Antiwar.com isn’t even supposed to have a position on Mark Thatcher and his merrie band of overthrowers, since it’s not a US foreign policy issue and it’s not really a war issue. But I have a position on the subject, and it is this: if I had known they were planning on overthrowing that monster in Equatorial Guinea, I would have been cheering them on.
Am I supporting war? Of course not. Am I supporting violating the sovereignty of a country? You bet I am. Dictators have no rights, and human beings have no responsibility to continue on under the thumb of dictators. Teodoro Obiang has ruled since 1979 (since he had the former ruler, his uncle, executed), and lives in lavish luxury, with all dissent crushed, while the population starves and cowers. He siphons tens of millions off the country’s oil profits. He is an absolute dictator and on his state-owned radio station, one of his aides said:
“He can decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell because it is God himself, with whom he is in permanent contact, and who gives him this strength.”
Go ahead, complain that I’m no different from the people who think the US is liberating Iraq — you’ll be dead wrong. Unlike Iraq, the coup plotters weren’t forcing anyone else to pay for their operations, as the US is. Unlike Iraq, this would be a surgical operation to attack the key points in the country — here I am assuming the presidential palace and key ministries and oil fields — and not anything anyhere near civilian population centers. Unlike Iraq, collateral damage would be nonexistent, because these are businessmen with a budget — not career bureaucrats with a bottomless pit of funding — and collateral damage is expensive.
And of course I don’t think the mercs cared about the Equatoguinean people. I’m not a dingbat — they were in it for profit. But so what? Who cares what the motives are, as long as the result (and the means) are unobjectionable? I can’t know who they were planning on replacing Obiang with, if anyone at all, but you can be damn sure it was someone who would create a more favorable business climate. This would allow Equatoguineans to improve their personal lots — instead of those of the ruling dynasty.