The Tyranny of Tyrants

Tyrannical regimes have very little crime.  Saddam Hussein had a way of dealing with criminals that democracies do not have:  they were summarily executed, whether guilty or not. Iraqi soccer players who did not win international tournaments were turned over to Saddam's sons who would torture them.  During Mussolini's tenure the Sicilian Mafia did not move a finger.  In North Korea, you can be executed at the whim of the tyrant there at the time.  Currently it's Rocket Man, aka, Kim Jung Un. In Communist China, if you criticize the tyrannical regime you're history.  Today the Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen is in prison for not being a supporter of the Chinese tyrants.  If you protest in Hong Kong, there is a good chance you'll end up dead or in prison for a long time.

Tyrants have come in history in many guises, Kings, dictators and tyrants of all stripes.  The English King, Henry VIII, not only ordered the execution of anyone who displeased him but his wives too. When Henry did not get what he wanted from the Catholic Church, he started his own church.  To this day, England follows that example.  In ancient history, for example, King Xerxes of the Persian Empire, decided to go to war against Greece because his wife wanted a Greek woman servant.  So King Xerxes mobilized hundreds of thousands of his troops to wage war on Greece, a war that he eventually lost at enormous costs.  Tyrants tend to get greedy.  Persia had one of the largest empires of all time in the 5th Century BC.  Their territory stretched from the entire Middle East, modern day Iran, to Egypt and as far as India.  Click here for a map of the Persian Empire of Xerxes. His empire was the greatest of his day. For a terrific history of this period there is a great new book, "The Harvest of War" by Stephen Kershaw.  Click here for a review of the book.

Nothing has changed.  Today we have tyrants such as Vladimir Putin of Russia, who, on his own accord, decided he wanted to reestablish the old Soviet Union, beginning with parts of Georgia and then followed by swallowing up the Crimea Peninsula and today, war on the entire country of Ukraine.  After less than a year of war it is estimated nearly 100,000 Russian soldiers have either been killed or wounded in battle, not to mention the loss of military equipment and the destruction of Ukraine.  A similar number of casualties for Ukraine.  All for the glory of one man.  During World War II Europe had an insane tyrant by the name of Adolf Hitler.  Just to satisfy his ego he invaded, conquered  and occupied most of Europe.  Not satisfied with that, he decided he wanted Russia too.  He lost.  On the way to doing all these misdeeds, he caused the death of about 50 million people.  German casualties in Russia alone amount to over three million soldiers.  The insanity goes on.  In the early 19th Century Napoleon of France had a big ego and wanted all of Europe and Russia too.  He waged war his entire life at the expense of the French solider. And the beat goes on. 

Tyrants in the World Stage

 The evil Russian tyrant, Vladimir Putin is losing the war in Ukraine.  He sent 150,000 of his countrymen to fight an evil and unjust war.  His glory at the cost of his soldiers.  I suppose that he thought that Ukrainians would just surrender at the sight of a Russian military column.  Bad mistake.  Did he not have any intelligence?  As of this date, it is estimated that 80,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded.  This is typical tyrannical insanity.  The tyrants wants glory so they will sacrifice their people to get it.  Let's look at historical tyrants:

Stalin.  Stalin was a crazed tyrant.  He killed as many of his own people as his enemy, the Nazis.  Let's take Ukraine, for example.  Over four million Ukrainians were starved to death by order of Stalin. Stalin wanted to get rid of private farms so he could replace them with his communist system. Click here for details.  During the Nazi invasion of Russia, Stalin sacrificed his own soldiers with mind boggling military orders to his commanders.  When a trained, experienced, Russian military commander would recommend a certain plan of defense, Stalin preferred inexperienced commanders with little experience, as long as they were loyal to him.  Any commander he saw as not loyal, whether in fact or not, he would either remove them or have them killed.  It is estimated that Stalin killed about 20 million of his own people.

Mussolini:  The Italian dictator had visions of a remake of the Roman Empire. The reality was that he did not have the means to do it under any conditions.  His military was in bad shape; they lacked the proper weapons, the training and the leaders.  Like Hitler, his insanity led him to declare war on the world, basically, when the truth was that he could not even beat a small country such as Greece.  To please Hitler, he sent 250,000 soldiers to Russia, without even the proper clothing, let alone the proper weapons.  Over half of these soldiers were killed, either in combat or by the fierce Russian weather.  The soldiers that managed to return, came back in such bad shape that he withheld showing them to the country.

Hitler.  I don't think I'm off by stating that Hitler was insane.  Let's take his Russian invasion for example. It is estimated that about three million of his soldiers perished in Russia.  He did not consider the size of Russia, the freezing winters nor the problems with supplying such a large army for so far away.  In the Siege of Stalingrad, Hitler refused to let his army retreat when it was clear they had no way of advancing nor surviving.  

We could go on and on with examples of the insanity of tyrants.  In our lifetime we now have Putin repeating Hitler's mistakes, we have the lunatic in North Korea, Rocked Man and the Chinese tyrants who want to flex their insane muscles.  The beat goes on.

No Pasaràn

 Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine by the Russians, I posted a comment on my Facebook page about the world needing to come to the aid of the Ukrainians.  A relative of mine from Italy posted a response to the effect that he did not believe that war was the answer and that the Russian people need to decide who leads them.  In other words, the usual hackneyed call of "war is not the answer."  Well, I agree, war is never the answer.  I participated in a war in Vietnam in the 1960s.  I know first hand what war is.  So what do you do when some hoodlums break into your house with guns with the intent of killing you and your family and taking your property?  Do you just say, I'm against war and violence?  What did the Europeans do when they were attacked by Adolf Hitler in World War II?  Do you not defend yourself?

