Dictatorship's thumb

In a recent rant, the far right-wing (his own self-description) essayist condorman wrote:

Most Americans dont have the foggiest clue what its like living under the thumb of a dictatorship. They also dont have the slightest inkling of what a tyrant will do to keep the peasants in line. Were so spoiled by freedom we cant imagine the depths of depravity and the breadth of barbaric brutality evil men will employ agaisnt their own countrymen. This explains the simplistic solutions and naive thinking by peaceniks and pop stars alike. Shakira said "I just feel that there are always pacifist solutions" and the people "have the obligation to demand to our leaders to give us pacifist solutions." Mayb she should first try to understand the nature of the beast.

While some anti-war rationale is breathtakingly simplistic, the rant raises some points worth responding to.

Ironic, then, that Africans (a majority of whom live under real or de facto dictatorships) generally also opposed the Iraq invasion. Maybe because they DO have more than the slightest inkling of what a tyrant will do, they realize better than Americans that true change can only come from within. They, unlike Americans, have seen regime change by force repeatedly up close and personal and how it so rarely achieves anything good in the long term.

Ask the people of Liberia if they preferred Samuel Doe's brutal dictatorship or the (foreign-backed) savage civil wars that toppled him.

Ask the people of the DR Congo (former Zaire) if they preferred Mobutu's kleptocracy or the first African continental war that followed his demise. But you can't ask the over 3 million Congolese that have died in the six years of said war.

Even Morgan Tsvangarai, dictator Bob Mugabe's erstwhile enemy, urges British caution in dealing with Zimbabwe.

South Africa is an instructive case. While the anti-apartheid struggle had international backing, the racist system was ultimately overthrown from within, not via foreign intervention.

Or, to leave the African continent, Serbia. It wasn't years of international condemnation or even airstrikes in Kosovo that brought down Slobodan Milosevic. It was a domestic protest campaign that brought him down.