[JJ]

It's also worth noting that Robert Mugabe has not always been the blatantly murderous psychopath he is today. He started out as very much the Hugo Chavez type, a leader of a "managed democracy" with authoritarian tendencies that the progressive set could be justified by legitimate fears of imperialist subversion of his regime.

Problem is, any government founded on a conspiratorial principle of fighting endless subversion is not a government that can ever become truly tolerant and democratic. If anything, it just steadily becomes more and more paranoid and oppressive until you're rigging elections and setting people on fire, like in Zimbabwe today.

There's very little about what Hugo Chavez says, does, or believes that is compatible with any sort of government other than a Chavezocracy, just as Mugabe's entire political ideology is basically just based around the idea that he must rule his country forever.

[Taospark]

I just wanted to add two things to this discussion.

First, that Chavez is essentially following pushing the same buttons as Mugabe and Idi Amin did, by concentrating national sovereignty on one man and expelling foreigners or any critics - regardless of which was a target of the CIA, Mossad, or any other intelligence agency. The only difference is what the people in those respective countries are (and were) willing to allow that defined how far said dictator went over the line.

Secondly, it is a given that the CIA has botched operations in South America while supporting rightist dictators in others (to say nothing of the damage the School of the Americas did to South America), but that was part of the Cold War which has been over for 17 years now. It did happen to be a 50 year nuclear standoff, which means the political sins committed by us or the USSR could have been much worse, but the fact remains that both Chavez and Mugabe are no one's puppets but their own.

[CanadianJeff]

It's just too bad that Chavez and Mugabe couldn't haved turned out better. It's now the people that have to suffer becuase of their mistakes rather then them. That's the saddest part of the whole affair.

[Psudo]

Fear causes people to concede that which death cannot take. I'm a person; put a gun to my head and I'd probably do the same. But it's still irrational, mad, wrong, evil, and stupid to concede that which cannot be taken by force. I hope I'd strive to resist, though I can't predict success.

I'm not talking about rational arguments that happen to come to the same conclusion. It's common for the rational reaction and the reaction of irrational terror to be the same; one shouldn't spend too much time irritating poisonous snakes with a bare hand. But it's also common for them to be different; like a deer frozen in the headlights of an approaching car.

But sometimes the rational thing is to die.

A man with a gun to your head tells you to kill two other men. He can't kill them directly, but he has your life entirely within his murderous control. If you obey, two men die. If you disobey, one. Inasmuch as death is to be avoided, it is rational that less death is preferable; you should die.

But fear dictates that you do what is required to live. It's irrational, it's immoral, but you shoot the two in the name of survival. Most people would probably choose this even if they had no way of knowing they wouldn't be killed immediately afterward. Even the empty hope of survival is enough.

This is how dictators rule. It is so simple to understand how to render them powerless, and so endlessly difficult to actually do what it takes. Because, deep down, human beings care more about fear than about rationality.

[CanadianJeff]

""Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their
country."
- Bertrand Russell"

It's brief but I think it answers the question in a way.

[Zipperfish]

CanadianJeff wrote:

""Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their
country."
- Bertrand Russell"

It's brief but I think it answers the question in a way.

bretrand Russell is awesome for getting to the quick of the matter.

[Thanos]

Mugabe's old enough that the best course of action is to do nothing just yet and wait for him to die. If his replacement from the inner circle turns out to be just as bad as he is then the US and Britain should move towards direct action, but I'd limit it to SAS assassination squads attempting to decapitate the ruling group in one fell swoop. I doubt that the current rank-and-file of the Zimbabwean military are as insurgency-competent as Mugabe's own generation was, but there's nothing to be gained by invading and having them go underground and emerge later Iraqi-style.

As one sho supported the Iraq adventure I find it infinitely regrettable that an attempt as detailed above to remove Saddam wasn't even attempted.

[CanadianJeff]

that's becuase you arn't in the military. You can't just think that it's going to be like the movies and a few quick shots are going to do anything.

And Iraq was hardly an "adventure". It's a war.

You make this all sound like an action movie. It's not.

[Taospark]

Thanos wrote:

Mugabe's old enough that the best course of action is to do nothing just yet and wait for him to die. If his replacement from the inner circle turns out to be just as bad as he is then the US and Britain should move towards direct action, but I'd limit it to SAS assassination squads attempting to decapitate the ruling group in one fell swoop. I doubt that the current rank-and-file of the Zimbabwean military are as insurgency-competent as Mugabe's own generation was, but there's nothing to be gained by invading and having them go underground and emerge later Iraqi-style.

