Robert A. George: "Your United Nations In Action (Inaction)"

The moderate-conservative Republican blogger writes about political problems in Zimbabwe: "So, following orchestrated intimidation and terror from the Robert Mugabe government, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Sunday pulled out of this Friday's scheduled run-off. Not content with that, Mugabe's thugs raided the opposition party headquarters early this morning. Tsvangirai is now urging world observers to demand an official postponement of the election. None of this is coming out of the blue. Ever since the first round of the election -- nearly three months ago! -- with all of the official bureaucratic powers under his belt, Mugabe wasn't able to win. Indeed, the 'official' tally had him coming in 'second' -- but close enough to 'force' a run-off. And, thus, Mugabe has used the long time between the two rounds to ratchet up the violence, detained Tsvangirai multiple times and blocked foreign aid from reaching starving citizens. All through this, the United Nations has responded by doing...basically nothing, except complain about what has been happening. In fact, not even the detaining of US and UN diplomats exploring rural areas where Mugabe's forces have been inflicting their reign of terror was enough to get the UN to denounce what was happening in Zimbabwe. Instead, Russia and South Africa have been allowed to block any action. In short, just as the UN has allowed the Darfur tragedy to proceed inexorably apace for years, the hopes of Zimbabweans for basic food staples, let alone democracy, have now been dashed by a thuggish dictator -- as the UN again twiddles its thumbs. Sad."

My response: I should add that Mr. Tsvangirai is now at the Dutch embassy in Harare, for temporary political refuge but not political asylum. It's so bad that a Zimbabwean writer whose article I recently highlighted asked me late last week to remove his/her photo from my website - but to keep his/her commentary up (a request that I, of course, granted to our fellow Zimbabwean bookerista) - because he/she feared political repercussions and his/her relatives' lives. I kid you not, dear readers.