In an interview with CNN and a piece in the Italian Daily newspaper, Corriere Della Sera, former Russian Oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, explains the mind set of Vladimir Putin, the insane tyrant of Russia.  Khodorkovsky explains that Putin only understands force, negotiations or diplomacy are useless. He knows Putin like no one else.  He was a close associate of his until he displeased him somehow.  He was arrested and spent 10 years in a Russian prison.  

Putin is not an isolated case.  Diplomacy was tried by the Europeans in 1938 with Hitler when the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain proclaimed "peace in our time" when they let him have part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland.  Hitler invaded the rest of Europe shortly thereafter.  Was "war is not the answer" then? There are dozens of other examples.  In short, "war is not the answer" is a fool's response to violence.

Before Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte tried to conquer all of Europe for France.  Should the Europeans have responded with "war is not the answer?  There comes a time when mindless phrases such as "war is not the answer" cannot be used because it represents wishful thinking and not based on reality.

Kings, Emperors and Tyrants

History is replete with one overriding theme: Kings, tyrants, emperors and all forms of non-representative government dominate world history up to the modern era.  In all but a few cases, these rulers were oppressive, murderous and in many cases mentally deranged.  We’ve all read about the madness of King Henry VIII of England.  Certainly, this man was completely insane. All you have to do is look at his misdeeds. In Roman times, we have examples of insane rulers such as Caligula and Nero.   Today we have Kim Jung Un in North Korea who certainly looks to be mentally unstable.  Successful emperors such as Justinian in the sixth century AD in the Eastern Roman Empire, more commonly referred to as the Byzantine Empire, was not outdone in depravity.  These men ruled with an iron hand and they were merciless killers of their own people. Justinian, for example, after some riots against him, herded 30,000 of his own people in his Hippodrome in Constantinople and murdered them all.  Nero burned Rome to the ground and blamed the Christians.  From antiquity on, whether emperor, tyrant or King, you could murder the king and take his place.  This happened often in Israel, Assyria, Greece and other areas.  For instance, King Philip II of Greece, also known as Phillip of Macedon was probably murdered in 336 BC on behalf of his son, Alexander, although this is not known for sure.  The Byzantine Empire had many such changes in emperors.

The brutality of kings, emperors and tyrants cuts across the spectrum.  For over a thousand years, the Pope in Rome controlled about one quarter of all Italy.  He was the political head of state, the judge and the jury of his people.  In 1849, Pope Pius IX fled Rome for his life when a rebellion against him started.  A new government was formed after his departure.  In order to get back to power he asked the French for a military intervention in which over 2,000 Romans were killed.  Upon his return he was merciless against those who had opposed him.  Many who fled were captured and killed on his behalf for no other reason than opposing the Pope.  See my previous post on this blog for more details.

The Ottoman Turks ruled a huge empire for about a thousand years until defeated in World War I.  The Ottoman Sultans ruled like kings and emperors, with an iron hand.  Brutality was their calling card.  When conquering a territory, they would offer a town or city peace if they surrendered, if not, they would kill everyone and everything and burn the city to the ground. Alexander the Great used a similar method of conquest.  After one or two of these examples, people got the message.  The Turks were equally brutal with their own people.  Troops would fight to the death because if they lost they would be killed.  After the 1683 Siege of Vienna, the commander of the Ottoman Army, Kara Mustafa, a brilliant military leader, was condemned to death upon returning home. They strangled him to death with a rope, cut off his head and dismembered his body.  This is the thanks he got for all the service he had done for the Ottomans.  See my October 2011 piece called “A House Divided Cannot Stand.” 

In our modern era we have countless examples too.  Adolf Hitler of Germany was responsible for more than four million German military deaths, not counting civilian deaths.  All in search of the glory of conquest which was so remote that at second grader could say it was impossible.  Hitler, again, one can easily say, was insane.  He murdered six million innocent people all because of their religion-Jewish. Benito Mussolini of Italy may not have been insane, but he was certainly crazy to partner with the suicidal Hitler then declare war on the rest of the world when he probably could not overpower any one country in Europe.   His military certainly had not one win and was defeated at every turn in places such as Greece, North Africa, Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and, of course, Russia, where he sent 250,00 troops, half of which perished.   In the Soviet Union we had Stalin, who certainly could be considered insane.  In his Purge of 1936-38, Wikipedia estimates that 1.2 million of his own people were murdered.  In the WW II Siege of Stalingrad, Russian soldiers who were captured by the Germans and then escaped or were released were executed upon their return.  In 1940 Stalin ordered the massacre of 22,000 Polish military officers in what became known as the Katyn Forest Massacre.  Today we have Kim Jung Un in North Korea, who, depending on how he feels, can order the execution of anyone, including his own family members.  In Iraq Saddam Hussein was a brutal killer; not only killing his own people but starting wars with Iran and Kuwait, for no reason, other than conquest and his own glory.

In all of these cases the people ruled by these tyrants were the victims.  In places where such tyrants rule, no one dares make a move or they will be killed on the spot.  And this is how such tyrants rule, by fear.  So, one man can have 50 million people under his thumb and in places such as the Soviet Union, Stalin had about 180 million under his thumb and subject to execution at his command.  

Now what is more alarming today is the political left, for example, here in America, tends to love these tyrants.  They love Maduro of Venezuela or Fidel Castro of Cuba, for instance.  Every day, you can find a young person wearing the Chè Guevara T-Shirt. Famous Hollywood actors, such as Sean Penn will go to Venezuela and speak glowingly of that country’s tyrant, similarly with Cuba. Leftist Hollywood director Michael Moore will speak glowingly of the Cuban health system, as described in his movie “Sicko,”for example.  None of these folks, of course, have ever lived under such political systems. They criticize America but will never leave it for these places they love like Cuba and Venezuela.