The Old Dictators' Retirement Home
Bruce Chapman of the Discovery Institute has an idea for savings lives and ordnance. I see the beauty of the idea, and if I thought it would work, I'd be right behind it:
In Libya, of course, the patron of “popular democracy,” the man of many official costumes, Moammar Gadhafi, might be more willing to leave, too, if he had somewhere to go. Instead, he is going to kill a lot of people and waste a lot of U.S. and European ordnance.
Where might a home for retired dictators - call it “Lost Horizons Estates” - fit in? South Florida certainly could use the luxury-housing purchases and tourism stimulus. After a visit to Disney World, people would be eager to see if they could run into Mr. Mubarak at Starbucks in Mizner Park in Boca Raton and catch a glimpse of Bashar Assad coming off the 18th hole at Royal Palm.
Better yet would be somewhere that doesn’t care about bad publicity and can ignore persistent attorneys. A nice island in the Caribbean, like Cuba.
The problem is that these guys are dictators because they love being dictators, and they're so out-of-touch and narcissistic that they tend not to grasp that their number's up--until someone shoots them.
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Oct '10
Re: The Old Dictators' Retirement Home
Claire Berlinski, Ed.:
The problem is that these guys are dictators because they love being dictators, and they're so out-of-touch and narcissistic that they tend not to grasp that their number's up--until someone shoots them. ·
Sorta like ducks at the circus midway shooting gallery, once you hit one, he simply goes down, to be replaced by another power hungry, narcissistic duck.
Mar '11
Re: The Old Dictators' Retirement Home
Able was I ere I saw Punta Gorda.
Aug '10
Re: The Old Dictators' Retirement Home
Sounds like a job for Gabriel Garcia Marquez , inn keeper .
Now how do we hook the Bloomberg terminals up ?
Dec '10
Re: The Old Dictators' Retirement Home
Cuba will quietly convert into a home for more refugees than anyone might expect—all coming from across our own shores—not for any casual loitering in surroundings of concertina razor coils at Club Gitmo, but as the Caribbean Saint Helena for Americans taking flight from the tyranny concocted in Washington.
Should the Cuban caudillo chose to keep his country the contrarian nemesis of America, then cheap gasoline flowing from local refineries supplied by offshore-platform piped in crude, abundant healthcare, not the phony kind from facilities made up in Michael Moore’s mind, but provided by experienced, American-trained physicians in exile still under sworn oath to the ethics of Hippocrates, not an allegiance to the myriad of diktats that “the Secretary shall deem appropriate,” topped off with sloping fields hither and thither of new and improved cigar tobacco with nary a windmill on the horizon, will fundamentally transform Cuba back to its paradisiacal state of nature in the tropics while our historic first Islamic apostate president and his minions lay waste our own land.
Want to flee for freedom from his encroaching ferrous grip? Soon we'll have Cuba—Deo volente—as the place where we will go.
May '10
Re: The Old Dictators' Retirement Home
If you say you're going to apply the death penalty to dictators you give them no choice but to fight to the death.
Mar '11
Re: The Old Dictators' Retirement Home
Pink Floyd suggested this way back in 1983 on their Final Cut album... the Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable Tyrants and Wasters of Life and Limb.
Unfortunately, Roger Waters being the silly leftist doof that he is, he thought Reagan and your gal Maggie should be rooming there right next to Brezhnev and Galtieri.
Aug '10
Re: The Old Dictators' Retirement Home
Douglas: Pink Floyd suggested this way back in 1983 on their Final Cut album... the Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable Tyrants and Wasters of Life and Limb.
Unfortunately, Roger Waters being the silly leftist doof that he is, he thought Reagan and your gal Maggie should be rooming there right next to Brezhnev and Galtieri. · Mar 31 at 11:54am
Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict
from Ummagumma
Maybe that's what they were thinking ?
Mar '11
Re: The Old Dictators' Retirement Home
This could have an effect at the margin. If some kind of enforceable deal could be struck whereby the dictator receives amnesty, a safe place to retire to, and access to his stolen billions, then it could tip the balance in some cases.
Problem is, it isn't enforceable. Pinochet, perhaps the only dictator ever to announce 'mission accomplished', call elections and gracefully retire on losing them was, after a decade or so of peace, hounded both in Spain and Chile. Perhaps deservedly, but I do suspect that going for revenge with one dictator makes it harder to dislodge others.
Aug '10
Re: The Old Dictators' Retirement Home
Great minds think alike. On March 22nd, I posted the following on Facebook:
"I'm thinking the Saudis should start building a planned community for ousted Arab leaders. I'm imagining Tunisia's Ben Ali, Egypt's Mubarek, and Libya's Qaddafi nodding to each other as they pick up the daily paper at the curb, in their bathrobes."
My personal preference for brutes like Qaddafi, however, is a fate like that of Saddam Hussein.