Seriously, I don’t understand how this can happen.
I’m a fairly politically neutral person. I am open minded, patient, and, I think, fairly balanced in my views. But this… this really pisses me off. How can we claim we’re in Iraq to rid them of a tyrannical and despotic ruler when this is allowed to happen:
I consider myself a pretty patriotic American. But I find it hard to defend us as the Doers of What (We Think) is Right, when something like this is merely scoffed at.
And now, I set myself up for pittings left and right, I’m sure. But so be it.
What are the chances the world would sit idly by if the races of these people were reversed? Well, okay, sure, now Mugabe is being an equal opportunity tyrant, and his entire country, and all her races, are suffering. But so many white people have been attacked, slaughtered, raped, brutalized, tortured, and imprisoned in the name of fighting “colonial powers”, that I find it hard to believe that if the roles were reversed, no one would have said anything at all.
Plenty of things were said, but noone really was prepared to do anything. Mugabwe didn’t just take land off white folk and give it to blacks, he took it off white folk and gave it to his supporters. And I’ll put money on the fact that the land leases aren’t given to supporters of his political rivals. I wouldn’t have a problem with nationalized farmland if I thought for one second that it would be divided up fairly amongst the people, and that the people voted for the land to be nationalised.
Mugabe is a brutal, racist thug, and I can’t think that anyone in this forum would be fool enough to support him. But the sad fact is that it’s Africa, and America in aggregate, and its government in particular, just doesn’t care what happens on that sad continent.
Sorry, don’t quite get what you are driving at here. Are you saying that if it were black folk having their land taken away from them, the world would be taking greater action, or what?
In any event, the world is certainly not “sitting idly by”; numerous countries have taken what actions they can, short of an illegal and so far entirely unwarranted invasion, to show their displeasure with the Mugabe government’s land policies.
I’m all for clarity; your OP leaves us all hanging as to what exactly you are advocating here. If you feel not enough is currently being done to affect the situation in Zimbabwe, please outline briefly what SHOULD be done, and by whom, and perhaps we can discuss that.
That’s bad enough, but what’s worse is that the confiscated farmland isn’t producing much any more, because those nitwits don’t know the first thing about agriculture. Go ahead and add “imminent famine” to the rest of Zimbabwe’s problems. Nationalization is just going to make a bad situation worse, since land management isn’t going to improve and no one will have any personal interest in producing anything.
Smart move there, Mugabe. Take the only people in your country with any modern knowledge of farming and kill them or run them off.
Yes, I’m saying that if a white ruler were taking these kinds of actions against a black population, the wrath of the world would be swift and merciless. Numerous countries have taken what actions they can? What’s that, a slap on the wrist, while funneling money into the UN Aid program?
What am I advocating? I’m advocating the idea that Mugabe is no less dangerous than Hussein was; I’m saying that if Hussein is such a threat to humanity that he needed to be ousted, than Mugabe is as well. I’m saying that if this:
is how the United States feels about Zimbabwe’s crisis - one that directly affects all of Sub-Saharan Africa - then what the hell are we doing in Iraq? Why isn’t it up to Iraq to resolve ITS own political crisis? Why wasn’t it up to Kuwait to defend itself from Iraq? An entire country is being annihilated, and bringing down a hunk of its surrounding continent with it, and all we can say is… Well, they just have to fix that for themselves. A tiny country was invaded, and we were there with fighter jets and soldiers to save them.
Illegal and unwarranted invasion? I’m saying that if the Iraqi invasion is “legal” enough for us to have exacted it, then this is just as legal, if not more.
Unwarranted? Why is stopping the bloodshed of thousands, and the starvation and ultimate destruction of thousands more not grounds for action?
I’m sorry, but if this were the other way around, this would have been first page news, not buried somewhere in the “Africa” section.
All I’m saying is, if we don’t have any business in Zimbabwe, then we have no business anywhere else, either.
South Africa is possibly the only country that Mugabwe would consider thinking of listening to. Can’t we convince DeBeer’s to put some pressure on then?
