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Ear to the Ground

Mugabe’s Last Stand?

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Posted on Dec 5, 2008
Mugabe
U.S. Air Force / Tech. Sgt. Jeremy Lock

You know you’re in bad shape when Desmond Tutu calls for your ouster by force.

The U.S. has finally decided that it is “well past time” for Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe to be shown the door. This after he stole an election in June, subverted a power-sharing arrangement and run his once-prosperous nation into the ground.


The New York Times:

With Zimbabwe in the midst record-setting inflation, rampant hunger and a cholera epidemic, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that it was “well past time” for President Robert G. Mugabe to go.

Referring to the cholera death toll, now nearing 600, she said, “If this is not evidence to the international community to stand up for what is right, I don’t know what would be.”

Her remarks, made in Copenhagen, seemed intended to pressure those African nations disinclined to nudge Mr. Mugabe, an 84-year-old hero of Zimbabwe’s liberation, toward the door. His government remains paralyzed by a stalemated power-sharing deal.

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By Witters, December 7, 2008 at 11:42 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Before bellicosity and righteousness generate the usual atrocities, perhaps it might be useful to understand in some depth what is - and has been - going on in Zimbabwe.  Try this link to the London Review of Books.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n23/mamd01_.html

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By Little Brother, December 7, 2008 at 4:16 pm #

Mugabe and soon-to-be-ex-President Unitard would make ideal cellmates!

It practically has sitcom potential!

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By Inherit The Wind, December 7, 2008 at 1:15 am #

Where’s FolkTailmaker to tell us everything we know about Mugabe is a CIA/Mossad plot?  I mean, I can’t WAIT for FT & Co to tell us it’s all a conspiracy and Mugabe really is a good guy and a true Socialist, cleaning up the mess…and that most everything we know about hims is really Zionist/CIA propaganda.

After all, we’ve watched Mugabe systematically destroy his once-beautiful, once-prosperous nation, but I’m sure FT and the gang will tell us “NO!!” that we are just dupes and they know best.

Yeah, as Chico Marx said: “Who you gonna believe: Me or your own eyes?”

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By Margaret Currey, December 6, 2008 at 4:00 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

This thug in Zimbabwe is not much different than the thug we have in office, only difference is we have good water so far, of course if Bush stayed any longer all the enviromental damage would leave the rich very rich and the poor very poor.

Example only when most jobs were outsourced and jobs given to those who worked the most for the least did people sit up and take notice.

The good thing is this Mulgbe is old and might happen to be in bad health.

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By George B, December 6, 2008 at 10:12 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

But it was perfectly OK for G W Bush to steal elections twice!!!
Maybe he should send some troops to Afghanistan, then he’ll be on the right side!
Arrogant Americans!

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By cyrena, December 6, 2008 at 1:57 am #

Ah Ha!! So…the “US” has finally DECIDED, dot, dot, dot. How long is it gonna take for us to get away from it always being ‘the US’ that ‘decides’ everything, including when they ‘decide’ to turn a blind eye.

To answer my own question, (maybe)…

•  “…With Zimbabwe in the midst record-setting inflation, rampant hunger and a cholera epidemic, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that it was “well past time” for President Robert G. Mugabe to go…”

Maybe when ‘the US’ isn’t Condi the Rice. Like…when her ass is gone, along with all the rest of the Global Hegemony Enforcing Gangster Administration of Dick Bush. It’s been long past time for Mugabe to be vanished since before he even came to power. So why didn’t Condi the Rice set up some collaboration with the rest of the world community to do something about him?  That’s a rhetorical question of course, since these thugs have done everything they can to undermine the UN and the International Community, acting unilaterally wherever and whenever they feel like it.

Or, why not just sic the CIA on Mugabe like they’ve done with so many other regimes in the past, and just insert their own puppets, if they thought he needed to be gone. That’s what they did to Saddam, and countless others before him, in various government locations throughout the world. Iran, Cuba, Peru, Chile, Pakistan, Columbia…. I could go on. So, that’s another rhetorical question, because it all goes back to being whatever the US ‘decides’. Apparently, Mugabe has been perfectly OK with the current regime in the US. Typical.

Sad as it is to say, I don’t expect any improvement on the Imperial Mentality to come from Ms. Rice’s successor, Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton. We’ve heard from her on these issues before, (Bosnian independence, Georgia, Russia, Iraq, Iran, etc). For instance, in her approval of the invasion of Iraq, it was her conviction that Saddam never did anything without being forced by military threat or action.
Now if indeed the new Obama Administration will be calling the shots, it might be OK. Condi the Rice is not a rogue. She’s carrying out the thugs agenda, and quite willingly, since it’s her’s as well. Hillary on the other hand, in pursuit of the SAME agenda, based on her SAME hawkishness and air of Imperial Majesty, could very well go rogue and maintain the long held and current attitude that the US is the ‘decider’ for the world. That’s not good.

Meantime, she points to all of the cholera death toll as a reason for the international community to take action. Right. So, it’s the fault of the International Community, never mind that body has been taken over by the US as well. Never mind that there have been far more deaths of civilian Iraqis and Afghans due to US military aggression, than there have from even the devastating numbers that have died in Zimbabwe from the cholera.

The hubris and hypocrisy of these thugs knows no bounds.

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By jchapin, December 5, 2008 at 6:29 pm #

I hate to say it, but I am so tired of the U.S. playing rescue mission.  The purpose of war is to conquer.  Therefore, if we are going to use our financial and human resources to invade a nation, we should colonize it.  Otherwise, we are going to run out of resources.  Of course, what we should really do is to mind our own business and not go to war at all, but I am not sure that man (yes, I am leaving women out intentionally) is capable of peace anymore.

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By diamond, December 5, 2008 at 5:57 pm #

It’s not America’s place to decide Mugabe’s fate. All of the African nations will have to unite (for once) and throw him out. The trouble is, that means war because the army is keeping Mugabe in power and that would be dangerous unless they were completely united so that no other African countries would be on Mugabe’s side and turn an intervention into a kind of African world war II. But they’ll only do anything at all when the cholera starts spreading all over Africa and they are personally threatened. I’ve always believed that there should be a group of United Nations troops on permanent standby to go into countries such as Sudan and Zimbabwe and intervene when the ruler clearly has no legitimacy and is threatening the well-being of his own people and that of the region, long before it reaches the tragic and disastrous stage it has in Zimbabwe. No one nation should have the power or the responsibility of intervening as the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan more or less in defiance of the United Nations and with only a fig leaf such as the ‘coalition of the willing’ to help them pretend they weren’t invaders. Morgan T. should have nothing more to do with the sham of a government of national unity which is just an excuse to keep a senile and dangerous man, and the army that backs him, in power. South Africa could probably force Mugabe from power on its own if it had the guts to take a stand politically but Mugabe would need to be told he would not face a trip to the Hague and his army henchmen would also expect to get a ‘don’t go to jail’ card but it would be worth it for the sake of the people of Zimbabwe to let these criminals go and live in any country that will have them.

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By AndrewX, December 5, 2008 at 5:24 pm #

Talk is cheap…...

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