When somebody like Maduro (or Assad, or Qaddafi, or Saddam Hussein) gets taken out by the U.S. or some alliance of democratic states, one complaint you always hear is some variation of the how-dare-we argument. Venezuela, or Libya, or whatever, is a sovereign state and this guy is their leader, and we have no right to kill or arrest another country’s leader. And if we can kill so-and-so, why can’t they come here and kill our president? What’s the difference?
Well, here’s the difference. If you killed Vito Genevese, the 1950’s mafia boss of New York City, nobody would care except for a few people who might have been depending on him for a paycheck. But if you killed Dwight Eisenhower, the nation would go to war against you. Even people who hated Eisenhower would come after you because in attacking him, you were attacking our nation. We elected him, so you were attacking us. Even today, when there are plenty of Americans who hate Donald Trump, a foreign power killing him would be viewed as an assault on America, and not on the individual named Donald Trump. Even those who would be happy he’s gone would understand that Trump is a symbol of our electoral system.
But Maduro and Saddam and the various other monsters around the world are symbols of nothing. They come to power and they maintain their power through force and weaponry and torture and bribes and phony elections and by making deals with other homicidal creeps like themselves. And when they’re gone, nobody misses them.
Eight million people fled Venezuela during Maduro’s reign, and today those people are dancing in the streets and kissing each other in cities around the world. The same celebrations occurred when Qaddafi went down, and Milosevic, and all the others. The issue is never how do we get them back? The issue is always how do we make sure they and their henchmen never sneak in here again?
Pundits and columnists (e.g., Thomas Friedman of the NYT), will sometimes tell us that totalitarian governments like China have an advantage over democratic republics like the U.S. because they can “get things done” or implement policies “more efficiently.” An arguable point, though government by edict can sometimes produce ridiculous results (huge empty Chinese cities), that could never occur in a politically-free society.
However, for all the “inefficiency” of political fights among elected officials in a republic, there are enormous advantages in having leaders who were put in place by popular support. Having the citizenry behind you means you are “legitimate,” even to those who opposed you or even to those who think you are scum. And this legitimacy is a weapon that can and should be used more often against the Maduros and Ayatollahs of the world. When dictators and strongmen appear, we tend to give them the benefit of the doubt because of our history and familiarity with tyrants, monarchs and conquerors. This is the head of their government? Well, who are we to judge? Maybe this is how the people in that country like it.
But they don’t like it, of course. They don’t like the guy who grabs all the wealth and tells you how to pray and always gets the best cuts of meat and the backstage passes to the Zeppelin concert and who, when you object, cuts your head off. A thousand years ago, or even three hundred years ago, this kind of ruler was usually the only option, but we’re past that, or we should be. We had the Enlightenment, remember? And the American Revolution. There are elected parliaments all over the world now. The entire world wants the bedrock principle of politics to be the consent of the governed. So why do we tolerate hoodlums who torture their critics or seize property that doesn’t belong to them or massacre people from religions they don’t like or make women walk around in bags?
These things take time, I suppose. The Brits passed the Slave Trade Act in 1807 and abolished slavery throughout the Empire in 1833, and the world basically laughed at them. Those crazy Englishmen! No more slavery? Are they kidding?
But the abolitionists and Abe Lincoln and William Wilberforce eventually won the battle, at least the battle for the world’s moral consciousness. Today, there are still plenty of slaves around the globe, of various traditional and modern varieties, but the difference is that nobody defends the institution of slavery. Also, if we catch a slaver, he will sometimes get prosecuted and go to the chokey. Progress has been made.
Removing the creepozoids, however, has taken a long time and will probably take a lot longer. There are still people who, faced with the U.S. extraction and arrest of Nicolas Maduro, find reasons to object. Many of these are creepozoids themselves, of course, like Putin or the Cuban apparatchiks or Xi Jinping, or wannabe-totalitarians like Bernie Sanders and Mamdani, but the point is that they exist. They think allowing Chavez/Maduro to destroy a nation like Venezuela is a good thing, and that expressing such a view is permissible in polite company.
It shouldn’t be. Just as nobody defends the institution of slavery, nobody should defend the monsters in the world with “sovereignty” notions that should have disappeared centuries ago. It is time to start shaming the defenders of these tyrants for their moral ignorance. It is time to make it clear that the defenders of the creepozoids are little better than the creepozoids themselves.
Copyright2026MichaelKubacki
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment