Luck of the Devil

     The 20th century has spawned a malignant crop of mass murderers -- soulless psychopaths who schemed and slaughtered their way to the pinnacles of power and then used that power to murder anyone who threatened it, starting with their enemies, moving on to their friends and eventually killing damn near anybody, including their own families.
      You know them: Lenin. Stalin. Hitler. Mao. Kim Il Sung. Idi Amin. Saddam Hussein. Together, these men killed so many people that historians can only estimate the death toll: Mao and Stalin alone are judged responsible for nearly 100 million deaths. In his lifetime, Hitler invented one unique thing -- a totally new social institution called a death camp where murder was carried out on an industrial scale.
      On rare occasions, the international community brings a mass killer to justice: The victors of World War II tried and executed a few of Hitler's murderous flunkies. Israel grabbed the chief engineer of the Nazi Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann, and hanged him in 1962.
      But generally, the big fish get away. Hitler blew his own brains out before the Russians could do it for him. Stalin died in bed, probably deeply insane, raving about wolves. Idi Amin is living in luxury somewhere in the Middle East. Kim Il Sung apparently died of old age. Mao croaked amid luxury. Saddam survives, also in luxury.
      Now come reports that Khmer Rouge communist leader Pol Pot, the middle-class, French-educated intellectual who rose to lead Cambodia into the Stone Age -- and kill one-quarter of his countrymen in the process -- has been afforded the luxury of dying of heart failure in the Cambodian jungle at age 73. He should have died 2 million deaths -- one for each citizen he had shot, crucified on a tree, tortured, beheaded, buried alive, mutilated, worked and starved to death.
      Like most of his fellow mass murderers, Pol Pot had the luck of the Devil.The 20th century has spawned a malignant crop of mass murderers -- soulless psychopaths who schemed and slaughtered their way to the pinnacles of power and then used that power to murder anyone who threatened it, starting with their enemies, moving on to their friends and eventually killing damn near anybody, including their own families.
      You know them: Lenin. Stalin. Hitler. Mao. Kim Il Sung. Idi Amin. Saddam Hussein. Together, these men killed so many people that historians can only estimate the death toll: Mao and Stalin alone are judged responsible for nearly 100 million deaths. In his lifetime, Hitler invented one unique thing -- a totally new social institution called a death camp where murder was carrried out on an industrial scale.
      On rare occasions, the international community brings a mass-killer to justice: The victors of World War II tried and executed a few of Hitler's murderous flunkies. Israel grabbed the chief engineer of the Nazi Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann, and hanged him in 1962.
      But generally, the big fish get away. Hitler blew his own brains out before the Russians could do it for him. Stalin died in bed, probably deeply insane, raving about wolves. Idi Amin is living in luxury somewhere in the Middle East. Kim Il Sung apparently died of old age. Mao croaked amid luxury. Saddam survives, also in luxury.
      Now come reports that Khmer Rouge communist leader Pol Pot, the middle-class, French-educated intellectual who rose to lead Cambodia into the Stone Age -- and kill one-quarter of his countrymen in the process -- has been afforded the luxury of dying of heart failure in the Cambodian jungle at age 73. He should have died 2 million deaths -- one for each citizen he had shot, crucified on a tree, tortured, beheaded, buried alive, mutilated, worked and starved to death.
      Like most of his fellow mass murderers, Pol Pot had the luck of the Devil.