FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - What to do with Tyrants

Rant Number 427 3 February 2011

Tyrants

Magical causation is fascinating. Its logic is appealing. It is simply that of your own desires. As it happens in the Thousand and One Nights. You rub a magic lamp and...Lo and behold! A genie appears, to do your bidding.

Ahmed, an occasional friend (he tends to disappear for long stints – here I suspect no magic but his being a secret agent, but whenever I joke about it he clams up – it figures), jokes about President Mubarak. ‘I wish I had the secret lamp – I’d send him straightaway to Jehannum, which is where the Egyptian people, apart from his goons, would like him to be.’

I joke back: ‘Got to be more realistic, Ahmed. What about the Egyptian Army seizing the old mummy and pumping a few bullets into his skull? The Romanian military did it with their own aging dictator, Ceausescu, back in ’89. On the whole, it drew general approbation. It would make sense.’

My friend shakes his curly head: ‘Nice but not very likely, Frank. Unlike the Romanian rogue, Mubarak was himself an Army man. Like all the Egyptian rulers since the overthrow of that fat, gluttonous man...yes, King Farouk. So he has the Army’s pulse. His own cronies lead it. No, sorry, it is not going to happen.’

Unbecoming of a Christian priest to wish for the assassination of a tyrant? Still, I recall Pat Robertson, an American Evangelical leader, once suggested the elimination of Chavez, Venezuela’s obstreperous ruler. For that he was pilloried. However, the rationale for Robertson’s vilification was unclear. Was it that it is intrinsically, absolutely monstrous and impermissible to advocate the assassination of a foreign statesman? Hardly. I can’t be the only one to remember calls, prior to the invasion of Iraq, from folks of impeccable democratic credentials, for the ‘taking out’ of Saddam Hussein. Humanitarian and utilitarian grounds were proffered in murder’s support: avoiding the horrors of war, saving lives etcetera. Is it that Chavez is a hero of our useless, clapped-out Left? Feel free but these things are bound to be subjective. A hero for some is a son of bitch for others. Bobby Mugabe reportedly is idolised by many Africans and even Saddam Hussein had plenty of fans. Bit tricky, eh?

A Christian priest, however, should never deliberately and directly kill another man, so Mubarak can breathe freely, as far as Egypt’s Coptic clergy are concerned. St Thomas Aquinas taught that bishops and prelates and priests should not engage in warfare (though I guess they could still preach a just war), because they minister at Christ’s altar. As Christ had his innocent blood shed for the salvation of men, it would be illicit for his priests to shed anybody’s blood. Oh, well, no disrespect meant to a fellow clergyman but I don’t figure people like Rev. Robertson as a card-carrying Protestant care hugely for sacramental theology, anyhow. Had he been au courant, I suppose he might have invoked the principle of double effect. A Baroque moral doctrine that is sometimes used to justify the unjustifiable. It’s like this. A human action can have two effects, one moral and one immoral. Thus an air pilot can a) drop a bomb near an enemy ammunition factory, even knowing that b) in consequence some innocent civilians nearby would be killed. The conscientious pilot foresees that b) but does not intend it. His lawful intention is only a). Therefore, just drop a large bomb near Mubarak’s palace, a wilier Robertson could propose. What for? Bumping off some of the local gangsters, drug-traffickers, looters, what you will. Oh, by the way, in the process Mubarak will die too. Totally foreseen but unintended secondary effect. Hence all is kosher. Geddit?

Only one British Prime Minister has ever been murdered. In 1812 Spencer Perceval was shot dead in the House of Commons. The motive was trivial: the killer was a bankrupt merchant who blamed the PM for his insolvency. Past examples are more grandiose. 400 years ago Guy Fawkes and his Gunpowder Plot mates ambitiously tried to decapitate the British establishment by blowing up at once both king and parliament. Catholic zealots, they sought to stir up an anti-Protestant rebellion. King James I, the son of an executed Catholic Queen, Mary Stuart, and the husband of another Catholic, Ann of Denmark, had proved disappointing. And since Pope St Pius V had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I, English Catholics were under a cloud, as potentially disloyal. King James indeed so feared a pious murderer’s dagger that he wore a quilted doublet. (Tony Blair when PM was pluckier: he refused to wear a bullet-proof vest.) James’ favourite, his catamite Duke of Buckingham, evidently did not, as a Protestant fanatic stabbed him to death.

The Roman Church of course never directly countenanced the killing of rulers. Only the odd Jesuit, like the learned Spaniard Juan Mariana, inDe Rege et Regis Institutione justified tyrannicide. When Henry IV of France fell under the Catholic Ravaillac, the Jesuits were forbidden to teach Mariana’s doctrine. Quite right.

I much doubt whether the young, brave Egyptian demonstrators now resisting Mubarak’s gangs (one of them my sweet Cairo friend Hasan – may God protect him) are familiar with Mariana’s doctrine. Some, however, might have read Muslim philosopher Al Farabi. In his politico-theological treatise Al Madina al Fadila, ‘The Just City’, he divides societies into virtuous and non-virtuous. Each has its corresponding type of ruler, or mis-ruler. The list is interesting, you can look it up online. Here I shall only mention one quality which puts Egypt’s dictator squarely where he belongs: the virtuous ruler should have no interest in money, to the point of enriching himself. Well, Mubarak is widely reputed to have stashed away 25 billions dollars. QED.

To avoid misunderstandings (and the Law): the priest does not advocate political bumping off of rulers, no matter how unjust. I take Socrates’ line. A tyrant, no matter how outwardly powerful and successful, is a most wretched being. Because a tyrant does evil and that is his chief punishment. As Socrates, the good champion of reason, demonstrates, “it is much worse to do evil than to suffer it.”

Ahmed’s gives a wry smile: ‘Fine for you, Frank. Mubarak’s unhappy people, however, may be of a different opinion.’