04 June 2008
Couldn't We See This Coming?
Zimbabwe is a sovereign state. There, I said it. That was hard to say because the government of Robert Mugabe seems to have done its best to pursue illegitimacy. On Wednesday, Mugabe's political opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, was arrested at a roadblock by the Zimbabwean police (read: Mugabe's henchmen). Tsvangirai had been in self-imposed exile for fear of assassination following the March elections in which he narrowly defeated Mugabe. He recently reemerged to build support and momentum for the runoff election scheduled for June 27th. However, Mugabe is making it clear he has no intention of leaving office, and that he will not be deterred by the international community of concerned, yet powerless NGOs and disaffected Western governments. As long as there is an illusion of democracy in Zimbabwe, an enabler in Thabo Mbeki and little interest from Western states, Mugabe will continue his cowardly and shameful dictatorship - and Zimbabweans will continue to suffer.
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2 comments:
Todd,
I finally caught up with you. How are you doing? How is married life? What are you doing? Drop me a quick note if you have a chance.
I still correspond with Pastor Fernando and support Chrsito Vive. He is making progress and keeps promising to send photos but so far, no luck. He does write and I run hiw letters through FreeTranslation.com and get the general gist. I hope he is able to get someone to translate my letters.
Gotta go,
Dave
This raises the interesting question of rights and responsibilities. You remark that Zimbabwe is a sovereign state, and then you imply that other states should pressure Zimbabwe to conform to other (external) standards. So what are the philosophical boundaries of "sovereign state"? Are dictatorships by definition invalid? How about true monarchies? Or oligarchies? (and what country isn't run by some sort of oligarchy?)
This is not to say I approve of what Mugabe is doing. From what I can tell (having only the media as a source of information), he is very selfish and very cruel. On the other hand, if the international community is going to intervene, even if only by economic and political pressure, by what standard is this to be justified? Since we're all human with all the negative inclinations of humans, where along the continuum is the line to be drawn? And are only nations on the upper (positive) side of that line allowed to intervene in a case like Zimbabwe's? It seems that a lot of "kettles" are calling a lot of "pots" "black".
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