THE OBSCENELY SILLY DOUBLE STANDARD

The Obscenely Easy Exile of Idi Amin (ETHAN BRONNER, 8/19/03, NY Times)

During the nearly quarter-century of his soft exile, no nation tried to bring Mr. Amin to justice. A few years ago, after Spain's government went after Chile's former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, Human Rights Watch did bring up Mr. Amin's case to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, but to no avail. Under international law, any nation, including Saudi Arabia, could have and should have prosecuted Mr. Amin.

But, as Reed Brody, special counsel for prosecutions at Human Rights Watch, says, "If you kill one person, you go to jail; if you kill 20, you go to an institution for the insane; if you kill 20,000, you get political asylum." Mr. Brody keeps a melancholy map on his wall of other tyrants gone free: Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay, lives in Brazil; Haiti's Raoul Cedras is in Panama; Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia is in Zimbabwe; Hissene Habre of Chad lives in Senegal.

Nothing better illustrates the core silliness of the Left than bemoaning the failure to prosecute the murderous dictators who are at least out of power while opposing attacks on the dictators who are still murdering their people--Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong-Il, etc. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 19, 2003 8:29 AM