TIGblogs - davyk

IN his book "Critical Mission: Essays on Democracy Promotion (2004)", Thomas Carothers wrote: "Where democracy appears to fit in well with US security and economic interests, the United States promotes democracy. Where democracy clashes with other significant interests, it is downplayed or even ignored."

Carothers served in the Reagan State Department on what was known as "democracy enhancement" projects in Latin America during the 1980s and he wrote a history of these projects in his book — drawing the foregoing conclusion.

The so-called democracy promotion has become the leading theme of declared US policy in the Middle East, just like it is the leading theme of the declared US policy on Zimbabwe. Declared because the US involvement in the affairs of Zimbabwe has nothing to do with the theme of democracy by any measure of imagination.

The project that has been assigned to Ambassador James D. McGee by George W. Bush has a background. It is part of a "strong line of continuity" in the post-Cold War period; as Carothers would call it.

The strong line of continuity, and the power interests that sustain it, is the only explanation that can be given for McGee’s new role as the campaign manager for Morgan Tsvangirai. The real substance of the puerile posture of "promoting democracy" by McGee, through the lapdog support of the gang of Western diplomats stationed in Harare, is the resolve by the West to ensure that Zimbabwe is run by a regime that kowtows to the US’ sabre-rattling foreign policy.

For the Empire, June 27 is the day to protect the "strong line of continuity". The continuity has been illustrated by McGee’s Cold War-style diplomacy. The roguery, the waggery, the incivility and the mischievousness portrayed so far by McGee is just but an explicit signal that the US is not only geared to upset the political establishment in Zimbabwe, but also to claim responsibility and credit for it.

The US has been pushing for confrontation between supporters of MDC-T and the Government for a long time. This has been pursued through the sponsoring of obnoxious civic organisations bent on rabble-rousing and pushing the Government of Zimbabwe into retaliatory action.

This confrontational approach could not be reflected any better than in the words of Morgan Tsvangirai when he was answering a question on his chances of winning the presidential election run-off. This was just after Tsvangirai returned from his self-imposed sympathy-seeking exile.

Said Tsvangirai: "As sure as the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, Mugabe is not going to win this election." One would be forgiven for thinking that the reporter interviewing Tsvangirai had asked about Tsvangirai’s views on President Mugabe’s chances of winning the election.

Tsvangirai was explicitly asked about his own prospects and chances of winning the election but, of course, he knows that his winning cannot be news ahead of President Mugabe’s losing an election. This is the credo upon which Washington is directing operations in Harare.

The election is not about policy or issues affecting the welfare of Zimbabweans. It is about confronting a man who has angered the Emperor. It is about defeating a revolutionary process that has stood in the way of US-owned international capital. It is about confronting a revolution that has dismembered the imperial agrarian institution that once ruled supreme in the agricultural affairs of Southern Africa.

Tsvangirai knows very well that McGee will not be too impressed about him talking about how he intends to win the election. He knows that he is not the centrepiece of the political power play. He knows his sponsors are more worried about President Mugabe than they care about his winning or what becomes of him after any such win. He knows he is a pawn in the Great Game pitting Zanu-PF and his masters in the British rulership.

Tsvangirai’s role in the run-up to the run-off is to appear to be combating a ruthless dictatorship as well as to be seen to be promoting liberty and freedom. His role is not to offer Zimbabwe better leadership and he seems to be honest enough not to even pretend to be a promising leader. When he talks of food, jobs and a better life, he does make it clear that "our friends from the international community" will take care of that. In the first round of elections, Tsvangirai even had figures of how much money would be coming in the first 100 days of his "government".

Voters were told that the amount was US$10 billion and many thought better this package than the package of sanctions. George Orwell would not have known whether to laugh or to weep. And Josiah Tongogara would have exploded into revolutionary anger. In fact, he must have already.

