An IBD Editorial: Mugabe's Madness

Hospitals cannot even hydrate patients, let alone put bandages on them. The army is restless. Businessmen who refuse to cut prices in half are being arrested.

National Geographic reported 90% of all ranched animals slaughtered, and 60% of all rare wildlife gone. Each month, thousands of Zimbabweans flee to neighboring South Africa.

It’s tempting to think this can’t go on. Yet it does, just as Fidel Castro’s regime does. A tight little party elite keeps itself fed, clothed and loyal to the Mugabe regime, wallowing in luxury. Their only imperative: Stay in power. Three forces help them do that.

One, Mugabe’s control of his country’s strategic resources.

As hellish as operating conditions are in Zimbabwe, Mugabe has gotten his hands on the only resources of critical value to global industries that always have willing buyers.

Read it all.

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Posted in * International News & Commentary, Africa

14 comments on “An IBD Editorial: Mugabe's Madness

  1. Pageantmaster Ù† says:

    South Africa is the key.

  2. Alice Linsley says:

    Prayer is the key.

  3. Christopher Hathaway says:

    A good shot with one bullet to his brain might work as well.

  4. Daniel says:

    Let’s not forget how the “useful idiots” in the hierarchy of the United Methodist Church have done their best to never criticize Mugabe and his murderous regime. They can rally on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and call for the impeachment of Bush, but they don’t have the guts and strength of faith to go to Harare and do the same about Mugabe. Ah – how easy it is to be a limousine liberal inside the Beltway and the ecclesiastical corridors of power within the mainline U.S. denominations when there is no threat to your personal safety.

    Use the search term “zimbabwe” on http://www.umc.org to see how they talk all around what the real issues are.

  5. Reactionary says:

    What I want to know is when are we going to invade to overthrow this murderous dictator?

  6. FrankV says:

    I have read Kathy Buckle’s letters from Zimbabwe and it is hard to believe that something like Mugabe and his regime can exist on this planet. Why South Africa doesn’t intervene is beyond my comprehension. They are inheriting the problem with all the refuges pouring over the border. Get the white farmers back (if they would even come back) and at least start growing food again. I read where the Anglican Clergy there also suck up to Mugabe. Go figure!

  7. Terry Tee says:

    There are those in the US who think that Mugabe is just dandy. Recently at Schuler’s Bookstore in Grand Rapids I found on the magazine racks a journal called Black Scholar which had devoted its entire issue to ‘scholarly’ articles explaining by Mugabe and his band of merry men were right (and being traduced by the West etc). The articles were replete with footnotes to give the impression of scholarship; the content was nonsense. The list of contributors revealed one to belong to the English language department of the Curban Communist party in Havana; another was spokesman for the Zimbabwe Government in London. It would be risible if it were not for the fact that this represents an African American apologia for a wicked dictator who is creating enormous suffering for Afirican people. It just confirms, I am afraid, the general impression that Black Studies are not to be taken seriously.

  8. Terry Tee says:

    Oh dear. For by Mugabe read why Mugabe. I ought also to explain that I was on a visit to Grand Rapids.

  9. AnglicanFirst says:

    Mugabe is part of the destructive and violent Marxist-Leninist-Maoist legacy of the Cold War.

    They claimed to revolutionaries opposing oppression and saviors of the people with a new idea leading to a utopian paradise.

    They all ended up as murdering and self-serving murderers and common thugs.

    But still, the progressives in the United States continue to look upon them as heroes while ignoring their obvious and very public criminal and murderous behavior.

    Witness the continuing progressive adulation of Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra, both COMINTERN hired assassins, and the emerging meglomaniac, Cesar Chavez.

  10. TACit says:

    Umm, would that be Hugo Chavez, #10?

  11. AnglicanFirst says:

    Correction to #10.

    You are correct #11. I meant Hugo Chavez not Cesar Chavez.

  12. Jeffersonian says:

    I’m sure the UN will get right on this. Well, maybe after passing a few dozen more important resolutions on how Israel is the Worst Country Ever, that is. Priorities, people, priorities.

  13. austin says:

    To my mind the most disgusting feature of this is the way the British establishment has both washed its hands of responsibility for a situation it engineered and abandoned the British settlers left in Zimbabwe, or scattered around the world. White Rhodesians were the most supportive, per capita, of the British cause in WWI and WWII of any colony or dominion. They resisted the imposition of majority rule because they predicted chaos, repression, and starvation. HMG dismissed their concerns in the rush to decolonize. It’s hard to say the colonists had no case, in retrospect, but they are still being punished by the home country.

  14. Pageantmaster Ù† says:

    #14 There may be much truth in what you say, in particular the service at our side in the European conflicts. However, almost bankrupted, without Marshall aid, the British Empire was dismantled after WWII at the insistence of the UN and US government. Decolonisation was an imperative of US foreign policy throughout the period and applied not only to Britain but European territories. It was done in a rush – many of the worlds conflicts have their roots in the chaos that ensued.

    It is only in the last 30 years that our economy recovered to the extent that we are the worlds fifth largest economy having just been passed by China and our army you have to remember is smaller than the USMC. It is stretched to the hilt by its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    In Zimbabwe, Blair’s government did make attempts to do something but such interventions as were made proved counterproductive. I know many Zimbabweans here; I believe that the farms are pretty much wrecked. The suffering has been and is being felt by by all Zimbabweans of all races. There is nothing that the UK can do without the cooperation of others and in particular Zimbabwe’s neighbors and crucially South Africa. Politically they have preferred to close their eyes to the chaos and rape of this country rather than grasping the nettle, but like Darfur, few come out of it well.

    Consider the quote from the thread below:
    ‘The world is a dangerous place to live — not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.’
    –Albert Einstein