17th
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Photo by Jay Hagan,
7/12/08 Burbank, CA
A Thought for Today
History tells us everything but how to
avoid repeating it.
TO BEGIN WITH
Last month Robert Mugabe was sworn in for a sixth term as president of
Zimbabwe. He was re-elected in a one-candidate runoff (!) Robert Mugabe
is not just your every day run of the mill Third World thug, he’s a
first class murderer and despot who doesn’t give a damm about the
welfare of the country he governs or it’s people.
Under his stewardship and the largely military gang he has chosen to run
Zimbabwe this beautiful country has been nearly destroyed. A weak and at
times willful United Nations has done nothing to help and The African
Union continues to argue that Mugabe and the Gestapo-like treatment of
his people is “a local problem and can be dealt with locally.” Of
course, nobody inside or outside Africa has ‘dealt’ with it. And, to
those of you who hold out any hope that they will I have this lovely,
golden bridge in san Francisco I’d like to sell you.
On Wednesday Thomas L. Friedman, the humanitarian and columnist for The
New York Times offered his thoughts on the matter and the declining
popularity of America as it relates to our position on Mugabe’s
dictatorship.
PERSPECTIVE
SO POPULAR, SO SPINELESS
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published July 16, 2008: New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
Much ink has been spilled lately decrying the decline in American
popularity around the world under President Bush. Polls tell us how
China is now more popular in Asia than America and how few Europeans say
they identify with the United States. I am sure there is truth to these
polls. We should have done better in Iraq. An America that presides over
Abu Ghraib, torture and Guantánamo Bay deserves a thumbs-down.
But America is not and never has been just about those things, which is
why I also find some of these poll results self-indulgent, knee-jerk and
borderline silly. Friday’s vote at the U.N. on Zimbabwe reminded me why.
Maybe Asians, Europeans, Latin Americans and Africans don’t like a world
of too much American power — “Mr. Big” got a little too big for them.
But how would they like a world of too little American power? With
America’s overextended military and overextended banks, that is the
world into which we may be heading.
TWO FOR THE ROAD
Welcome to a world of too much Russian and Chinese power. I am neither a
Russia-basher nor a China-basher. But there was something truly filthy
about Russia’s and China’s vetoes of the American-led U.N. Security
Council effort to impose targeted sanctions on Robert Mugabe’s ruling
clique in Zimbabwe.
The U.S. put forward a simple Security Council resolution, calling for
an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, the appointment of a U.N. mediator, plus
travel and financial restrictions on the dictator Mugabe and 13 top
military and government officials for stealing the Zimbabwe election and
essentially mugging an entire country in broad daylight.
In the first round of Zimbabwe’s elections, on March 29, the opposition
leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won nearly 48 percent of the vote compared
with 42 percent for Mugabe. This prompted Mugabe and his henchmen to
begin a campaign of killing and intimidation against Tsvangirai
supporters that eventually forced the opposition to pull out of the
second-round runoff vote just to stay alive.
Even before the runoff, Mugabe declared that he would disregard the
results if his ZANU-PF party lost. Or as he put it: “We are not going to
give up our country because of a mere X” on some paper ballot.
STOP THIEF!
And so, of course, Mugabe “won” in one of the most blatantly stolen
elections ever — in a country already mired in misrule, unemployment,
hunger and inflation. Some 25 percent of Zimbabwe’s people have now
taken refuge in neighboring states. (I have close friends from Zimbabwe,
and one of my daughters worked there in an H.I.V.-AIDS community center
in January.) The Associated Press reported in May from Zimbabwe “that
annual inflation rose this month to 1,063,572 percent, based on prices
of a basket of basic foodstuffs.” Zimbabwe’s currency has become so
devalued, the A.P. explained, that “a loaf of bread now costs what 12
new cars did a decade ago.”
No matter. Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, argued that the
targeted sanctions that the U.S. and others wanted to impose on Mugabe’s
clique exceeded the Security Council’s mandate. “We believe such
practices to be illegitimate and dangerous,” he said, describing the
resolution as one more obvious “attempt to take the Council beyond its
charter prerogatives.” Veto!
Mugabe’s campaign of murder and intimidation didn’t strike Churkin as
“illegitimate and dangerous” — only the U.N. resolution to bring a halt
to it was “illegitimate and dangerous.” Shameful. Meanwhile, China is
hosting the Olympics, a celebration of the human spirit, while defending
Mugabe’s right to crush his own people’s spirit.
But when it comes to pure, rancid moral corruption, no one can top South
Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, and his stooge at the U.N., Dumisani
Kumalo. They have done everything they can to prevent any meaningful
U.N. pressure on the Mugabe dictatorship.
As The Times reported, America’s U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad,
“accused South Africa of protecting the ‘horrible regime in Zimbabwe,’ ”
calling this particularly disturbing given that it was precisely
international economic sanctions that brought down South Africa’s
apartheid government, which had long oppressed that country’s blacks.
So let us now coin the Mbeki Rule: When whites persecute blacks, no
amount of U.N. sanctions is too much. And when blacks persecute blacks,
any amount of U.N. sanctions is too much.
Which brings me back to America. Perfect we are not, but America still
has some moral backbone. There are travesties we will not tolerate. The
U.N. vote on Zimbabwe demonstrates that this is not true for these
“popular” countries — called Russia or China or South Africa — that have
no problem siding with a man who is pulverizing his own people.
So, yes, we’re not so popular in Europe and Asia anymore. I guess they
would prefer a world in which America was weaker, where leaders with the
values of Vladimir Putin and Thabo Mbeki had a greater say, and where
the desperate voices for change in Zimbabwe would, well, just shut up.
© 2008 by The New York Times & Thomas L. Friedman. All Rights Reserved
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