McGee is trying to do what John Negroponte did in Iraqi in 2004. Negroponte was assigned to hand over "Iraqi sovereignty" in fulfilment of Bush’s "messianic mission" of bringing ‘‘democracy’’ to the Middle East. Of course, Western mentality does not see the irony of "handing over" sovereignty to other nations. To the Western ruling elite, the sovereignty of other nation-states is in the custody of the Empire.

Negroponte was heavily involved in the 2005 Iraqi election — an election he wanted postponed until the right "Shiite leaders" were put in place. However, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani led a popular non-violent resistance to Negroponte’s machinations and the US-UK gang had no other recourse but to allow the election. Sensing diplomatic mortification, Negroponte set the US doctrinal machinery into high gear to represent the elections as a US initiative, the same way the US claims to have ended the Kenyan crisis in January.

After this successful spin by Negroponte, he was immediately nominated as the first director of National Intelligence, a feat McGee must be itching to emulate via the politics of Zimbabwe.

Negroponte’s career had its arc ranging from Honduras, where as Reagan’s ambassador he oversaw the Contra terrorist forces’ war against Nicaragua, to Iraq, where as Bush’s ambassador he briefly presided over another exercise in purported democratisation.

McGee is not after the liberty and freedom of Zimbabweans. He is after an election result that is in line with the wishes of the US imperial authority. In as far as the coming election is concerned, the words spoken by Noam Chomsky, the renowned American linguist and academic, on March 2, 2005 are most incisive.

Said Chomsky: "In line with the strong line of continuity and its institutional roots, we can anticipate that Washington will not readily tolerate political outcomes that it opposes."

This is why the US does not tolerate Hamas in Palestine, and this is also why the public opinion in favour of US-UK withdrawal from Iraq has been totally ignored by the Bush crowd of the likes of Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

The US will not tolerate an election outcome that does not depose President Mugabe. Such an outcome is by definition ‘‘fraudulent and undemocratic". On the other hand, victory for Tsvangirai is by definition the compendium of democracy.

Zimbabwe is faced not with the threat of power-hungry puppet politicians shamelessly soliciting for funding from rich and powerful countries. This Tsvangirai-led and Biti-administered outfit is no challenge at all to a revolutionary party like Zanu-PF.

Rather, Zimbabwe is faced with the threat of the world’s most powerful country, a country that has deployed all its energies on trying to isolate the Government from as many countries as can be either persuaded or threatened.

The Government has been facing provocations of the highest order from some of its own citizens — people coming from a section of the population that has been romanticised by the glitter of Western capitals as well as the sweetness of the US dollar.

This provocation is meant to push the Government into repressive action and that way arming the US-UK alliance with the entire diplomatic arsenal they want. It is in this context that reports of violence in some parts of the country need to be managed with the ingenuity they deserve.

Tsvangirai and his MDC-T lieutenants may shout all they want that they find violence appalling, but the truth of the matter is that the MDC has from its formation been hankering for violence with the desperation of a cornered rabbit.

It is like hearing the MDC-T protecting the identity of sanctions in commentary related to the economic ills facing Zimbabwe today. It is dreadfully appalling to hear fellow Zimbabweans profusely defending sanctions and those who imposed them in as much as they hysterically blame President Mugabe for everything that the US-UK alliance has engineered in the country today.

Zanu-PF is not without blame. A revolution that can afford the luxury of corruption, laziness, greed and bickering cannot be without blame.

However, it is absolutely dishonest for anyone to claim that the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe at the beginning of this century are of a benign effect to the state of the economy today. Equally, it is not honest to pretend that corruption has nothing to do with the state of the economy today.

Some have said Zanu-PF is standing against the economy as its opposition, with the clownish gang in the opposition MDC-T only serving as a proxy. The economy, or is it the economic crisis, is, in fact, a creation of Western powers and logically Zanu-PF is, therefore, standing against the Western alliance as fronted by the MDC-T.

Likewise voters must be aware that they are engaging in an election between their party and the Western powers — their party because the majority of MDC members are indeed children of Zanu-PF.

