Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe yesterday railed against President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, calling them "international terrorists" bent on world domination like Adolf Hitler.
Mr. Mugabe departed from his text at a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to accuse Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair of illegally invading Iraq and looking to unseat governments elsewhere.
Of course, if you were Mugabe, you might be a little paranoid about being "unseated" by others who see your rule as tyrannical, oppressive and murderous. Of course, that said, it won't be by the US or Britian, and it certainly won't be the the UN which steps in to save the people of Zimbabwe. No, as in Darfur, the plight of the people being oppressed and killed will be ignored while the likes of Mugabe and the bandits who run the Sudan are left to rail against the rest of the world at UN sponsored events.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has simply become another in a long line of UN organizational forums for tin-pot dictators to spout their anti-American and anti-Western tripe.
"The voice of Mr. Bush and the voice of Mr. Blair can't decide who shall rule in Zimbabwe, who shall rule in Africa, who shall rule in Asia, who shall rule in Venezuela, who shall rule in Iran, who shall rule in Iraq," he said.
It is instructive to note with whom Mugabe aligns himself.
Of course Robert Mugabe has been the hand at the tiller which has run the ship of the prosperous nation of Zimbabwe aground on the rocks of tyranny, oppression, fraud, corruption and outright political murder and turned in into a sinking derelict.
Mr. Mugabe accused Britain and the United States of working to unseat him because of his forcible redistribution of white-owned farms among blacks, helping plunge his country into its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1980.
Regime critics in Zimbabwe and abroad say Mr. Mugabe's land policies have turned what was the breadbasket of southern Africa into a country facing mass shortages at home.
Aid groups estimate 5 million of Zimbabwe's roughly 12 million people may need food aid this year.
But that doesn't mean it's his fault, oh no, it's the Bush/Blair cabal's fault. And, this being the UN, also known as the world's largest debating club for third world dictators, Mugabe had a chance to play to supporters:
Some FAO delegates applauded several times during Mr. Mugabe's fiery speech yesterday.
It is time to consider something new in terms of an effective world body. The UN is simply no longer an appropriate vehicle for the pursuit of peaceful goals among democratic nations any longer. It has long since destroyed any credibility it might have had through its corruption and ineffectiveness.
We've seen discussions about the formation of an alternate body come and go, but at this point it should be clear that the UN is not the institution that can handle the job.
It will take a bold leader to say "enough" and pull the US out of the organization. It has had its day and its deterioration into an ineffective and expensive organization has been percipitious. It survives today on impetus, tradition and a lack of an alternative.
Maybe it's time to seriously discuss a "League of Democracies" or some alternative world organization where being a tin-pot dictator actually disqualifies you from memebership instead of automatically providing you with a forum, paid for by others, from which to spew lies, disinformation and hate.
Time and again you have criticized the UN for giving a stage to tinpot dictators such as Mugabe.
Mugabe is nothing. Meaningless.
By contrast, the Butchers of Beijing are given a place at the table, and yet this draws no protest. Indeed, Rumsfeld is meeting with them today. Whatever Mugabe’s sins, they pale in comparison to the death and destruction meted out by the Chinese Communists over the last 50 years.
When you start complaining about the real problem - our coddling of the Buthchers - I will take your complaints about Mugabe seriously. Until then, your complaints simply smack of a weird obsession with a single personality.
While I’m happy to see that you recognize the horrors committed under the authority of Communism, MK, I’m a bit curious as to why you think a totalitarian regime in a country of 12 Million should be treated the same as a (slightly freer) totalitarian regime with a population of 1.3 Billion. Moreover, since when has anyone on this site given the Chinese regime a pass?
Don’t withdraw from the UN, just defund it. We will give as much money as the French taxpayers give. Thats fair. A League of Democracies should run in parallel but carry sway over UN policy.
I would like to ask those who now defend our invasion of Iraq on humanitarian grounds if they would support using US ground troops in Zimbabwe. We could save far more lives and it would have cost us much less. In any lives saved per dollar analysis, we would be better off helping out Zimbabwe. The people also would have been grateful.
He is the leader of his country. If we are not going to invade him, we need a forum to talk to him. Any forum can become his soap box. Why not the UN? I really don’t think we are in a position to bash them. It’s not like we pay our dues regularly
Do you guys still feel badly that they were right about the lack of Nukes in Iraq?
Speaking for myself, Cindy, I would be perfectly happy to see our military sweep Mugabe from power. As you indicated, it would be a pretty easy job compared to taking down Saddam ... and that was pretty damn easy in itself. Restoring the breadbasket of Africa is certainly a tempting goal, and one with many worthy aims even from a limited, nationalistic view.
But such an event wouldn’t take place in a bubble. There is a much greater effect from planting our democratic thumbprint firmly in the center of the world’s most volatile and dangerous (to everyone) area than in taking out a thug who has no capability to threaten anyone outside his own borders. Whereas Saddam had oil and the U.N. as means of feeding his regime billions of dollars with which to project his hate around the world, Mugabe has no such power or resource. Allowing Saddam to stay while ousting Mugabe would be a bit like mowing the weeds with a push-mower instead of yanking them out by the roots.
As for "a forum to talk to him", to what effect? He’s not changing his mind about Stalinist totalitarinism and neither are we. What’s left to discuss?
I really don’t think we are in a position to bash them. It’s not like we pay our dues regularly.
We pay dues every damn day, Cindy. In case you haven’t noticed, Turtle Bay is some pretty prime real estate. Not to mention that allowing stalinist thugs and fascist fools to have any say whatsoever in international policy leads to the sort of messes that we are constantly called upon to clean up. Can you think of war that didn’t happen becasue of the U.N.? Can you think of a conflict that got better because of U.N. involvement? I sure as hell can’t. At least not until our troops hit the scene ...
