A useful "tell"

In a world of authoritarian regimes, it can be difficult to tell whether one is simply dealing with a pragmatic dictator doing the best he can in the service of a nation that is (for whatever reason) not suited to representative government, or a genuine monster.

In the former category, I suppose, one might mention Lee Kuan Yew, of Singapore. My father in law has sent a copy of his autobiography, The Singapore Story. On the back there are blurbs from western pragmatists such as George Bush ("one of the brightest, ablest men I have ever met"), Margaret Thatcher ("he was never wrong"), Henry Kissinger ("one of the seminal figures of Asia"), and Jacques Chirac ("[he] has gathered around himself the most brilliant minds"). Singapore was and is, no doubt, a very authoritarian place, but it is gradually, bit by bit, shaking off the damnation of Gibson - Disneyland with the death penalty. To many observers it looks like a dictatorship that is working - whether you accept it or not depends on whether you put more emphasis on the word "dictatorship" or on the word "working". It's a slippery slope, of course, as Henry Ford learned long ago.

In the latter category, well you have your run of the mill martinets and legacies. But for me the clearest indication that you are dealing with a potentially genocidal monster is...the show trial. Stalin, of course, was the Louis Armstrong of show trials, showing how much could be accomplished with this deceptively simple presentational format (here is a 10-minute briefing that is hard to watch).

Before the invasion of Kuwait, Bush, Thatcher, and many others thought Saddam Hussein was the "good kind" of dictator, having been an important force for modernization and improvement of Iraq before assuming total power. The tipoff was the hideous parliament confession (video here, although I won't watch it again), in which a party rival was forced to confess to a conspiracy and name his co-conspirators, who were led away, one-by-one. Saddam clearly relished the experience, and any sane person witnessing this would recognize that this guy was on the wrong side of the authoritarian technorat/genocidal monster line. There's pragmatism, and then there's sadism.

So I take the latest events in Iran as an important sign. Bush didn't care for Iran, for reasons of his own, but whatever the logic process, I can't fault his conclusion. These are bad people, they can't be trusted, and they mean to harm those who do not kowtow to them.

I don't know what to do about them, but now I know what they are.