I've wondered the same things, Hilzoy. Just like I wonder how my conservative friends can actually take pleasure in the misery of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe is being murdered by its government.

If it were merely dying we might be able to help it.

[...] the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe would be unable to print enough currency to pay their (the army's) daily wages [...]

You know something is *seriously* screwed, when it's not worth the govt's time to print more money to shut its people up. Even if it means they have to learn the names for numbers which, previously, were known only to mathematics professors...

Even though I was here by then, all of my family and friends were in Poland, when inflation began to gallop faster than tuberculosis ever did and everyone became a multimillionaire almost overnight. When I went to visit, I had to learn to, mentally, slash oodles of zeros to estimate what the price of a loaf of bread was. And the zeros on te prices grew, daily, like mushrooms after a good rain...

That situation lasted for about a year. And then the regime flipped, from red (communist) to black (Roman Catholic) under the pressure. So, perhaps, Zimbabwe isn't dying either; perhaps it's on he cusp of flipping.

My first trip to Africa was to Harare, back in '92 or '93. I was struck by its bustle and apparent prosperity, its cleanliness and relative safety. Great people. Great beer.

A major cholera outbreak in Harare. Soldiers taking out their frustrations on street vendors. Those who know the place from back in the day can scarcely fathom or believe what has happened to the former southern engine of Africa.

Hate to say it, but the place was run better when it was called "Rhodesia."

There are some obvious analogies to the U.S.-- Corruption and mismanagement for eight years. New Orleans, the banks, the environment, the justice system--all were like Zimbabwe's water system. You must be able to check the power of a tyrant. Impeachement here was "off the table." Surely one of the more stupid utterances ever.

don't get me started, furple.

Hate to say it, but the place was run better when it was called "Rhodesia."

When I was there in the early 90s, the place was "run" just fine. Mugabe was always a ruthless character, and probably crazy - old hands will remember the atrocities committed in Matabeleland in the early 80s - but public services and economic activity were about as good as they get in Africa well into the 90s.

But, hey, things were definitely better for the whites when the place was Rhodesia.

If Jacob "showers prevent AIDS" Zuma takes power in South Africa next year as expected, Zimbabwe may fade into insignificance by comparison.

If Jacob "showers prevent AIDS" Zuma takes power in South Africa next year as expected, Zimbabwe may fade into insignificance by comparison.

Unlikely. Where HIV is concerned, at least, South Africa has already trudged through many years of official AIDS denial at the hands of Mbeki and his loony minister of health, Tshabalala-Msimang.

It's hard to imagine that conditions re HIV/AIDS under Zuma could be any worse.

Sparko, I'm with you on this one.

I remember just earlier this year when Ahmadinejad said it was going to take 30 years to recover from the mess Boy George created.

Why is it that other countries know what is happening here and to us before we do?

Example, when the illegal immigration issues were heated, the illegal immigrants knew they were going to be able to stay and get amnesty.

Maybe we need to start listening to foreign leaders when it comes to our welfare and well-being!!!!!!

The end of Mugabe is likely going to come as the result of a violent public uprising which overwhelms his armed thugs and sends them fleeing. It won't be pretty.

Unfortunately, neighboring African nations, especially South Africa, have done far too little to force things to resolution and instead have sat by and allowed this slow-motion disaster to unfold in a mass wave of disease, starvations and corruption.

Sometimes, leaders come to hate that which they lead, and their ultimate act becomes one of auto-destruction, to leave nothing behind.

The case could be made that Bush has been on this path for a while ...

One simply must ask the question: Why were we willing to cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war down onto the heads of a Serbian thugfest in Yugoslavia that wrought far less damage than is now being done by Mugabe and his ilk?

Steve W: one of the clinching arguments at the time, made quite openly, was that we couldn't let the old horrors of genocide return to Europe.

There was a certain logic to that at the time, in an era when the U.S. military all but refused to heed the President of the United States in many ways. Clinton couldn't get them to do very much, but he could at least shame them into this one thing.

Now that we're in an era where our leaders can apparently send the military anywhere they want, you'd think the least we could do is helicopter a special-ops team into Zimbabwe and take Mugabe out, or drop a bomb on wherever he's holed up. Such an intervention could hardly make things worse, and it's impossible to see how things in Zimbabwe can get any better until Mugabe's removed.

Low-tech cyc,

there's a difference between removing a sitting leader and disarming them.

Hate to say it, but the place was run better when it was called "Rhodesia."

It is a horrible thing to say, but it is a necessary thing to say. Unfortunately people will hear it wrong. It is not that Ian Smith and his regime were beautiful and good, what is important to learn here is that there is no color guarantee of goodness. Just because you put someone who looks like you in charge is no guarantee of goodness. America has just climbed over that wall. Africa is only starting down this road, and it is the division between the black tribes that is the real hurdle here. Once democracy came to town, the Europeans were always going to become secondary characters to the drama.

Now that we're in an era where our leaders can apparently send the military anywhere they want, you'd think the least we could do is helicopter a special-ops team into Zimbabwe and take Mugabe out, or drop a bomb on wherever he's holed up.

You need to review your geography. No NATO nation is even close to Zimbabwe.

Also review the word "apparently" -- it's not as it appears to you, and not all these special ops can actually be done. Perhaps if Mugabe were taken out the resulting civil war, eventually won by a Mugabe associate, would be even worse than what is now in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe has been running the place into the grave for more than 10 years now, whatever his initial governance may have been. A more important question: when will it be useful/advisable/necessary/etc. to intervene in South Africa? S.A. is at least not landlocked. If decay continues or accelerates, it could begin to look like the earlier Mugabe years in Z.

Where are all the bleeding heart do gooders now, the ones who kicked Ian Smith & his Government out of what was once one of the Richest countries in Africa. Their silence is deafening. Name me an African Nation that is now as the financial would say 'In The Black'. You can teach Monkey's how to eat Bananas but you can't teach them how to grow them.
Lets hope Obama does a better job than Magabe