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If Jimmy Carter had never been president, Robert Mugabe would not have come to power in Zimbabwe. We got rid of Jimmy as quickly as we could. Africa was not so lucky, but WSJ Editors say Comrade Bob may soon be ousted. Desmond Tutu is beginning to sound like, er, ah, - George W. Bush.
… The situation has become so dire that Mr. Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate and former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, told a Dutch TV station Thursday that African leaders cannot stand by any longer. “If they say to [Mugabe], step down, and he refuses, they must go in . . . militarily,” Mr. Tutu said.
Africans are welcome to finally resolve this crisis. And there’s a chance that force won’t be necessary. Mugabe has held onto power despite the West’s targeted sanctions, in part because other African leaders have been reluctant to criticize the onetime liberation hero. Former South African President Thabo Mbeki was one of the most lenient with Mugabe over the past several years, but his successor as head of the ANC, Jacob Zuma, has signaled a tougher line. Political pressure and no more economic lifeline from South Africa could sap Mugabe’s regime. …
Dr. John Sentamu, a native Ugandan, and the present Anglican Archbishop of York adds his voice against Mugabe in an OpEd in the Guardian.
When Jesus Christ wanted people to know what he was doing, he chose a passage from the Old Testament to describe his mission. It was a passage from the prophet Isaiah, written to encourage a disillusioned and demoralised people. It looked forward to a new day when there would be justice for people being treated unjustly and in poverty and release for the oppressed. It promised new life for the present and hope for the future.
President Robert Mugabe was right when he said only God could remove him. That’s exactly what happens. No tyrant lives for ever. No cruel regime lasts. God acts. And he is acting. An international chorus is at last being raised to bring an end to Mugabe’s brutal regime.
As cholera devastates a Zimbabwe already on its knees, our Prime Minister, our Foreign Secretary and the US Secretary of State have all called for an end to the regime of Mugabe. Now these voices must unite for a further call to bring an end to the charade of power-sharing that has enabled Mugabe to remain in office, assisted by his ruthless politburo. …
The closing paragraphs of James Kirchick’s June 2007 Weekly Standard piece on how Jimmy Carter interfered to put Mugabe in power.
… Carter is unrepentant about his administration’s support for Mugabe. At a Carter Center event in Boston on June 8, he said that he, Young, and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance had “spent more time on Rhodesia than on the Middle East.” Carter admitted that “we supported two revolutionaries in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo.” …
… History will not look kindly on those in the West who insisted on bringing the avowed Marxist Mugabe into the government. In particular, the Jimmy Carter foreign policy–feckless in the Iranian hostage crisis, irresolute in the face of mounting Soviet ambitions, and noted in the post-White House years for dalliances with dictators the world over–bears some responsibility for the fate of a small African country with scant connection to American national interests. In response to Carter’s comment last month that the Bush administration’s foreign policy was the “worst in history,” critics immediately cited those well-publicized failures. But the betrayal of Bishop Muzorewa and of all Zimbabweans, black and white, who warned what sort of leader Robert Mugabe would be deserves just as prominent a place among the outrages of the Carter years.
Obama is rumored to plan a speech in a Muslim country during his first 100 days. We have a series of Contentions posts on the subject. There is a lot of fool in this president-elect.
The election of Barack Obama comes at a time when the black family continues its decline. In 1950 85% of blacks were born into two parent families. Now. 70% of blacks are born to single families. Kay Hymowitz lays it out in a WaPo op-ed.
In the nearly half-century in which we have gone from George Wallace to Barack Obama, America has another, less hopeful story to tell about racial progress, one that may be even harder to reverse.
In 1965, a young assistant secretary of labor named Daniel Patrick Moynihan stumbled upon data that showed a rise in the number of black single mothers. As Moynihan wrote in a now-famous report for the Johnson administration, especially troubling was that the growth in illegitimacy, as it was universally called then, coincided with a decline in black male unemployment. Strangely, black men were joining the labor force more, but they were marrying — and fathering — less.
