Dictator Death March

Word leaked out late last night that Kim Jong-in of North Korea died of "fatigue" yesterday. Kim had been sickly for the past couple of years so his death is not a huge surprise.

What is a bit odd is how many of the world strongmen have gone down or are preparing to go down. This past year we've lost Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen. In the very near future Hugo Chavez of Venezuela will probably die of cancer and Bashar al-Assad of Syria will decide whether to flee or commit self-immolation with his entire nation as the pyre. This also does not take into account the likelihood that Father Time will remove both the Castro boys of Cuba and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe in the near future.

Of course, new dictators will rise up to take the place of the old, but it still feels just a little odd that so many of the well-known scoundrels of history are going down in such a short time.

Hopefully things go well in North Korea. There has been a fear that Kim Jong-il's designated successor, Kim Jong-un, will not be strong enough to reign in his generals and that he will be deposed. If that happens, open warfare may break out as the generals jockey for position and that in turn could spill out into South Korea. That might potentially draw in the US and the Chinese as well. We shall see and hope that things don't get out of hand too quickly.