I just read an article about the conditions in Zimbabwe's jails. Crikey - Essay: Zimbabwe's prisons are death-traps - Essay: Zimbabwe's prisons are death-traps At the bottom, an ad for the blog says, "Read 25 more articles like this every day!" No thanks! I don't know what can be done by an ordinary person to help the people of Zimbabwe.
I have to say, I don't see the rationale behind doing something about Saddam Hussein but not doing something about Mugabe.
Did the US get any oil from occupied Iraq? Doesn't look like it, Randywine. Then again I've seen it as an argument that held little, if any, factual grounding even back when the Iraq invasion began. Now, back to Zimbabwe and comparisons to Saddam Hussein. Let me ask the following questions... Is southern Africa known to be a region from which violent individuals go out to kill people in a blaze of glory? Is Zimbabwe known to be a dangerous and warlike country in said region? Is it actively perusing the conquest of any of its neighbors, or has it done so or attempted to do so under the current administration? Does it hold weapons of mass destruction, which it has also employed at any time by the current government, particularly against enemy civilians? Is forcibly replacing the current government in Zimbabwe likely to achieve a stabilizing or destabilizing effect in the region? Will it have any positive long-term effects to compensate for the very likely short-term unrest and massive death tolls, or will it likely fail and ignite further conflict and suffering region-wide? How popular is Mugabe? How extensive is his support base? And are his opponents and their support base any better? Is there a truly feasible leadership just around the corner to replace him, rally the nation together, and actually not repeat the same oppression? Or is it just a bunch of Mugabe wannabes waiting for their chance to be at the top of the food-chain? Will you get the support, indifference, or active sabotage from Zimbabwe's neighboring states? Will they send in food or insurgents to supposedly liberate it from evil colonialist conquerors? And where, precisely, will you find the people to send there to conquer occupy the place for several years, and fund both their stay there and the reconstruction of a country that is already so utterly broke and dying that one in every six or seven people in a refugee in one of the nearby countries? Cost versus gain, and reality's rather grim. Savior or occupier - everything's in the eye of the beholder, and there are quite a few eyes in every country, and each has a different opinion behind it. And who is willing to step from the diplomatic path to the military one, and take the first step? So I guess we'll stick to sending food over there and hope that Mugabe's goons won't confiscate it this time. Perhaps we'll threaten him with wide-reaching sanctions, knowing all the while that expanding them beyond that which is owned and run by the ruling elite will do far more harm than good. But mostly we'll just pray. For better times and maybe for some peaceful (or not so peaceful) overthrow via locals who have the active support of most of the general populace, the means to quickly bring order, and a vision that goes beyond brutally murdering people while telling them that it's for their own good. Maybe we'll even fund a few of them... But secretly, because if it ever gets public we'll be The Bad People who Fund Violent Revolutions. Which I find ironic, considering that the alternatives are being The Bad People who Invade Countries for Purposes of Regime Change, or The Bad People who Sit Around Doing Nothing Whatsoever That is Of Any Use. If anyone knows an actual good option, please let me know. For now I'll stick to lamenting the cruelty, stupidity, and indifference of most of mankind. And maybe supporting the funding of some insurgents. Last time my country did that, some Southern Sudanese and some Iraqi Kurds got a slightly better chance at not being brutally murdered - though at the time, it wasn't nearly enough.
The sad thing is this isn't happening just in Zimbabwe, this is about the worst I have heard of but there are plenty more horror stories where that one came from and from many other places. I think bringing this to the attention of friends may be the best thing you can actually do as a concerned person, spreading awareness seems to me the only way to fight the complacency we all have too much of. Maybe there is a critical mass of awareness that has to be reached before the world tries to make things right. I hope so, I am so tired of learning how stinking rotten the world is. When you think about how many times we have been shown people starving to death for no good reason it is sort of understandable that they don't know where to start, maybe, but there are rules to follow, the world has made promises. I wish the powers that be would start keeping some of them.
Roman, my question was not so much, "Why don't we do something about Mugabe?" as much as, "Doesn't the cost/benefit analysis come out pretty similarly with Hussein?" My MP tells me that it doesn't matter if it was ultimately illegal for the US and UK to go into Iraq because an evil, human-rights-abusing tyrant was overthrown. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the Iraq invasion, he thinks that any means to an end is acceptable in one situation but not in another. I'm thinking about consistency of approach - and it seems that, "Will we get anything but a headache out of it?" is the more important rule here.
Grace, your MP sounds more like he's giving you the post-event reasoning rather than trying to backtrack through the pre-event reasoning. While I consider that not all the necessary considerations before the war in Iraq were taken properly - and I'm not considering the legal matters here but rather the consequences in and for Iraq itself, as well as the surrounding region and its effects (matters like the splintering of the populace to tribalism and internal warfare, the neighboring states' active obstruction of any attempt to stabilize Iraq, the mistaken sentiment of "they'll welcome us as liberators" that the expat Iraqis had spread without it having any real basis other than their personal hatred for Hussein, and so on...), some of them were. Robert Mugabe is a dictator. He's a petty and monstrous dictator who is destroying his own people. He has no considerations for human rights other than those of his own person, and he profits from the suffering and pain around him. And all the while, he points the finger at some distant Evil Outsider to be the blame for it all - in Mugabe's case, he really hates Britain. And that's where the parallel to Saddam Hussein ends. Robert Mugabe has limited his influence to the borders of his man-made Hell. Robert Mugabe doesn't go to wars against his neighbors. He doesn't use chemical weapons, nor did he ever have any such arms. He never launched rockets across the region. Nor did he ever fund various terrorist groups. Robert Mugabe is a harmful influence only on the people of Zimbabwe. And forcibly removing him might cause far more harm than good both to Zimbabwe and to surrounding countries. Who will replace him? Who will create order in the anarchy and chaos that will erupt? Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe are only similar in the superficial sense - their context, both local and regional, is completely different. So yes, the headache we might get out of it is a very strong consideration - only the "we" here covers everything from the southern half of Africa and beyond, to anyone who happens to become involved in the matter of Zimbabwe. That's a big headache there. Big responsibility. And big consequences.
As to who would replace Mugabe I'm guessing Morgan Changerai*, you know the guy who actually won the election... *and I'm pretty impressed with the fact that i spelt this right
Well, there's this pesky lack of stability in the country... We thought we'd have a pipeline up and running by now. Didn't work out that way!
Roman, I see what you're saying, and I don't think we disagree much, except on this point: Yes, it is big. But weren't you talking just now about the way the consequences of the Iraq war have destabilised the whole region, with problems for all involved? While Hussein and Mugabe might differ from each other, the amount of difficulty that arises from taking out either of them seems not dissimilar to me.
The main difference is that elements of the US government convinced themselves that they could stabilize the region. No one is deluded enough to think they could bring stability to Zimbabwe, especially after the example of the Iraq war.
I'm with Ba on this one. It was believed that post-war Iraq was going to be a walk in the park and a textbook example of nation-building after destroying an oppressive regime. Some people forgot that such text-books don't really exist. Well, now they and their successors know - for better and for worse.
Actually, it's precisely the opposite in the case of post-occupation nation-building. In the American context, we have Germany, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea - to name a few examples. I doubt that there's a text-book out there for that sort of thing, though.
There is a textbook for everything unfortunately, often for dummies to. I work with a girl from Zimbabwe and from what she has said on the topic the economic data quoted in media articles while bleak doesn't paint a complete picture of the reality of the situation as the general population is using other currencies and barter in their day to day business rather than the abysmal Zimbabwe dollar. So while the Zimbabwe dollar is in a terrible state a local economy limps on in some fashion.
