Are you bad enough?

Why do bad people get to the top so fast and hurt so many people almost legally? Why do they get everything done their way without anyone stopping them? It's easy, there's one word to sum it all up: Violence.

The world's corrupt, power-seeking, careless leaders are not afraid to use violence to get things done. And it works! Robert Mugabe isn't afraid to use violence against his people if anyone criticizes him or his regime. And that's the case of most dictatorships - Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, etc. These regimes are not afraid to kill, hurt, imprison or torture innocent people to stay in the government and abuse their power.

Interesting story the one of East Timor. After acquiring their independence from Portugal in 1975, they had 9 free days before being invaded by Indonesia and became the 27th province of the county. After clashes, protests and the indignation of the UN (as always a very impressive contribution from the UN), the Timorese people were asked to vote for their independence in 1999 - the results were clear: 78.5% of the population voted in favour. The pro-Indonesian militia and the Indonesian military - a.k.a. the bad people here - started riots, murders and wars which called for peacekeeping forces from Australia, New Zealand, France, Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, Fiji, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Portugal, Sweden and the UK - and postponed the official independence day of East Timor to May 20th 2002.

What happened here? It took 9 days for the bad people to invade the country and 3 years for good ones to set things right. But this independence came at a high price, East Timor became one of the poorest countries in Asia after all the conflicts it went through.

Though some leaders/political parties don't use direct violence on their people to achieve their selfish purposes, they just let their population die. How many African countries have starving populations and leaders in Mercedes'? How many of these countries' resources are owned and managed by the son, daughter or brother of the ruling president while the population doesn't benefit at all? How come Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil exporter, still has 70% of its population living under the poverty line? They might not be using violence directly on the populations but the result is the same: oppressed, poor and starving people. These leaders are indirectly killing innocent people and they are still here. Let's compare, how many good leaders have been killed in the world and how many bad ones? I agree that many dictators have been killed, but how long were they in power before that happened? The dictators stay in power long enough to damage the majority of the population before being assassinated and the good leaders don't even last a year before they get killed.

The point of all this post is the following: there are mainly two ways of "getting there". Either the good way by diplomatic and democratic means; or the bad way by violence, murder and intimidation. In most cases, the good way is used to achieve good things and the bad way for bad purposes. But if confronted, I think it is safe to say that the bad wins over the good. So why not then, in some cases, use the bad way to achieve good things?

I'm not saying that the good way doesn't work - it does in the West most of the time. But in developing nations where people are less educated (hence more likely to be bribed) and poorer (hence more likely to be bribed), they need more immediate action to achieve their goals rather than elections which results we already know. Who here would feel sad if Mugabe gets murdered? Or if Omar al-Bashir gets murdered? What if in 1999, the Timorese killed the leaders of the pro-Indonesian militia and launched an attack on them rather than just defend themselves?

Why don't the nice guys sometimes kill for the greater good? The tyrants don't hesitate to kill millions of innocent lives to finance their luxurious lifestyle - so why not kill them? Surely it all has to be thought through with a long term strategy and a post-murder plan in order to avoid chaos.

I know this post is easily criticisable because many of the previous coups were supposed to be for a better future and ended up as military regimes, but that's why it has to be done intelligently...with a touch of "good". Because being nice sometimes just doesn't pay off.

An example that illustrates my idea is the TV show Dexter. The show is about a police officer that also is a serial killer. He's not a bad guy, he just needs to kill - it's an addiction (the same way you are addicted to this blog). So instead of killing innocent people, he kills murderers that have been acquitted or other people that deserve to die but manage to get around the law. It's WRONG to kill and I am NOT promoting that, but no one can deny that sometimes, murder is the only solution. I say that killing a leader or destroying a toxic political party (like Hezbollah in Lebanon) needs to be the plan Z, but it's an option not to ignore.