[UPI] Analysis: Learning from Saddam

By MARTIN SIEFF, UPI Senior News Analyst

WASHINGTON, March 3 (UPI) -- Say this for Saddam Hussein: He ran one of the most sadistic and merciless dictatorships in modern history, but at least he avoided a civil war.

The issue is not a minor one. Great political philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century, author of "Leviathan," have long argued that dictatorships, however merciless and unjust, were preferable to unleashing the hellish chaos of civil strife. Ancient Greek philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, who usually failed to agree on anything, were as one on that.

Political thinkers in the traditions of the three great monotheistic religions have struggled with the issue of how to deal with an unjust ruler without opening the doors to anarchy and civil strife that usually killed far more people than the dictator at his very worst did.

In general, Catholic and certainly Orthodox Christianity have far preferred autocracy, however harsh, to the miseries and collapse of basic society that anarchy invariably brings. Traditional Muslim respect for established rulers has taken a similar approach.

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