can one ever allow a person like Zarqawi to live a single day more
knowing that hundreds and perhaps thousands of innocents will die for our scruples?
How many lives is a punctilious observance of the Geneva Convention worth?
One, one hundred, one thousand, one million? And if a million is the price, what are our principles except for sale.
The only question being the price."
- "Our willingness to fight by the strictest legal standards
must be matched by a corresponding willingness to sacrifice in order to uphold those standards.
It may be necessary to bleed and to bleed at home to uphold our beliefs. Or change them.
Talk Left merely poses the dilemma. But the choice is ours.
The tragedy of the West is that it is simultaneously impatient for safety;
intolerant of hardship and unable to bear guilt. The demand for no body bags;
no protracted war; no inconvenience; no painstaking effort also means,
in it's own way, a secret demand for no law."
- Deterrence - The only language that Islamists understand.
- Don't Wanna Be Zarqawi
- Palestinian terrorists kidnap a Jew.
When they realise he is an American, they decide to hand him over.
""Apparently, the kidnappers did not want to end up like Zarqawi," a defense official said."
- Whether this is true in this case or not,
it is true that seeing Zarqawi killed from the air on TV
is a good thing to see
for tyrants and terrorists all over the world.
They should be nervous.
- As with the Nazis and Soviets, appeasement will only make the Islamists grow stronger.
Deterrence and fear is what they need.
They should be afraid of the West.
They should be afraid of Israel.
They should be afraid of America.
As
General William T. Sherman
said:
"My aim .. was to whip the [enemy], to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses,
and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom."
- Who's sad about Zarqawi?
- "Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran and al-Qaida come from different sides of the Sunni-Shi'ite divide,
but they agree on the need to wage jihad against the West, particularly Israel and the US.
The death of Zarqawi saddens all of them, just as it is cause for
encouragement for free peoples everywhere."
- Other targets:
-
Alan Dershowitz points out the hypocrisy of those
who condemned Israel for similar targeted killings, such as that of
Yassin:
"When Israel targeted the two previous heads of Hamas, the British foreign secretary said:
"targeted killings of this kind are unlawful and unjustified.""
And yet:
"Now Great Britain is applauding the targeted killing of a terrorist
who endangered its soldiers and citizens.
...
I applaud the targeted killing of Al Zarqawi. His death will save many innocent lives.
But I also applaud the targeted killings of anti-Israel terrorists whose deaths save numerous lives.
...
It is nothing short of bigotry to approve this tactic when used by the
United States and Great Britain but to condemn it when it is used by Israel."
I agree.
- Bush administration official:
"This should give heart to those who think we'll never get bin Laden. It's just a matter of time."
-
Abu Hamza al-Muhajir
(or Abu Ayyub al-Masri)
is the new leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
May the F-16s find him soon.
- Pinochet,
dictator
of Chile 1973-90,
died of old age, rather than facing justice for his crimes.
- Rudolph J. Rummel
estimates
(see table)
that Pinochet killed 10,000 people.
-
Of All the Dictators ...
Why the Left singles out Pinochet,
by Anthony
Daniels,
National Review, Feb 7, 2000,
asks why, given that Pinochet was such a minor figure in the
20th century bloodbath, there is so much focus on him.
- The danger in asking this kind of question is that
it seems like making excuses for Pinochet.
If we accept that Pinochet should have been tried and executed
however, then we can go on to
ask the question why not the other dictators -
and this may reveal some problems in thinking on the left.
- Daniels says the answer is that:
"Alone of the dictators, Pinochet was stunningly successful.
He found his country an economic disaster
and left it ..
more prosperous than it had been in all its previous existence."
And he did this by following free-market economics.
That was the problem.
-
"Pinochet was thus an existential reproach to [the left].
Had his regime confined itself to torturing and "disappearing" its opponents while the country staggered from economic crisis to
economic crisis, Pinochet would have been the object of mild theoretical reproach, but not of the strident and emotional obloquy that
leads to demonstrations outside embassies."
- Sadly, Daniels is right.
The left is very selective about which dictators they get
worked up about.
I'm against them all.
All tyrants must be deposed by 2025
All
of the world's dictators must be deposed or killed,
if the world is ever to have peace.
- A little spat in Feb 2007 illustrates why I am not a leftist:
-
Charles Johnson
(and more)
shows a photo of a meeting of
the enemy leaders of Iran and Syria -
unelected dictators who oppress their own people
and persecute minorities;
men who have the blood of innocent Jews, homosexuals, atheists, women,
and American and British soldiers on their hands;
men who are killing Americans right now in Iraq;
and men who threaten a second Holocaust of all of the Jews of Israel.
- Charles Johnson captions the meeting:
"Definition of a Target-Rich Environment".
Quite right. If only Bush had the guts to respond to the war that Iran and Syria
declared long ago.
- Pious left-winger
Greg Sargent
(and more)
is horrified:
"Popular Wingnut Blogger Appears To Advocate Assassination Of Foreign Leaders".
- Greg Sargent sums up why I am not a leftist.
Is this what the left stands for now?
That killing dictators is now wrong?
If so, I will never be a leftist again.
I support, now and always, the rebels,
those who would attack and overthrow the dictators.
I support the end of dictators, everywhere.
That is why I am not a leftist.
That is why I am a neo-conservative.
- As a comment above says:
"Is your point that political leaders of enemy countries should not be targeted?
That's just bizarre."
- And again:
- Glenn Reynolds
(and more)
on Iran, Feb 2007:
"Nor do I think that high-profile diplomacy, or an invasion, is an appropriate response.
We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and Iranian atomic scientists,
supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran,
putting the mullahs' expat business interests out of business, etc.
Basically, stepping on the Iranians' toes hard enough to make them reconsider
their not-so-covert war against us in Iraq."
- Leftist
Paul Campos
bizarrely claims this would be "murder" and "a war crime".
He claims that "radical mullahs and Iranian atomic scientists"
are "civilian noncombatants".
He confidently claims that "Iran is not at war with America".
He says people who support attacking
the active, wartime, anti-semitic, fascist enemies of America, Britain and Israel
"sound very much like fascists".
He says this is "right-wing extremism" that should perhaps have legal consequences.
-
Paul Campos illustrates why I am not a leftist.
If you believe killing dictators and their lackeys is wrong,
I will never be on the same side as you.
If this is what the left believes, I will never again be a leftist.
"Think of every moment when
some poor soul believed he was about to die, every moment spent in hellish prisons, every person
tortured beyond imagining, every child dumped in a mass grave, every person of faith treated as an
enemy of the state. To watch the perpetrator of this extraordinary evil brought low - into a rat-hole in
the ground - is a privilege. It happens rarely. It is a moment when some kind of cosmic justice breaks
through the clouds, and all the petty wrangling and mistakes and political jockeying fall away in the
face of liberation from inescapable fear and terror and brutality. It was a day of joy. Nothing remains to
be said right now. Joy."
- Andrew Sullivan
on the capture of Saddam.
"God bless that fist Samir. That punch was from ALL Iraqis."
- The Iraqi blogger
Iraq the Model
on the US soldier
(an Iraqi exile from Saddam)
who captured Saddam
and gave the dictator his first (and only - until his execution)
physical assault
after 30 years of genocide.
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