Dictators Get the Deaths They Deserve By SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE Published: October 26, 2011 The New York Times 接录： the death of a democratic leader long after his retirement is a private matter, but the death of a tyrant is always a political act that reflects the character of his power. If a tyrant dies peacefully in bed in the full resplendence of his rule, his death is a theater of that power; if a tyrant is executed while crying for mercy in the dust, then that, too, is a reflection of the nature of a fallen regime and the reaction of an oppressed people. 民主领袖退休后的死亡是私事，但暴君的死亡总是政治事件，反应其权力的性质。如果暴君在其统治的辉煌中平静地死在床上，其死亡就是那权力的表演场；如果他在尘埃中乞求时被处死了，那也只不过是反应了其崩塌政权的性质与被压迫人民的反抗。 This was never truer than in the death, last week, of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. The only difference between his death and those of so many other tyrants across history was that it was filmed with mobile phones, a facility unavailable to contemporaries of, say, the Roman emperor Caligula.上周卡扎菲上校的命运算是最明显不过。他的死亡与历史上许多的其它暴君的区别在于现在有了手机，可以录相，这在比如罗马暴君卡力古拉的时代就不可想像。 In modern times, it was more frenzied than the semi-formal execution, in 1989, of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, but not as terrible as the ghastly lynching, in 1958, of the innocent King Faisal II of Iraq (age 23) and his hated uncle, who were supposedly impaled and dismembered, their heads used as soccer balls. In 1996, the pro-Soviet former president of Afghanistan, Najibullah, was castrated, dragged through the streets and hanged. 在现代，比起1989年齐奥塞斯库半正式的处决来说，的确有点狂乱，不过，还比不上1958年伊拉克的无辜国王费萨尔II世与他逗人恨的叔叔惨淡的命运，他们据说被钉死了再肢解，脑袋被人当球踢。在1996年，阿富汗亲苏联的总统纳吉布拉，先被阉割，再拉来游街，然后才被吊死。 Colonel Qaddafi’s tyranny was absolutist, monarchical and personal. The problem with such dictatorships is that as long as the tyrant lives, he reigns and terrorizes. As Churchill put it, “dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount.”卡扎菲上校的暴政是绝对的，君主式的， 侵害到每个人。这样的独裁的麻烦在于，只要暴君还活着，他就用恐怖统治全国。用丘吉尔的话说，“独裁者必须虎狼环侍，不敢独行。” Romans were so terrified of the emperor that it was not enough to assassinate him. They wanted to see him dead: fearing it was a trick and lacking cellphone footage, they had to be convinced. The mile-long line of Libyans who were keen to see Colonel Qaddafi’s cadaver in its shop-refrigerator-tomb would understand this perfectly. 罗马人对卡尼古拉暴君是如此害怕，刺杀他还远远不够，民众需要亲眼看到他确实是死了：害怕那是假相陷阱，没有手机摄下的镜头，他们需要确据。那些人排队数公里长，为要看卡扎菲上校在冰箱里的尸体，肯定可以理解这一点。 Sometimes the killing of tyrants is specially designed to echo the leader’s vices. Shajar al-Durr, an Egyptian sultan’s widow who became (uniquely in Muslim history) a sultan in her own right, was notorious for her extravagance. When she murdered her new husband in 1257, his concubines beat her to death with her own clogs — both a sign of Arab contempt and the medieval equivalent of death by stiletto. It was said that Edward II, notorious for homosexual relationships with his favorites, was killed with a red-hot poker. The upside-down suspension of the dead Mussolini with his mistress in a town square signaled the end of his pretensions to Caesarian heroism and Casanovan machismo.有时暴君之死就是要彰显其罪恶。 一个埃及苏丹的遗孀夏甲*阿尔杜尔在穆斯林历史上独树一帜，自己也成了苏丹，因为奢侈铺张而臭名昭著。当她在1257年谋杀了她的新的丈夫时，她被丈夫的嫔妃们用她自己的木屐给打杀了——那是阿拉伯蔑视的标志，也是中世纪的屈辱死法。据说爱德华II世，喜欢跟宠臣玩同性相交游戏，是给烧火棍捅死的。墨索里尼跟他的情妇尸体倒吊大街上示众，是显示他自命凯撒式的英雄以及貌似潘安的帅哥命运的终结。 