Can’t Win for Losing
Found this happy item while trolling the Guardian for some piping fresh outrage:
The United States government has said it wants to see President Robert Mugabe removed from power and that it is working with the Zimbabwean opposition to bring about a change of administration.
The trouble, of course, with regime change in some sub-Saharan African states is that the new guys are often worse than the old guys. Think of Angola, Congo/Zaire/Congo, or even what has become of Zimbabwe. The good news is, there’s damn little chance that anyone could be worse than Mugabe, even if the new leader turns out to be a hyperactive, knife-wielding pack of ferrets.
The other trouble, of course, is how long will it be before the US is accused — by the very same Guardian reporter — of trying to force Zimbabwe back to its white-ruled days as Rhodesia?
I seem to recall Christpher Hitchens stating, when asked how he motivates himself for writing, that he awakes each morning and looks for the “All the news that’s fit to print” motto at the top of the New York Times.
If it is still there, and still irritates him, he knows he’s good to go for the day.
Sounds like the Guardian is your equivalent, Steve…
Mugabe really is a despot. He has evicted the white farmers while some 6 million of his people face starvation. He has ignored his own High Court (Zimbabwe’s judicial system is basically sound) when they rule him and his minsiters in contravention of the law, and he is in debt up to his eyeballs to Gadaffi for all the oil he’s imported from Libya.
My “best Bits’ have a whole section devoted to “Mugabe Watch”. Idi Amin was worse than Mugabe, but given time, I suspect Mugabe could outdo him.
I remember writing on War Now! how we should pointedly NOT go about trying to remove Mugabe….. we should simply tally up the death toll as it happens, and announce it to the world. Every day. Day after day after day. In other words, to everyone on planet earth, pissing and moaning about the “arrogant, hegemonic” US…. no hegemony here. This one is YOUR problem. Were just gonna count the bodies. Every day. So, let us all see how successful your little ICC deal is over there. Let us see how that good ‘ol Human Rights Commission is at really saving real lives of real humans, rather than just saving the reputations of academics, chatterers, and Guardian and New York Times reporters.
Like the slogan says, “real lives, real stories, real people”. Dying. Every day. Every day. What do you plan to do about it? Still waiting. Still dying. Got an answer yet? Got the forces to implement it? Still waiting. Still dying. Still watching get your little duckies in a row, and make sure, God Forbid! that no one gets offended or calls you nasty names, like unilateralist, imperialist, arrogant…. etc, you know the words.
Still waiting.
Still dying.
Have we made our point yet?
At which point, Andrew, we will be held up as the CAUSE of the disaster.
How so?
1. We didn’t intervene when we could have.
2. Zimbabwe has no oil, so therefore we don’t care.
3. Zimbabwe has black people, so therefore we don’t care.
4. We should have shipped aid (even if it propped up Mugabe), because, like Somalia, we’re supposed to.
I’m sorry, but IMHO, there’s NOTHING we can do that would ever be credited by these people as right. Intervene? White, American imperialism, and we moved too quickly, didn’t give diplomacy a chance to work.
Don’t intervene? We’re callous, only interested in white folks or places w/ oil, and part of the “rich North” problem.
I’d just about take bets that this is the likely course of events…..
Right you are. I’d be willing to take the hit just to make all the do-gooders realize clearly that so much of what they do is about making themselves feel good and ideologically correct, as opposed to actually solving anything. But your point is correct.
On that score, may I repost something I saved recently from the blogosphere -
Timothy Roscoe Cartera, on Matt Welch’s letter page, explains the everything America does is wrong mentality:
What should we do about a repressive regime?
Option 1) Military Aid. Obviously wrong. We are providing the weapons that kill the innocent. See Israel, Turkey, Columbia, Reagan-era Iraq, etc.
Option 2) Economic Aid. Wrong. We are financially propping up the regime. See Egypt, Indonesia, etc.
Option 3) Humanitarian Aid. Still Wrong. By relieving the regime of its financial duty to feed its people, we free up their money for military uses. See Afghanistan, where the US supported the Taliban by providing $43 million in humanitarian aid in exchange for the Taliban not exporting Heroin, thus sacrificing 12 million women to the alter of the failed War on Drugs.
Option 4) Trade / Constructive Engagement. Wrong. This is merely an excuse for US corporations to profit off of the regime’s repression of its own people. See China and Reagan-era South Africa.
Option 5) Economic Sanctions. Wrong. The economic sanctions in Iraq have killed 6,000 people a month for the past 11 years, or nearly 800,000 victims of US foreign policy.
Option 6) Military Attack. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! See every military conflict that the United States has every engaged in. (Caveat: There may be a possible exception for the US Civil War, which will be considered obviously justified if you are talking to any white person born in the former Confederacy.)
Option 7) The Prime Directive. Wrong. It is intolerable for the most powerful nation in history to sit by and do nothing while thousands die. It probably stems from a racist lack of concern for people of color of persons of other religions. See Rwanda, Bosnia (not to be confused with Kosovo, which falls under Option 6, above).
Andrew X again – So basically, all WE have to do to not be blamed for everything is… die, I guess. That’s easy enough, isn’t it?
To Andrew X:
In a word? Yes. But please do so in a politically correct fashion.