As one sho supported the Iraq adventure I find it infinitely regrettable that an attempt as detailed above to remove Saddam wasn't even attempted.

Assassination is much more organic than surgical. Even with fresh direct intelligence from both satellites and dozens of high-ranking defectors, it was close to impossible to construct enough of a "picture" to plan such an operation during the 1990's.

The other alternative, convincing someone from within to carry out the job, is also a lot more imprecise because you have to anticipate their own ambitions or if they'll decide to kill everyone else remotely connected to be thorough. Assassination from a distance with "precision bombing" or UAVs is even more messy since the blast radius of a bomb is much greater than that of a bullet.

Quote:

Assassination, people sometimes think with precision weapons that maybe you can now assassinate people from very high altitudes. First of all, if it's a fixed target like a building you have the time to understand it, its location. The next hardest target is one that moves around and the single hardest target of all is a human being.

James Roche
Secretary of the Air Force (2001-2005)

[Psudo]

CanadianJeff wrote:

"Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country."
- Bertrand Russell

Is he advising that the listener to live up to this patriotism, or is he criticizing what he sees as weak or luke-warm patriotism?

I'm completely unfamiliar with the individual, so I don't know whether he tends to that cynical sophistry that is so popular these days.

[Quantum_Wizard]

Psudo, I think that quote just shows Bertrand Russell's anti-war stance.

[CanadianJeff]

the context I've seen the quote most often in is mostly an anti-patrotism/war stance.

I take it in the context of "Patritotism is highly illusionary with no basis in reality thus a patriotic soldier is really a fool unaware of the reality of war."

At least from my point of view.

[Prestwick]

JJ wrote:

It's also worth noting that Robert Mugabe has not always been the blatantly murderous psychopath he is today. He started out as very much the Hugo Chavez type, a leader of a "managed democracy" with authoritarian tendencies that the progressive set could be justified by legitimate fears of imperialist subversion of his regime.

Problem is, any government founded on a conspiratorial principle of fighting endless subversion is not a government that can ever become truly tolerant and democratic. If anything, it just steadily becomes more and more paranoid and oppressive until you're rigging elections and setting people on fire, like in Zimbabwe today.

There's very little about what Hugo Chavez says, does, or believes that is compatible with any sort of government other than a Chavezocracy, just as Mugabe's entire political ideology is basically just based around the idea that he must rule his country forever.

While they may have started out the same initially, they have radically veered onto different paths. Mugabe made his intentions very clear when he first invited North Korea to "train" the Zimbabwean Defence Force and then, just two years into his first term as Prime Minister, sent the notorious Fifth Brigade into the Matabele land to murder, rape and pillage.

The problems in Zimbabwe today can be traced all the way back to the Lancaster House Agreement and the insistence, by us, that majority rule be instituted whatever the cost may be. When UDI was declared by Ian Smith back in the late 1960s, my Dad (who was in 3 Para at the time) were being briefed for a possible intervention in the then Rhodesia, targeting dams, television & radio stations, etc. That was how strongly the then Wilson Government felt about majority rule in Africa.

While these intentions are noble and indeed when done correctly in a gradual and peaceful fashion (al la South Africa) you can see democracy blossom and flourish. The Lancaster House agreement instead saw power more or less being handed over wholesale to a bunch of known thugs and warlords. We knew what was going to happen but because we had backed Mugabe and Nkomo before and because these people had been paraded up and down Universities across the land in the UK, there has always been a significant minority of the liberal establishment who would fit into the "apologists" category for Mugabe.

The problem is that now its gone too far. The country is so dilapidated, its only major income and job generator - the white farmers have now fled to other African countries like Mozambique, Uganda and Botswana to farm there instead - and the ruling elite in Zimbabwe are now so well entrenched that even if Thabo Mbeki came to his senses and cut the power to Zimbabwe tomorrow, you still wouldn't be able to get Mugabe out.

The only course of action now is to wait for the monster to die and hope that there is such a violent power struggle that ZANU-PF will be so divided as to give the MDC a chance to negotiate a legitimate handover of power and the restoration of democracy.