Careful - you’re not implying that a burning urge to bring flowing milk and honey to benighted foreigners isn’t the prime motivation of the Axis of Feebles foreign policy are you? :mad:
While I have no sympathy whatsoever with Mugabe and his murderous ilk there is an historic injustice that provides a fig-leaf for his ‘land-for-cronies’ policy.
Why should land ownership rights derived from a colonial apartheid system hold with 1% (white, and largely opponents of the liberation struggle) owning 80% of the arable land in a society where agriculture is the main industry?
The problem was never really resolved but grabbing it for your non-farming mates doesn’t look like any sort of answer.
I don’t get your line of reasoning, TellMeI’mNotCrazy. Firstly, you seem to imply it’s a race issue - if it were black people being oppressed by white people, we’d be in there like a shot, apparently - but then go on to point at Iraq as an example. It’s not a good example, however, because a) Hussein isn’t white, and b) we didn’t attack Hussein because of his oppression, even if this is the justification du jour. We invaded his country because we thought he was a threat; the fact that he was also a tyrant is merely an unsurprising yet convenient sidenote.
I don’t think the world is standing idly by - I just think that by and large, we are powerless against an idiot of such murderous magnitude as Mugabe. He is rendered immune to sanctions, since he effectively imposes them upon his own people by destroying the infrastructure that feeds them. He is immune to political pressure, since he simply doesn’t care what anyone thinks, and is willing to place the continuation of his personal power above the wellbeing of his people. We have no leverage over him short of outright invasion and deposition. I can’t think of any recent-ish examples where the US or other western nations have done this purely for motives of altruism, although I’m sure someone will be along to correct me. Given our current international reputation, I’m not convinced such an intervention would do more good than harm.
I’m not drawing a race parallel between Iraq and Zimbabwe. I’m simply saying that if one is our business, then the other one shouldn’t be any less.
We didn’t go in with guns blazing, and the various Administrations over the course of Apartheid were woefully lax for far too long, but the world was not then as it is now. And I’m saying that if Apartheid were to happen today, you bet there’d be a serious price to pay.
But fine, I’ll even cave on the race issue. Maybe I’m just being hotheaded. So I’ll drop that fight. It changes little.
We don’t play defender to the underdog? Why were we in Vietnam? Why were we in Kuwait? Why did we care what Milosevic did to the Serbs? What the Nazis did to the Jews? I guess what it comes down to for me is, I agree with **gobear’s ** statement that “we just [don’t]care what happens on that sad continent”. And I think that it’s a travesty.
That’s not why we’re there. We went there to confiscate Saddam’s WMDs and to remove him from power because of his tight connections to AlQaeda. Don’t you know anything?
I had to do that.
The Who said it best:
While my heart goes out to the oppressed everywhere, I honestly don’t understand why anyone still heeds commercial media. Would we have heard about this if all else was hunky dory with the current administration? No, we would not.
I agree generally with TwistofFate’s post, in that nationalizing privately owned land could be a good thing if done correctly. A society based on private land ownership is not better than one does rejects it, and nationalizing property does not constitute a human rights violation. There is no way to make a case for a humanitarian intervention based on this act, while there are other places where genocide is taking place and we are doing nothing.
Right now we’re (we = US, prob. also applies to UK) in a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t scenario. If we do nothing, it’s seen as not caring about Africa (I’ve heard “cus they don’t have oil” more than once :rolleyes: ). If we were to actively do something, we’d be painted as imperialist aggressors trying to keep blacks from reclaiming what’s rightfully theirs- I’m not saying this is correct; just how Mugabe’s supporters would play it. As much as I’d love to give Mugabe the boot we can’t do it without a lot of harm falling upon your average Zimbabwean. In the meanitme Mugabe gets richer (73 Mil in Zimbabwe dollars where your average Zimbabwean makes $400 a year) and more corrupt, inflation skyrockets (602%!!!), South African pressure has achieved little, and he’s tightening his grip with torture training camps, as well as clamping down on food distribution and the internet.
Things are already VERY crappy for the average Zimbabwean. I do not think the factor that decides whether action is taken or not is that things will get worse for them. Because things immediatley got better in Afganistan or Iraq?
