Ceausescu was in his helicopter, Saddam Hussein was hiding in a hole, Tunisia's Ben Ali fled into exile, Gaddafi fled in a convoy and ended up hiding in a drainpipe. The autocrats escape, they leave, they don't sacrifice themselves in the palaces from which they dictated their arbitrary laws; they do not die seated in the presidential chairs with a red sash across their chests. They always have a hidden door, a secret passage through which they can scurry away when they sense danger. Over decades they build their secret bunkers, their protected "ground zeros" or their underground refuges, because they fear that the same people who applaud them in the plazas can come for them when they lose their fear. In the nightmares of the dictators, the demons are their own subjects, the abyss takes the form of mobs who want to bring down their statues, spit on their photos. These despotic gentlemen sleep lightly, alert to the cries, the hammering on the door... they live with premonitions, often of their deaths.
I would have liked to see Muammar Gaddafi before a court, indicted for the crimes he committed against his country. I think the violent deaths of the satraps only gives them an aura of martyrdom they do not deserve. They must be left alive to hear the public testimony of their victims, to see their countries move forward without the hindrance they represented, and to observe the fickleness of the opportunists who once supported them. They must survive to witness the dismantling of the false history they rewrote, to see how the new generations begin to forget them, and to hear the diatribes, the scorn, the fiercest criticism. To lynch a despot is to save him, to offer him an almost glorious way out that spares him the lasting punishment of being judged before the law.
To continue the cycle of friction that these tyrants have sown in our nations is extremely dangerous. To kill them because they have killed, to attack them because they attacked us, prolongs the violence and turns us into beings like them. Now that the images of a bloodied and babbling Gaddafi are traveling the world, there is not a single totalitarian who is not afraid to stare into the mirror of this end. Now, the orders to reinforce the secret tunnels and to expand the escape plans must be circulating through more than one presidential palace. But take care, the dictators have many ways of escaping us and one of them is death. Better that they survive, that they stay and realize that neither history nor their people will ever absolve* them.
*Translator's note: The concluding lines of speech Fidel Castro made in his own defense when on trial for the first act of the revolution, the July 26, 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks, were: Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.
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The injected Ladies describe similar symptoms after being punctured in the back and gluteus, meanly an extreme fatigue.
Rita Maria Montes de Oca, wife of the ex political prisoner Vladimir Alejo Miranda said was injected while a beating in the streets and she fainted some minutes later, when she wake up she had it hard to swallowing, breath, walk, and she was dizzy and felt a hard pain in the legs. She went to the doctor and they took blood and other corporal fluid samples to analyze but when she went back to pick up test result the medical personal said the samples get lost!!!!!
Another Ladies in White injected under beating of paramilitary mobs that denounces this new criminal practice of castrofascism are Sara Marta Fonseca, Caridad Caballero, Mayra Morejon, and Mercedes Fresneda who knowing by information received from a fellow nurse that a list of opponents were delivered to Havana’s hospitals with extrict order of do not practice any kind of test to the persons in the list. She went to a hospital with her sister identification and could get blood test that showed high level of led in blood.
http://www.ddcuba.com/derechos-humanos/7702-damas-de-apoyo-denuncian-misteriosos-pinchazos-durante-actos-represivos
I agree, but many high profile politicians, business men, and entertainers would certainly not like their connections and dealings with the dictator highlighted in court.
I don't think anybody wants to be the next Gaddafi now. They are sufficiently deterred.
Instead of sacrificing to save the nation, as they were told, they sacrificed life and limb for neocon pugnaciousness and profiteering.
The best service these wounded veterans could now give to the USA would be to bring an end to the perpetual war madness that rules the WH and the Congress.
She's a lot like Ayn Rand: royalty expelled by the serfs from Russia and now in the US, about the last plutocracy on earth, where she can try to regain her royal status.
Well done. Thank you.
It would be great to have him tried in a court.
BUT...as long as he were alive, even awaiting trial, too many of his opponents would be afraid to speak out against him, and those who felt compelled to stand as his allies might kill the captors.