"Go To Hell"
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Begone I Say And Let Us Have Done With You | Contra Tyrannum | Robert Mugabe | Zimbabwe — Comments (26) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
That is the rebuke that Robert Mugabe commonly reserves for his critics when they take him to task for plundering and annihilating Zimbabwe in order to further his need for self-aggrandizement. Nowadays, "Go to Hell" may as well be replaced by "Come to Zimbabwe." The two phrases mean the same thing, after all:
Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president, said on Friday that liberation war veterans would take up arms if he lost a June 27 presidential run-off vote.
Mr Mugabe told youth members of his ruling Zanu-PF party in Harare that the veterans would launch a new bush war if the election was won by the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
"They said if this country goes back into white hands just because we have used a pen [to vote], `we will return to the bush to fight'," Mr Mugabe said.
His comments came as James McGee, the US ambassador in Harare, said 30,000 potential opposition supporters had been displaced from their homes as part of brutal tactics by the Mugabe government to swing the run-off in his favour.
Mr McGee, who was speaking by telephone from Harare, said the conditions ahead of the poll were the worst he had ever witnessed, while another western diplomat said Zanu-PF was determined to secure an election victory "at any cost".
"It's very, very obvious that there is political intimidation, there's thuggery, there's outright theft, murder, happening here in Zimbabwe," Mr McGee said. "In my long diplomatic career, I have never seen anything comparable to this."
It takes a special kind of Hellish character to hold an entire nation hostage to your own political whims. Mugabe has that character in spades. Milton would likely have found it easier to write of Lucifer's depredations than to recount the nightmarish deeds of Robert Mugabe.
After all, there is still a chance that Lucifer is purely a fictional character. Mugabe, alas, is all too real.
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Mao.
Stalin.
Hitler.
Pol Pot.
Fidel.
Idi Amin.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
Idi Amin Dada was already in exile by the time I was aware of world events. Pol Pot was worse, yes, but he was chased into the wilderness. Fidel has been completely outdone by Mugabe in the misery index.
...don't worry. Everyone does.
Not to mention his puppet protege: "Of the bears." Someone contact Mr Colbert!
...in a noble way. And I applaud that, because sovereignty means something. However, there's something else going on in Russia as well that I can't help but deplore.
but I see a glass half-full. He's obeyed the constitution, albeit creatively (as our own people do) and now they're trying to iron out an independent judiciary and root out corruption. The siloviki, which is what they call the faction of ex-KGB types in government, aren't as dominant as we may have thought even last fall. They also have a 13% flat tax and Putin has even proposed a seven year mineral extraction tax holiday for firms who will develop certain oil fields.
Meanwhile, Zyuganov admitted that the Russian Communist Party has fewer members (93,000) than there were polling stations (96,300 or so) in the last two elections. Zhirinovsky rightfully seen as a failed answer to Huey Long and, as much as we like Garry Kasparov, he really hasn't succeeded in business and politics as he did in competitive chess. In fact, The Other Russia is an absurdly big tent that includes everyone from anarchists to skinheads and everything in between, and the other opposition parties really don't have their act together and will need time to mature.
Sure, there are problems and unanswered questions but my friends over there are getting along reasonably well and it's an open society now. I chose to say "glass half full" because they have such enormous potential and we're better off encouraging them and not needlessly antagonizing them, which is my one major foreign policy difference with McCain.
...I'll just say, from personal experience, Russian foreign policy isn't as good for certain countries as US foreign policy. Putin is having to ensure dictatorship in his country in order to pursue an over-ambitious foreign policy. And the only reason it's working is oil prices. Putin is a bubble dictator. Like Chavez. If either had integrity their people would be rich and strong. Now both countries are in a set track of oppression.
but I think a lot of this is grandstanding. Sometimes the nation behaves as an old man desperate to feel important again, even as its true nature is one of youth and vitality.
I don't see any reason why we should deal with Russia in less good faith than we do with China. That's my problem with McCain's attitude, that we have enough to work through as it is without creating new issues.
I wasn't really thrilled with independence for Kosovo and I think the Russians have a valid reason to dread a precedent that could lead to secession from their own federation. As for Abkhazia and similar situations, I don't have favorites because these ethnocentric conflicts just seem so useless to my American perspective, but of course it's a fact of life that the rest of the world doesn't appreciate diversity and harmony the way we do. Much needs to be done.
If you care about American interests I don't see how Abkhazia is not a favorite cause of yours. Or how you don't have an opinion, or a further discussion on what Georgia has undergone recently. It's simply an issue of national sovereignty being respected. Putin doesn't care about that, because the USSR is his, and any abrogation of that will be bombed and sabotaged and destroyed.
