This man should not be allowed near nuclear weapons!

[Thecla]

They don't believe in diplomacy, that's why they're despots.

Actually, the problem is just that they're not our despot.;)

[Jester]

The Cold War was brutal, ugly, and expensive. Now, I'm a peace loving person, but I'd rather we just outright destroyed these 'wannabes' now rather than go through the next twenty to thirty years in another nuclear arms race.

By "destroy these 'wannabes', you mean what?

-Jester

[Jester]

How do you explain all the crazy people with power that began wars of aggression, thereby de-facto, putting themselves in harms way, and most of them ultimately dying early deaths (Castro being a rare exception)?

Other than Hitler, to whom are you referring? Napoleon died at 52, in peacetime. Stalin died at the ripe old age of 75. Genghis Khan himself even made it to 65. The Ayatollah Khomeini was a whopping 87. Kaiser Wilhelm II was 82, although he wasn't really that crazy.

I'm not seeing the pattern you're describing. Maybe Alexander the Great?

-Jester

[kandrathe]

I'm not seeing the pattern you're describing.

Well, let's see... Mussolini, Pol Pots (although he died of heart failure after being captured), Hirota Koki, Tojo Hideki, Ion Antonescu, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein.

But I'm reaching here. There are far more evil despots who comfortably drove their lethal state apparatus until they died in office from natural causes.

[Jester]

Well, let's see... Mussolini, Pol Pots (although he died of heart failure after being captured), Hirota Koki, Tojo Hideki, Ion Antonescu, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein.

Mussolini I'll give you. 62 is not young, but his death was violent and quite directly a consequence of the war he'd started. Hirota, Tojo and Antonescu as well, although they were also getting on in their years. Frankly, I think all of them are kind of adjuncts to the larger case of Hitler, who actually is a pretty good example of a crazy who might push the button out of sheer insanity.

Saddam Hussein died at age 69, after a war of aggression, but not the one he started. I don't think that counts. Maybe if he'd been whacked at the end of Gulf I, when he was younger, and he actually started the war?

Pol Pot died at age 70, not exactly in normal circumstances, but hardly before his time. Does that count? I guess it could, but it's not very clear-cut.

Slobodan Milosevic died at age 65 of a heart attack, either naturally or as a quasi-suicide from failure to take his heart meds. Doesn't feel to me like he got his comeuppance.

There are far more evil despots who comfortably drove their lethal state apparatus until they died in office from natural causes.

There certainly are. Not-so-strangely, few of them saw fit to launch into suicidal attacks on vastly more powerful opponents, and instead mostly just hung on to their comfy position of power as long as they could. As Mel said, it's good to be king.

-Jester