No first hand tales of benevolence here, all of my knowledge of Museveni comes from The Economist.
Stay with me here, I’m working my way into a phrase that i think might work: Power corrupts . . . . absolutley. No wait.
‘Absolutely power corrupts . . .’ nah.
Okay, I’ll get back to you.
Well, at least he made the trains run on time…what?
I knew that in a conversation about benevolent dictators the name castro would be thrown in there.
No, no, no, and no. Dictators can not be anything but evil. The entire energy of their government is expended on keeping themselves in power. In some instances that means dispose of the opposition, by whatever means, in others it means absolute control over every aspects of the citizens lives. Dictators are never good, and when you hear someone go on about the benefits of living under such a rule ask yourself the question, could I live there? Would I be willing to trade freedom A for the benefit of B, if the answer is no then it is probably the same for those who live in that country.
From what I’ve read on this board there is not a single person here who would chose to live in castro’s Cuba, as a Cuban.
Napoleon might qualify, but he’s from the period just before the OP’s stipulation. He unified the country, lent his support to many social reforms such as in the schools and the law, enchanced France’s prestige internationally, and IIRC didn’t kill any of his own citizens unless he “had to” (arguable, of course, but certainly he was less bloodthirsty than the revolutionaries he displaced). Then again, he ruled undemocratically and got most of the rest of Europe mad at/fearful of him, embroiling his country in an extremely costly (in terms of both blood and treasure) series of wars. A seriously mixed legacy, that.
“Benevolent dictator” is so subjective a term as to be almost indefinable, or useless. Even the “best” dicator will necessarily kill at least some of his people in cold blood, eliminate at least some freedoms, spy on at least some of his people, subvert at least some laws, and have flunkies who are at least somewhat sticky-fingered. Lord Acton was right; it’s inescapable human nature. Some tyrants are more skilled in their craft than others, and do more good and less harm than others, I suppose, but they’re still tyrants. If I had to, I’d certainly rather live in Castro’s Cuba or Museveni’s Uganda than Stalin’s Russia or Pol Pot’s Cambodia, but it’d just be a choice between the lesser of still-terrible evils.
[QUOTE=Elendil’s HeirIf I had to, I’d certainly rather live in Castro’s Cuba or Museveni’s Uganda than Stalin’s Russia or Pol Pot’s Cambodia, but it’d just be a choice between the lesser of still-terrible evils.[/QUOTE]
See and that’s the point, ‘If you had to’ you would chose Castro’s Cuba, but you only say that never having lived in Castro’s Cuba. To explain, emigrating from Cuba has never been easy under Castro, but because of Cuba’s historical ties with Spain that was one of the easier ways to leave. That means that until Franco’s death Cubans traded Castro’s dictatorship for Franco’s. Of course given a different choice they would have probably chosen differently, but for those Cubans at least Franco was a lesser evil, I’m sure many Spaniards disagree.
I loathe Castro, but I don’t think even his more vehement critics would suggest it’s worse there than in Stalin’s Russia or Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Hence my comparison - and no, I’ve never lived in any of them.