America has done the same thing, across the world.
But there's an obvious fundamental difference between the two "imperialist" forces. I'm posting this now and no one is pounding on my door, and if they do I'll laugh at them. Bush is horrible, a criminal! I'm waiting, and nothing. No cops at my door, no fear in my mind.
Free speech is everything in what we're discussing. (Cheney is a transsexual! Waiting, waiting, nothing.) Free speech is free politics.
Russia is, therefore, not going well. Any region that gets away from them while they have the chance is going to have my support.
I could have stated it better because it's late.
Of course Georgia is on the right side of the Abkhazia conflict and I hope the Kremlin will play down the recent tough talk. I was really getting at how stupid it seems to me that all these little places want to break away for ethnocentric reasons. Sure it's easy for me to say as someone removed from the territory but it's very different from the life we live here, where we might be neighbors with all sorts of denominations and ethnicities but think of ourselves as one society. We could talk at length about the history of the Northern Ireland conflict but it doesn't look any less stupid by our standards.
I'll have to expand on those thoughts another time when I'm not so tired. I can say right now that it really is a case where I can only wish that things were better than they are over there. Everyone gets discouraged when a vision takes longer to come together than we might have hoped.
I promise I won't offer any Kremlin apologia when I'm visiting eastern Europe in a few months. I do have that much political sense.
Putin is a DISASTER.
The fact that you characterize satisfaction with the Russian government as making you a Slavophile means that you are placing Russians at the head of Slavic cultures.
If you care about Slavs, then Russia must behave so that non-Russian Slavs can be free.
Non-Russian Slavs love America more than Americans do. You will not find more eager American allies who see the world from a very much RedState framework.
Show support for the people of Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic States, Poland, etc. Its the Reagan way!
Putin tells the truth and only wants what's best for his country.
I never said I find "satisfaction" in the current state of Russian affairs, only optimism for the long term.
And I love the Slavic peoples of Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states and Belarus, and I will entertain no thoughts of visiting the latter until Lukashenko is gone. It's no secret that Russian supremacy was always the game in Soviet times and it should never be enjoyed at the expense of other states again.
And I haven't forgotten how the Baltic states led the way in secession from the USSR, and I thought that whole row between Russia and Estonia last year was stupid, mostly on the part of the Russians. Those Soviet troops memorialized by the statue were conscripts whose only choice was to fight the Nazis or be shot by their own superiors.
I'm still wondering if all we did in Kosovo was to support an Islamist insurgency against a sovereign federal state. The ethnic cleansing thing was entirely wrong but, as a veteran of that theater told me, there were no clean hands in the former Yugoslavia. I still think we'll be in a mess if the independence of Kosovo will be answered with Russian recognition of an independent Abkhazia, although that would probably backfire on them pretty quickly if other oblasts and republics use it to justify their own secession.
I don't claim to have the last word on any of this and I don't want to. I just try not to be so alarmist about too many things.
to criticize the government may have more do with the success of Other Russia than a mere failure to "get their act together."
Kasparov himself was arrested in pursuing his "campaign" --i.e. he really wasn't free to campaign.
Russia has been sliding each and every year away from the West. Not saying carrots are inappropriate, but a failure to recognize the reality that "rule of law" is absent in Russia makes any other analysis worthy of being ignored.
and nobody's silenced Yulia Latynina yet.
Personally, I think many of the media killings were done by free agents on their own initiative, which is of course even more dangerous than state-sanctioned violence. Just my feeling.
You're right about one thing: closing newspapers and TV stations is something that we just don't do here.
Meanwhile, we're all eligible to buy stock in Gazprom. I wouldn't feel any worse about that than buying Chinese stock.
in Venezuela, Russia, China, Cuba, Burma.
But not as a negative example.
After all, there is still a chance that Lucifer is purely a fictional character. Mugabe, alas, is all too real.
Perhaps. On the other hand, if he is indeed a real character, then he's far worse than Mugabe and every other dictator combined together since six thousands years ago.
But I digress...
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Daniel 2:20 And he [God] changeth the times and seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding.
he's been for two decades, especially the last decade when he's been routinely lionized by the Eurotrash and the UN.
We - or somebody - should have taken this two bit twig out years ago. One dollar spent on a match 308 would have done more for the people of Zimbabwe than the millions in foreign aid that's been pissed away.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
then he most certainly was inspired by someone real. I have to say, I can't think of anyone from my lifetime besides Saddam Hussein who's been so corrupted by power and yet lingered to extend the misery so excruciatingly. Ceaucescu's fall was quick, at least.
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