| About Damn Time |
18 August 2003
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Idi Amin Finally Dies -- Hooray!
When the lights came back on in the northeastern part of the US, news came in from Saudi Arabia that Idi Amin, former dictator of Uganda, had died. First, the power came back, second, an impromptu holiday had arrived, and now this piece of good news. His death marked the beginning of a very good week-end.
For those too young or too uninterested in Africa in the 1970s, Idi Amin ran Uganda into the ground, forced out a great many Asian immigrants who formed the nation's middle and professional classes, and was responsible for about 200,000 murders (by most conservative estimates). At one stage, the bodies were being dumped in the Nile river in their hundreds because there was no other way to dispose of them. Idi Amin, friend of crocodiles.
Since his ouster, he had been in exile, winding up in Saudi Arabia. There, he was said to have become a good Muslim. One doubts that. However, it is not impossible for a tiger to change its stripes, merely unlikely. The real evidence is that he seems to have done absolutely nothing to atone for, or even acknowledge, his genocidal actions. If that is the mark of a good Muslim, then a great many civilized human beings who profess that faith have been sadly misled.
Like Pol Pot of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge, Idi Amin never got the punishment he deserved. A trial would have been a pointless exercise in degrading the legal system. However, he is dead now, and all friends of decency should cheer. And those who believe human life is too precious to revel in his passing mock their own beliefs. An evil man has died, and that is a good thing.
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