That was stupid of Amin to think he could annex Kagera, though I read somewhere his idea was to blow the bridge that connects into that region and make it difficult for Tanzanians forces. However, if you read through history objectively, you guys provoked him first, you were training and arming rebels in readiness to overthrow Uganda.
Museveni, Tito Okello and thousands of rebel fighters were all being fed and trained in Tanzania.
I was reading Christopher Hitchen's brick of a collection of essays "Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens".
Right on page 579, when he was making the point that interventions by way of wars are/ should not be the monopoly of superpowers, he made examples of good interventions that were not done by superpowers. The examples being Tanzania's invasion of Idi Amin's Uganda and the Vietnamese overthrow of the Khmer Rouge, both circa 1979.
In examining who started what and who replied in kind, things get murky if you don't establish a very good standard to go by.
So Idi Amin overthrew Milton Obote in 1971. Nyerere kinda felt guilty about that. Because it happenned during a Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit in Singapore. Originally Obote did not want to go, he had a hunch that Amin was not to be trusted. But Nyerere persuaded Obote that it was important for Obote to go to Singapore to strengthen the African case against Ian Smith of Rhodesia and against British support for Smith I believe. So Obote relented to the persuasive charms of the Nyerere arguments. Obote went to Singapore, only to be told that Amin overthrew him.
Nyerere felt so bad. He gave Milton Obote, Tito Okello, Yoweri Museveni, David Oyite-Ojok and a bunch of other Ugandans asylum in Tanzania. That much I know. I know the Ikulu houses Museveni and Obote used to live in. Okello used to be Museveni's neighbor and they would shout at each other over their windows, to the dismay of their more civilized Tanzanian neighbors. Okello used to hire cabs and refused to pay the fare. Museveni has not paid his electrical and water bill in full for the Upanga apartment he was given by The Tanzanian State House, to this day, and he probably will never pay. The poor soul who came to work for Ikulu and was to live in the same apartment was stuck with a huge bill, Museveni's.
So, anecdotes aside, there were a lot of Ugandan activists at University of Dar, including Museveni who graduated there and had frequent meetings with Nyerere. Idi Amin did himself no favor by acting like a buffoon. He constantly kept making ridiculous statements that he wanted to invade Tanzania and take a chunk of the country all the way to the port of Tanga, so Uganda would no longer remain a landlocked country. How do you deal with that type of crazy?
Nyerere genuinely disliked Amin. I would not blame Nyerere if he was training Ugandans for a regime change in Uganda, which eventually happenned. Nyerere did Africa and the world a favor by getting rid of Amin. I was delighted to see the Christopher Hitchens salute.
It is not like Idi Amin was a respectable, self respecting, democratically elected statesman.
We are talking about a buffoon who grabbed power and was killing people wily nilly.
Suprisingly enough, when I was in Kampala a couple of years back, I found some people, Ugandans, were sympathetic towards Amin.
To me, that was more of a cry to denounce the vacuum of leadership many African countries have now than actually. A sort of statement to the effect of "our current leaders are so bad, they make that madman Amin look good in retrospect".
Leadership vacuum can create some dangerous false nostalgia.