Hooray for Thatcher?

[ciphergoth]

OK, so it's far from clear he actually tried to do it, and if he did he doubtless did it for personal gain, but if he did, it looks like overthrowing the government of Equatorial Guinea and bringing in the main opposition party might actually have been a good thing to do. I mention this here only because AFAICT the news reports seem to be treating it as if Equatorial Guinea was a perfectly nice democracy until he came along.

Don't worry, I'm not turning Tory. It's just that I don't feel motivated to catalogue every single evil and stupid thing they do, but when they do something that might not be either evil or stupid it's surprising enough to blog about. If Boris does something that is only one of evil and stupid I'll probably blog about that too.

Comments

[werenerd.livejournal.com]

I don't think it should be up to private businessmen to decide which countries to topple with mercenary armies. The consequences of that are even most disastrous than the poor system of international law we have today. Even in the case of war-mongering USA, there's at least some element of electoral accountability, in this case there is no accountability at all (except for the mercenary captain).

[palmer1984.livejournal.com]

*agrees*

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I disagree with what you're saying, but I can see arguments against it:

No-one with accountability was proposing to do anything about the situation, so the choice Thatcher might feel he faced was either unaccountable mercenaries coming to the rescue, or no-one coming to the rescue. Is it clear that the latter is better for anybody?

[autopope.livejournal.com]

My inner cynic keeps reminding me, "yes, but this is Mark Thatcher we're talking about." The guy who allegedly spent most of the 1990s outside the UK because the SFO wanted to ask him pointed questions about the Al Yamammah kickbacks. The George W. Bush to Dennis "corporate raider" Thatcher's George H. W. Bush, if you like (except luckily neither of them were involved in politics -- ruining the country was just the Missus' little hobby).

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, OK, the idea that someone like him would even accidentally do good is pretty implausible. Made for an interesting and enlightening discussion though :-)