Zimbabwe and the world

The situation in Zimbabwe is very bad, with political opponents of Robert Mugabe being openly threatened and murdered. Here is the New York Times’ June 24 article on the Security Council’s response (the page links other recent Times articles on the same subject). But Mugabe has ignored previous Security Council statements, so they are helpless.

Ian Smith, a defender of Western civilization
who was despised and isolated by the West.
And now see what we have.

During all the years of the terrorization and murder of white farmers and the seizure of white-owned farms for Mugabe’s cronies, the UN and the West virtually ignored Zimbabwe. Now at last the West, the UN, and the Times are taking note. I’m not sure why the difference, except that now the violence is directed, not against white farmers, but against Mugabe’s black opposition. World opinion is upset about the latter, it hardly noticed the former.

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Evariste writes:

I was sickened in the car two days ago, while driving around running errands and listening to Talk of the Nation, a public radio show (with call-ins for listener questions). They had a former U.S. ambassador to Angola on the show for the sort of “expert flavor” that kind of show thrives on. In response to a caller’s question, this fine gentleman expressed his astonishment at what Mugabe has turned into. Which would have been fine, except that he then launched into a dreamy, girlish reminiscence at length of his previous admiration and respect for Mugabe as an African leader, because he dispossessed the white minority farmers and businessmen from their prominence in the Zimbabwean economy, and displaced them in favor of blacks. He only became disillusioned with Mugabe when Mugabe ran out of whites and could fully devote his malevolent attention to his black countrymen.

Let’s recap here: a U.S. ambassador expressed his longtime admiration, in very personal tones, for an African thug for his racist vilification, usurpation, and displacement of an English-speaking, European white people. He sounded like a teenage girl talking about her favorite rock star. He only became disillusioned with the thug because the thug started oppressing blacks full-time.

Kevin V. writes:

My good friend Evariste is quite right to be shocked at such a statement from a US Ambassador. Sadly, such sentiments are all-too-common in our State Department.

As bad as it is here, though, it’s even worse over at the Dead Isle. Note how, when speaking of the situation, leading British diplomat and peer, Lord Malloch Brown, refers to his own country, as qouted in the Times of London:

But now that Britain has said that it wants an end to the Mugabe regime, what can it actually do? Not much on its own, although Lord Malloch-Brown said it might now look at forcing the few British companies that still did business there to cut all ties. In answer to a question about whether Britain might strip Mugabe of his knighthood, he said drily, “I can’t imagine anyone in this room, including this minister, thinks he should keep it. But for the mangy old British lion to rise to its full height and say, this is outrageous, you’ve lost your knighthood…”—it would not, he concluded, match the gravity of the offence. “We don’t want it to be Zimbabwe versus Britain, it’s Zimbabwe versus the world,” he said.

Dead Isle, indeed.

LA replies:

Brown’s underlying point is that no nation by itself, or at least no white Western nation, has any moral authority. Only “the world,” the “international community,” has moral authority.

Imagine a world in which individual human beings are deprived of any moral authority to think, to form judgments, to speak, and to act, but they only have moral authority insofar as they act as part of a committee consisting of all human beings. The result is that each individual human being, who actually has a mind, a personality, an identity, and is capable of acting and taking responsibility, becomes nothing, while the Committee of All Humanity, which has no mind, no personality, and no ability to act or take responsibliity, becomes the sole moral agent in the world.

Apply that idea to entire nations, and you have the post-political, post-human hell that is being created by the EU, internationalist forces.

Re Evariste, Kevin is referring to the fact that both he and Evariste are former commenters at Little Green Footballs.

Gintas writes:

Mugabe was a Great Liberal Hope for Africa. I think the liberal world is shocked and embarrassed now that he is killing blacks, whereas killing whites must have been something of a birthright or even a duty. Where is Ian Smith when we need him?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 26, 2008 11:58 AM | Send