There was a good essay about Zimbabwe in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, pointing out how all the Left-wing journalists, politicians, and academics who have been Mugabe cheerleaders are now trying to cover their tracks.
Some samples:As Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, presides over what might be the most rapid disintegration yet of a modern nation-state, it has become de rigueur for journalists, politicians and academics to offer what has become a near-universal analysis: Mugabe, who has ruled his country uninterrupted for 27 years, was a promising leader who became corrupted over time by power.
This meme was popularized not long after Mugabe began seizing white-owned farms in 2000. Four years ago, in response to these raids, the New York Times editorialized that "in 23 years as president, Mr. Mugabe has gone from independence hero to tyrant." Earlier this week, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said that "I’m just devastated by what I can’t explain, by what seems to be an aberration, this sudden change in character." ... But this popular conception of Mugabe — propagated by the liberals who championed him in the 1970s and 1980s — is absolutely wrong. From the beginning of his political career, Mugabe was not just a Marxist but one who repeatedly made clear his intention to run Zimbabwe as an authoritarian, one-party state. ...And over several years in the early 1980s, Mugabe executed what arguably might be the worst of his many atrocities, a campaign of terror against the minority Ndebele tribe in which he unleashed a North Korean-trained army unit that killed between 10,000 and 30,000 people.
Yet, even in the midst of these various crimes, Mugabe never lost his fan base in the West. In 1986, the University of Massachusetts Amherst bestowed on Mugabe an honorary doctorate of laws just as he was completing his genocide against the Ndebele. ...In 2000, at the start of Mugabe’s seizures of white land, New York Times columnist (and early Mugabe fan) Anthony Lewis admitted, on behalf of quite a few journalists, diplomats and academics in the West, "how wrong we were" about Mugabe. But he offered the qualification, "at least over time." Lewis, and everyone else who ever feted Mugabe, was not just proved wrong about the despot "at least over time." They were wrong the minute they endorsed him.
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Written By:
Aldo
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You mean like this guy Aldo? |
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Written By:
Retief
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Score one for you, Retief. Reagan received a visiting head of state, and the White House put out a pro forma press release saying complimentary things about him. That is a red herring, though, and I think you know it.
The same type of ideological blinders that caused the Left to reflexively condemn the Duke Lacrosse players had them shaking pom-poms for Mugabe long after it was clear that he was a monster. And now they are starting over again with Hugo Chavez. |
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Written By:
Aldo
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It’s the Democrat’s dream vision for America, with them as an American ZANU-PF smashing a boot into human faces forever. |
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Written By:
E. Brown
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http://saturninretrograde.blogspot.com
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Of course it is Aldo. Funny how easily you recognize a red herring when it’s about Reagan praising Mugabe and in the next sentence continue with your "liberals love the monster Mugabe" claptrap. |
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Written By:
Retief
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Nope, it’s fully documented that they supported him wholeheartedly for years, your Orwellian desire to erase the truth notwithstanding |
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Written By:
E. Brown
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http://saturninretrograde.blogspot.com
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Funny how easily you recognize a red herring when it’s about Reagan praising Mugabe and in the next sentence continue with your "liberals love the monster Mugabe" claptrap. That’s a bogus comparison. Your single example of the Reagan White House performing an act of diplomatic Kabuki theatre in the early 1980’s does not change the fact that it was not Reaganites who were propping up Mugabe’s image in the West for 30 years, but the Left, blinded by ideological affection for a black, Marxist, post-colonial regime.
I used the example of the Duke case, but the better analogy is the Left’s, support for Stalin. The very institutions in our society that are charged with truth-seeking, academia and journalism, were the ones rushing to offer Mugabe the cover of legitimacy, with their honorary degrees and fawning coverage.
If you missed them do it with Stalin, and Fidel, and Mugabe, don’t worry. We’ll see it again with Hugo Chavez and maybe even A’jad. |
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Written By:
Aldo
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"We’ll see it again with Hugo Chavez and maybe even A’jad."
Yep, Chavez is a fascistic Peronista who’s smart enough to make red his favorite color instead of brown. Look at how the leftfilth eat him up.
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Written By:
E. Brown
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http://saturninretrograde.blogspot.com
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Of course it is Aldo. Funny how easily you recognize a red herring when it’s about Reagan praising Mugabe and in the next sentence continue with your "liberals love the monster Mugabe" claptrap. By the time Reagan was in office, Mugabe was already in power thanks to Jimmy Carter.
I suspect that if Reagan won in ’76 the Mugabe disaster may have been averted. Winning the cold War was key with Reagan, and he was willing to fight in Afganistan, Angola, El Salvador, etc., so he likely would have fought in Rhodesia as well. |
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Written By:
Don
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Don,
No way would we have fought for Rhodesia. |
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Written By:
Harun
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And, that was one of decolonialization’s last wars. The United States has pretty much supported decolonialism, and would have been hard pressed not to welcome Mugabe right after his victory, especially since it was a negotiated one and they had won free elections.
This is quite similar to Chavez now, where we don’t like him, but he did win "elections" so we tolerate him. And perhaps progressives actually like him for his policies.
But when we get to North Korea, Zimbabwe, etc., you are only going to find hard, hard left people liking those regimes. Stalinists, etc. Not social democrats.
Cuba is different, I think, because of the cool music, rum, and the revolutionary chic aspect, so it attracts perhaps more mainstream leftists, as a fantasy really. |
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Written By:
Harun
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Mugabe’s been on my list of "World Leaders most deserving a MOAB" for years. |
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Written By:
SDN
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