Colonel Qaddafi faced an entirely fitting end. When he asked his frenzied killers, who had known no other ruler in their lives, “Do you not know the difference between right and wrong?” he had already taught them the answer. We may call this auto-tyrannicide. The manically terrifying but ruthlessly brilliant Mamluk sultan Baibars I, was more literally a victim: according to some accounts, he regularly poisoned his guests until, in 1277, he absentmindedly downed a glass of poisoned fermented camel’s milk himself. During the Crusades, the Atabeg of Mosul and Aleppo (in today’s Iraq and part of Syria), Zangi, who liked to castrate the children of enemies, and possibly his boy lovers as well, was supposedly stabbed in his bed by one of those humiliated eunuchs. When Stalin suffered a stroke in 1953, he had recently arrested dozens of doctors for treason. He lay in his own urine for more than 12 hours before his henchmen dared to call a doctor. He was not murdered — like Colonel Qaddafi, he was the author of his own destruction.卡扎菲上校完全是自食其果。当他责问他的狂乱的凶手时， 他们一生中只知道他这位统治者，“你们懂得区分正确与错误么？”他早就教给他们了一个答案。我们可以称之为暴君式的自杀。 那位疯狂恐怖残暴的马穆鲁克苏丹白巴斯I世，实际上是一个受害者：据说他经常给自己的客人下毒，在1277年，他漫不经心地给自己灌下了一杯下了毒的骆驼酵奶。在十字军东征时代，摩苏尔与阿勒颇（现伊拉克与部分叙利亚）的阿塔贝格（藩王）展机，喜欢阉割敌人的孩子，可能也包括自己儿时好友，据说被一受到羞辱的太监捅杀在床上。当斯大林在1953年中风躺在床上时，他才以颠覆罪名逮捕了几十个医生。在他的心腹敢打电话叫医生时，他在自己的尿中躺了12个小时。他没有被谋杀，正如卡扎菲一样，他才是毁灭自己的人。 Unlike monarchs, who pass power to their heirs at the moment of death to ensure the survival of the regime, tyrants must simply survive as long as possible. Hence inhumane struggles by indefatigable doctors to keep ailing dictators — Chairman Mao, Leonid I. Brezhnev, Marshal Tito, General Franco — alive. Only the ingenious North Koreans have solved this problem by declaring Kim Il-sung immortal, perpetual president.不象王朝君主在临死时把权力交给继承者以确保政权延续，暴君需要挣扎着活到极限 。因此，不知疲倦的医生们会以非人道的方式维持将要断气的独裁者——毛泽东、勃列日涅夫、铁托、以及佛朗哥将军等就是范例。只有聪明的北朝鲜解决了这一问题，他们宣布金日成练就不死金身，是其永远的主席。 ALL tyrannies are virtuoso displays over many years of cunning, risk-taking, terror, delusion, narcissism, showmanship and charm, distilled into a spectacle of total personal control. Tyrants are the greatest of all actor-managers — omnipotent impresarios. They will last only as long as prestige, prosperity and a vestige of justice are maintained. Uninhibited bloodletting can also work — as Bashar al-Assad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have demonstrated — until luck eventually runs out in the shape of treason, outside interference or a tsunami of rebellion like the Arab Spring. It is hard to imagine that there would be anything but giblets left if those two now fell into the hands of their people. 所有的暴政都是大场面地表演多年积累的阴险、冒险、恐怖、妄想、自恋、虚伪、与做作，浓缩到完全的针对所有个人的控制的奇境中。暴君是所有有表演天赋的管理者之最——万能的形象家。他们在威信、繁荣、以及那点正义形象消失后就无以为继。无限制的流血恐怖也可能有用——就象阿萨德与伊朗的霍梅尼所表现的一样——直到运气用尽，终结于叛乱、外来干涉、或者像阿拉伯之春的海啸式的人民起义。很难想像，假如这对活宝活入人民手中，是否会有点内脏会保持完全。 Colonel Qaddafi could have saved his family and thousands of lives by retiring to a villa and later facing the International Criminal Court. Yet the narcissist envisages his downfall only as a mise-en-scène featuring his followers, family and country, consumed in his bonfire of egomaniacal nihilism. Colonel Qaddafi must have planned to die in battle like Richard III and Macbeth, or to kill himself. Yet this monstrous poseur totally bungled his own death. 卡扎菲上校可以保全其一家及千万人的性命，只需要退位隐居，面临国际刑事法院而已。然而，这个自大狂非得要把他的追随者、家庭、和国家拉上表演舞台，在他狂涨的自我毁灭中陪葬。卡扎菲上校肯定计划要象理查三世和麦克白一样死在战场上，或自杀。然而，这个让人笑掉牙的假打却最终把自己的死亡计划搞得一蹋糊涂。
标签: 独裁