I don’t think anyone there expects things to get better overnight, but leaving Mugabe in power certainly assures things will get worse, a lot worse, before they get better.
Not for the sake of it, no. Not usually, anyway. The following are gross over-simplifications, but:
Why were we in Vietnam?
To prevent the spread of Communism, viewed as a threat to western society. Why were we in Kuwait?
To prevent the advance of an imperialist force in a vital region to the world economy, namely the oil-producing nations of the world. Why did we care what Milosevic did to the Serbs?
This is the best example of altruistic action, and even then isn’t directly comparable for reasons I’ll come to. What the Nazis did to the Jews?
Not that we didn’t care, but this was not the motivation for waging war on Hitler. We fought back because he threatened us.
I disagree that it’s a matter of “caring”. It just generally takes a more strong motive than care to cause an invasion, for better or for worse. In the above examples you give, altruism can certainly be listed as a possible motive for action, however in all but one case I don’t believe that it is the motive that caused the action.
The one truly comparable example you give is, as I said, Milosevic. The key difference here with Zimbabwe as I see it is a matter of locality (we can get into an argument about whether this is actually a matter of race if you like), not to mention degree. Firstly, in Milosevic’s case, verifiable genocide was occurring. This is not the case with Mugabe, brutal as he is. Secondly, and IMO more crucially, Kosovo is part of Europe, and as such can be seen (reasonably or not) as coming under NATO’s purview. A peacekeeping mission in Kosovo would thus draw relatively little international disapprobation, although in the event the opposition was not insignificant. By contrast, imagine the international reaction to a Western-sponsored invasion of an African nation. The chance of such a mission gaining sufficient approval even within Europe seems to me to be minimal. There’s simply too much colonial history for altruistic motives to be taken at face value, particularly when confronting one such as Mugabe who portrays himself as a liberator from colonial oppression.
I just don’t see it as a matter of western disinterest - I don’t see how anyone can fail to be dismayed by Mugabe’s systematic destruction of a once relatively prosperous country. However I believe that any military measure taken by western nations would be disastrous, and that our politicians are aware of this. Far better to bring pressure to bear through such political means as are available, such as the Commonwealth and (more plausibly) the African Union.
I must disagree here. I can’t think of a single case of wide-scale government nationalistion of land in the 20th century that turned out well, and generally the people who have the ability and will to nationalize lot of land tend to be the types who won’t do it “correctly.”
Also, I consider ownership of private property, including land, to be a fundemental human right, on par with the freedom of speach, the right to due process, or the right to bear arms. Any society which rejects private ownership of land would be just as bad as one that executes people for speaking against the government, in my eyes.
I guess there is no way to discuss this issue without getting into a bigger discussion on private property and capitalism and all that, and I’m not prepared to enter into the historical debate that that will entail. I’ll just say that just because the few examples we have of nationalization of private property have been less than ideal does mean that it’s not worth experimenting with. This TINA (“there is no alternative”) attitude espoused by the powers-that-be today frightens me. Capitalism in its modern form has not been such a resounding success that we should abandon every other possible form of social organization. Most societies throughout the world have not had a system of private land ownership – this was a relatively recent European invention. Of course, suggesting that we question whether a society based on private property is the only or best way to do things make me a wacky commie. I still haven’t seen an example of a society with private land ownership that “turned out well,” which in my book means that it resulted in everyone living a decent, dignified life.
That’s just your own personal definition. When I speak of “human rights” I’m referring to the international standards that are accepted as law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does refer to a right to private property, but this right is set out in terms too general to be enforceable and it is questionable whether the UDHR constitutes binding law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not include any such right, and it is binding law. It is generally accepted that taking away someone’s property requires some sort of due process, which I assume was lacking here. I don’t think anyone would suggest that a deprivation of property without due process is on a par with a deprivation of life. (The due process standards for life and property are certainly much different in U.S. domestic jurisprudence.) A military intervention might be justified in the case of genocide, but it’s ridiculous to suggest it for a violation of due process regarding property.
