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Jun 25, 2008 11:44 PM
My friend Jamie Kirchick published an op-ed in the New York Sun yesterday pointing out the cretinous rhetoric (and rhetoric is all it amounts to) of the U.N. with respect to Robert Mugabe:
Damn right. However, Jamie believes that a military intervention is the only option for Zimbabwe now that the legitimately elected opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been bullied out of participating in the run-off election, which is really just a second chance for Zimbabweans to vote for Mugabe lest they require a third and fourth. Jamie knows far more about this wretched and luckless country than I do but I find Paul Wolfowitz's argument in the Wall Street Journal more compelling. He says that a swelling chorus of criticism by individual countries -- including those in Africa -- is or will be enough to force the Harare regime to recognize its people's right to self-determination:
Two questions that must be asked of a dictatorship before committing to a policy of its removal by a foreign military are as follows: Does the country have a strong political opposition with enough popular support to topple -- if only with outside encouragement -- the criminal regime peaceably or by use of its own forces? Is the international community prepared to isolate the regime and rob it of its usual band of accomplices? That there was even an election with an alternative candidate on the ballot makes Zimbabwe different from Iraq. There is still the chance that inducements to leave office quietly will have their effect on Mugabe, who has had an embarrassing spotlight trained on him for months and only because of his myriad human rights abuses ("But I don't even sponsor Islamic terrorists!" must be among his pathetic final thoughts in office). And although the prospect of seeing a murderous tyrant "retire" in lush surroundings in South Africa, which is an inducement Wolfowitz commends, should not sit well with any person of conscience, one can't really envision an international military invasion further galvanizing neighboring African countries against Mugabe. This is one case in which pointing a finger, screaming at the top of your lungs, and letting a growing scandal do its nasty work may yet produce the right result.
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