International Political Will

If only Zimbabwe mattered to a public caught up in the price of oil, home foreclosures, and the so-called “war on terror.”

The story skips briefly across the mainstream nightly news, when the cameras are turned from the self-aggrandizing speeches of the presidential contenders.

We know the name: Mugabe. He’s been in power since independence in 1980, and has thrown the country into economic chaos with his land reforms. He wanted the farmland to be owned by blacks, instead of the largely white former colonizers that ran both the farms and the country prior to 1980. You can’t really blame him; but the lasting effect of white European colonization in the developing world is the subject for another day.

In 2002, Mugabe rigged the election to keep his ZANU-PF party in control and assure a two-thirds majority in parliament; he needed some façade of legitimacy. After all, Zimbabwe claims to be a democracy.

With inflation exponentially increasing, one U.S. dollar equivalent to 30,000 Zimbabwe dollars (or as high as 13 million, depending on the black market used for the exchange), an 80% unemployment rate, and more than two-thirds of the people living in poverty despite a literacy rate higher than 85%, the March 2008 elections seemed like the tide had turned. Perhaps the fall of Mugabe was imminent. The opposition parties claimed victory.

But election results have yet to be released more than 10 days after the election. The national high court has delayed their ruling on releasing the election results. The court is deciding if the matter is “urgent.”

While the nation’s highest court decides if national parliamentary and presidential election results are “urgent,” Mugabe is hard at work.

The state-run newspaper claimed that five election officials were arrested for “undercounting votes for Mugabe.” No chance election officials (likely in Mugabe’s pocket) are going to be arrested for “undercounting votes” for the opposition.

With the most likely scenario is a run-off between the opposition party that won the most votes, and Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, state-imposed intimidation campaigns have already begun.

On Sunday, Mugabe warned Zimbabweans that if the ZANU-PF party loses, the white farmers will return and take back their farms (never mind that the opposition party claiming victory, the MDC, is also overwhelmingly black).

Mugabe called on his supporters to “make sure the country’s land does not ’slip away from us and go back into the hands of the whites.’”

Nothing like some good old-fashioned fear-mongering during an election.

If America wants to spread freedom across the globe, now is our chance. Here’s a country that has already democratically elected a successor; they are already largely united behind a replacement for Mugabe. Democracy has spoken; perhaps it just needs a nudge from the U.S.

If military power was ever going to be an effective modus operandi for democratic change, this is the moment to prove it. Where are the neo-cons when you need them? Why wait until a dictator has done away with anything resembling free elections before we act? Decapitating the leadership when harsh totalitarianism has taken hold of its citizens will only lead to chaos.

It’s simple. We send in the Marines, escort Mugabe and his closest advisors to a willing host country, and let them live out their days on the millions of dollars they pilfered from their own people during their rule through extortion and bribery. It may not seem like punishment, but at least that gives Zimbabweans a future. And at this point, no one needs to be hanged. Just removed, like a band-aid; quickly and painlessly.

Unfortunately, the U.S. strong-arm of democracy and freedom is a little tied up. There’s no manpower, money, or time to worry about a poor African country that isn’t Muslim (and hence, not part of the so-called “war on terror”). There is no budget to aid democracy in a country with no pot of black gold at the end of the rainbow that will fuel our SUVs.

So Mugabe will continue his crackdown on freedom of speech, dissent, and choice. He will use fear to convince his people that voting for the opposition is a vote for the enemy.

And the U.S. will let him do it. Why?

Perhaps because Mugabe is taking a cue from George Bush during the 2006 congressional elections.

“However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses. That’s what’s at stake in this election…” said Bush in an October 30, 2006, rally for Republican congressional candidates.

Nothing like some good old-fashioned fear-mongering during an election.

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