Zimbabwe as Bad as Florida 2000? Come On.

Some overheated comments on liberal blog Crooks and Liars regarding Mugabe's stolen victory in Zimbabwe:

Straight from the Republican handbook.

Is Zimbabwe in Florida or Ohio- I forget.

Newly elected President of Zimbabwe, President Bush, heralds the election as fair and honest and cannot wait to implement the capital he has gained with such an overwhelming victory.

At least they’re honest enough to use old fashioned thuggery, instead of butterfly ballots and crooked Deibold voting machines.

I know the Internet is teeming with stupidity, but this is insane. Butterfly ballots? Yes, those are infinitely worse than supervised voting and death by genital mutilation.

Video Shows Vote-Rigging in Zimbabwe

Kudos to the prison guard, Shepherd Yuda, who risked his life to obtain this footage. Yuda intended to document the conditions of political prisoners at the jail, but ended up with a front row seat to Mugabe's "election". He has since fled the country.



[NOTE: For their protection, people directly interviewed in this video have had their faces blurred, and their voices dubbed over by one of the British announcers.]

Meanwhile, in a move that is sure to mean death for a good number involved, Britain is demanding that 11,000 refugees from the country return home. Many Zimbabweans, understandably, are opting to live illegally in the UK rather than return to the violence.

"The small piece of paper cannot take the country"

Craig Timberg at The Washington Post details Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwe military's campaign of intimidation against the Movement for Democratic Change:

During an April 8 military planning meeting, according to written notes and the accounts of participants, the plan was given a code name: CIBD. The acronym, which proved apt in the fevered campaign that unfolded over the following weeks, stood for: Coercion. Intimidation. Beating. Displacement.

In the three months between the March 29 vote and the June 27 runoff election, ruling-party militias under the guidance of 200 senior army officers battered the Movement for Democratic Change, bringing the opposition party's network of activists to the verge of oblivion. By election day, more than 80 opposition supporters were dead, hundreds were missing, thousands were injured and hundreds of thousands were homeless. Morgan Tsvangirai, the party's leader, dropped out of the contest and took refuge in the Dutch Embassy.

The Post obtained access to the CIBD meeting notes, and relied heavily on a Zimbabwean reporter "whose name is being withheld for security reasons." Thanks to his or her bravery, we have a small window into the violent mechanics of Mugabe's renewed grip on power.

Is Zimbabwe a Distraction from Our Own Crimes?

We talk a lot about low voter turnout in America, and mourn the passing interest most Americans appear to take in politics at any level. But thanks (I guess) to Robert Mugabe for reminding us that the right not to vote is the flip side of that freedom. Many citizens in Zimbabwe can't exercise that choice today - they're being led to polls to cast their ballots in a sham single-candidate run-off.

Residents said they were forced to vote, threatened by violence, arson or roving bands of government supporters searching for those without an ink-stained finger.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who withdrew from the runoff citing a campaign of state-sponsored violence, said the results would "reflect only the fear of the people."

"What is happening today is not an election. It is an exercise in mass intimidation," he said at a news conference.

Unfortunately, it seems that the US and EU are talking "sanctions". The US State Department has had a policy of targeted sanctions towards key Zimbabwe businesses associated with or run by the Mugabe regime for the better part of the 21st century. The EU has such an extensive list of sanctions against the Mugabe regime that they can't enumerate what they would add.

History has shown that sanctions don't work. They're particularly impotent against "self-isolating dictators" of the Mugabe strike. Sanctions further isolate and impoverish populations, often turning their sentiment against their self-styled saviors. Franklin Foer cites of a study from the Institute of International Economics, which argues that sanctions have "worked" 23 percent of the time. Their criteria for "worked", however, does not take into account the suffering that sanctions inflict upon the population. Foer himself highlights the economic "collateral damage" done by sanctions levied against Yugoslavia and South Africa. Low estimates on the "side effects" of the economic sanctions against Iraq put the death toll at over 100,000, with high estimates pegging the death toll at over 2 million.

It's frustrating to Westerners to accept that perhaps we can't be The Great White Hope that saves Zimbabwe. But that's reality. It's heartbreaking to watch from afar. But the restoration of democracy is in the hands of Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC, who are straddling the line of rebellion in hopes of minimizing bloodshed against their supporters.

Meanwhile, as Professor Gerald Horne reminds us, our own country continues to wage a war that is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Does anyone outside of wonkish circles know what a bloody week this has been in Iraq for both US soldiers and Iraqis? Odds are they don't, because the media isn't telling them.

I don't blame the media for reporting on Zimbabwe; they need to. The American press is notable in world journalism for its lack of attention to what happens outside of our borders. But is it merely coincidental that the press is reporting in depth on a tragedy we can't affect, while ignoring the tragedy we can?