The Column: Saddam & Co. can’t win out over democracy
Wednesday, February 5, 2003 Charita Goshay www.cantonrep.com
Imagine for a moment, that you are the Most High Exalted, Glorious Grand Pooh-bah and President for Life.
Your word is law. Schoolchildren sing your praises. You have unlimited wealth. Palaces. Yachts. Hummers. A luxury suite on the 50-yard line.
Your country is floating on a sea of oil.
Life is good.
Then one day, the most powerful nation on earth rings you up and tells you to dump your stockpiles of anthrax and poison gas, or prepare to be turned into a parking lot.
Would you do it? Or would you stick out your tongue and say, “Make me.”
That pretty much sums up the situation for Saddam Hussein.
Even if I didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction in my arsenal, I think I’d whip up some to turn over if it meant the United States would leave me alone.
Then again, Saddam is the same megalomaniac who vowed that the desert would be pockmarked with American graves during the Gulf War. Instead, ill-equipped Iraqi soldiers were begging to be captured.
Guess it’s hard to fight a war in dress shoes, especially when you haven’t eaten in three days.
Perhaps Saddam is looking to become a martyr.
If so, he’s about get his wish.
In Venezuela, the doltish Hugo Chavez is regularly and publicly humiliated by his wife, but it hasn’t loosened his grip on the government, which is in chaos.
A few weeks ago, Chavez fell for a telephone prank, in which the caller pretended to be Fidel Castro.
What, no caller I.D. in the presidential palace?
The only ones who might be more dense than Chavez are the Bush administration operatives who fumbled an attempt to overthrow him when their elderly, hand-picked successor promptly suspended all civil liberties.
Chavez was back at his desk in two days, because even a dolt is preferable to a doddering despot.
If you were to call Central Casting and say, “Get me a dictator,” chances are, Kim Jong II would show up.
With his Elvis eyeglasses and Don King hairdo, North Korea’s fearless leader looks like a bargain-basement villain from a James Bond knockoff.
A frustrated actor who starves his own people, a man whom supporters say was born on a “magic mountain,” Kim II has dared the world to do something about his nuclear arsenal.
So, what are we going to do about him?
Not much.
Why not?
No oil.
Too many times, we’ve crawled into bed with dictators because they served our purpose at the moment, or because they were preferable to communists, only to have them bite us in the end.
Augusto Pinochet. Manuel Noriega. Fulgencio Batista. The Duvaliers. Marcos. Mugabe.
The world always will be plagued with strongmen. We can’t eradicate them all. But we can, and should, promote democracy wherever possible. When people have a real voice in how their government is run, they’re not too quick to give that up in exchange for the trains running on time.
If Saddam was at all smart, or even sane, he would opt for exile.
He might even get to keep his luxury box.
You can reach Repository writer Charita Goshay at (330) 580-8313 or e-mail: