The Feeble Mugabe Gotcha

ndm

Alex Massie writes:

-- Chances are that you were more concerned by him then than you now pretend.

No - and there is no pretence about it. It is precisely because of unexpected consequences that human-rights organizations tend not to suggest war as the answer to human-rights problems. Thre would be a lot of people alive right now had the US spent one trillion dollars on healthcare between the Nile and the Congo than warfare by the Euphrates.

Spencer Ackerman has a tragic suggestionfor the quote of the decade in Iraq:

http://tinyurl.com/289pxy9

There is a message there for those who seek to perpetuate the GWOT.

Snowman

given Britain’s colonial past in Africa (in Rhodesia in particular), would any British politician ever contemplate kicking out Mugabe, or any other tin-pot dictator for that matter? That’s the reason for letting the Zimbabwean unwashed suffer, and not the country’s inaccessibility and stuff. Get real, Alex.

and another thing: if you ever believed that Saddam was a threat to you in the Borders you should consult a psychiatrist. A threat to the Iraqis and neighbours, certainly, to British interests, perhaps, to you and me, never.

David Bouvier

I think it means what it says - which is that many of the surrounding countries were content for Saddam to be deposed by force. If you read the background materials not the headlines it becomes clear.

Augustus

Obviously, there is a genuine concern for Zimbabwe, and the way Mugabe and his henchmen have ruined the economic and political structure of a once productive country, with fertile soil and enormous mining riches. But the symbolic power of the collective experience of colonialism is still very great on the continent of Africa,
and Mugabe's nativistic victim ideology still curries considerable favour. Nowhere
more than in Zimbabwe do Africans feel a heartfelt desire to 'know themselves', to recapture their own destiny, and to belong to themselves in the world. Perhaps Mugabe's genius has been ensuring that what is a legitimate desire for black liberation
can be manipulated to sanction his every ignoble move.

Baron

what is it that fuels the fertile pseudo-liberal brain of yours?

in a recent blog you’ve opined that the stoning of adulterous women in Iraq was a personal tragedy, here you are suggesting that quashing Saddam’s rule was a ‘human rights’ issue. By the same rationale, I take it that Adolf’s gassing of the Jews falls into the same ‘uman rights’ slot. There also would be around 60 millions alive today if Winston were to give in to the Austrian corporal’s demands. Of course, they and many others would also be all speaking German, greeting each other ‘Sieg Heil’, and labour like slaves without any ‘uman rights, but that’s OK with you, is it?

maddy1

The great thing is that the Massies of this world do not have to live under black leadership. The Rhodesians were brilliant farmers, innovators but mutch too pragmatic for their own good.

Rhoda Klapp

The old principle used to be that you did not interfere in a foreign country's business absent threats to your own citizens in that country or to the nation's vital interests. There is no moral dimension, because that is the way of confusion, relativism and ultimately madness.

If only that principle had held in the Blair era.

Baron

the hastily cobbled up posting of mine at 11.34 was addressed to ndm @ 10.05.

Anonymous

While a joint US-UK invasion of Zimbabwe, to kick out Mugabe would have been nice, it is not as practical as Alex makes it out to be. Although Blair’s assertion that the surrounding countries would have prevented an invasion is absurd, it still doesn’t seem practical.