There were other puzzling facts. In 1950, at the height of the Jim Crow era and despite the shattering legacy of slavery, the great majority of black children — an estimated 85 percent — were born to their two married parents. Just 15 years later, there seemed to be no obvious reason that that would change. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, legal barriers to equality were falling. The black middle class had grown substantially, and the first five years of the 1960s had produced 7 million new jobs. Yet 24 percent of black mothers were then bypassing marriage. Moynihan wrote later that he, like everyone else in the policy business, had assumed that “economic conditions determine social conditions.” Now it seemed, “what everyone knew was evidently not so.” …
Kimberley Strassel says Obama’s picks for energy and the environment are critical.
… You might think now that Barack Obama has staffed his economic and security teams, the hard choices are over. But he has one more doozy of a decision to make. And the worry is that his picks for that final, crucial team — those overseeing energy and environmental policy — will undo any smart moves the president-elect has made so far.
It isn’t yet clear Team Obama understands that it doesn’t have the luxury of making a mistake here. Energy is the engine of, and inextricably linked to, the American economy. Environmental policies and regulations that punish energy markets will only deliver a further economic hit.
In the process, this will damage Mr. Obama’s own goals. He has picked an economic team that has already successfully discouraged him from proceeding immediately with any tax hikes. Good. But an ill-crafted cap-and-trade program that dramatically escalates energy costs is the same as a giant tax hike. Mr. Obama is promising to save or create 2.5 million jobs. Fabulous. But drowning industries in exorbitant energy prices will only encourage further overseas flight. If the president-elect thinks Detroit is a problem, just wait for the impact an upward march in electricity prices would have on, say, the manufacturing South. …
George Will thinks there’s a lot of silliness, and some danger, in Obama’s jobs promise.
Three days after the president-elect announced in a radio address that he had directed his “economic team” to devise a plan “that will mean 2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011,” he said at a news conference that he favored measures “that will help save or create 2.5 million jobs.” To the extent that his ambition is clear, it is notably modest.
It is, however, unclear. How will anyone calculate the number of jobs “saved”? In what sense saved? Saved from what? Saved by what? By government action, such as agriculture subsidies or other corporate welfare? What about jobs lost because of those irrational uses of finite economic resources? Should jobs “saved” by, say, protectionist policies that interfere with free trade be balanced against jobs lost when export markets are lost to retaliatory protectionism?
In recent years, in normal conditions, the economy has “lost” tens of millions of jobs through capitalism’s “creative destruction” (Joseph Schumpeter’s phrase). It also has created a few million more than that, which is why the destruction is creative. …
… In his wise book “Capitalism, Democracy & Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery,” John Mueller, an Ohio State political scientist, notes that John Maynard Keynes’s central theme, according to his biographer Robert Skidelsky, was that “the state is wise and the market is stupid.” Mueller continues: “Working from that sort of perspective, India’s top economists for a generation supported policies of regulation and central control that failed abysmally — leading one of them to lament recently, ‘India’s misfortune was to have brilliant economists.’ ” Many of them were educated in Britain, by Keynes’s followers. In America today, everyone agrees that the president-elect’s economic team is composed of brilliant economists.
Jeff Jacoby reviews the progress of climate change skeptics.
THE MAIL brings an invitation to register for the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change, which convenes on March 8 in New York City. Sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank, the conference will host an international lineup of climate scientists and researchers who will focus on four broad areas: climatology, paleoclimatology, the impact of climate change, and climate-change politics and economics.
But if last year’s gathering is any indication, the conference is likely to cover the climate-change waterfront. There were dozens of presentations in 2008, including: “Strengths and Weaknesses of Climate Models,” “Ecological and Demographic Perspectives on the Status of Polar Bears,” and “The Overstated Role of Carbon Dioxide on Climate Change.”
Just another forum, then, sounding the usual alarums on the looming threat from global warming?
Actually, no. …
And a Dilbert is here. If it catches you right, you’ll hurt yourself laughing.