It is incumbent upon the generality of Zimbabweans to reflect on what is before us politically right now and in that reflection choose to stand and defend the national interest.

Zimbabwe, together we are one. We shall overcome.

l Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk

مهمة حرجة: تجارب على ديموقراطيّة ترقية
Automatically translated into Arabic thanks to WorldLingo
في كتابه "مهمة حرجة: كتب تجارب على ديموقراطيّة ترقية (2004) ", توماس [كروثرس]: "حيث ديموقراطيّة يظهر أن يلائم داخل جيّدا مع [أوس] أمن وفوائد اقتصاديّة, يروّج الولايات المتّحدة الأمريكيّة ديموقراطيّة. حيث ديموقراطيّة يشتبك مع أخرى فوائد هامّة, قلّلت هو [أر فن] تجاهلت. "

خدم [كروثرس] في ريغان دولة قسم على ماذا كان عرفت بما أنّ "ديموقراطيّة تعزيز" مشاريع في [لتين مريك] أثناء الثمانينات وهو كتب تاريخ من هذا مشاريع في كتابه - يسحب الاستنتاج [فورغينغ].

الما يسمّى ديموقراطيّة قد أصبح ترقية الموضوع رئيسيّة من يفاد [أوس] سياسة في [ث ميدّل ست], فقط مثل هو الموضوع رئيسيّة من ال يفاد [أوس] سياسة على زمبابوي. يفيد لأنّ ال [أوس] تورط في الشؤون زمبابوي يتلقّى لاشيء أن يتمّ مع الموضوع الديموقراطيّة ب أيّ إجراء التخيل.

المشروع أنّ يتلقّى يكون عيّنت إلى سفيرة جيمس [د.]. [مكج] بجورج [و.]. بوش يتلقّى خلفيّة. هو جزء من "خطّ قوّيّة إستمرار" في ال [بوست-كلد] حرب فترة; بما أنّ [كروثرس] دعا هو.

الخطّ قوّيّة إستمرار, والقوة فوائد أنّ يبقي هو, الشرح وحيد أنّ يستطيع كنت أعطيت ل [مكج] دور جديدة كالحملة مديرة ل [مورغن] [تسفنجري]. المادة حقيقيّة من الوضع صبيانيّة من "يروّج ديموقراطيّة" ب [مكج], من خلال ال [لبدوغ] دعم من المجموعة من داخلات غربيّة يقام في هاراري, القرار بالالغرب أن يضمن أنّ ركضت زمبابوي بنظامة أنّ [كووتووس] إلى ال [أوس]' [سبر-رتّلينغ] سياسة خارجيّة.

للإمبراطورية, يونيو - حزيران 27 اليوم أن يحمي ال "خطّ قوّيّة إستمرار". وضّحت الإستمرار يتلقّى يكون ب [مكج] [كلد] [ور-ستل] دبلوماسيّة. ال [روغري], ال [وغّري], الفظاظة وال [ميسكهيفووسنسّ] يصوّر [س فر] ب [مكج] صحيحة غير أنّ إشارة بيّنة أنّ عشّقت ال [أوس] ليس فحسب أن يخلّ الإقامة سياسيّة في زمبابوي, غير أنّ أيضا أن يدّعي مسؤولية واعتماد ل هو.

يدفع ال [أوس] يتلقّى يكون لمواجهة بين مؤيدات ال [مدك-ت] والحكومة [فور ا لونغ تيم]. تتبّعت هذا يتلقّى يكون من خلال ال يكفل من منظمات كريهة مدنيّة يثنّى على [ربّل-رووسنغ] ويدفع الحكومة زمبابوي داخل عمل انتقاميّة.

هذا [كنفرونتأيشنل] مقاربة استطاع لم يكن عكست أيّ على نحو أفضل من في الكلمات [مورغن] [تسفنجري] عندما أجاب هو كان سؤال على فرصه من يربح الرئاسيّة إنتخاب دورة حاسمة. هذا كان [جوست فتر] رجع [تسفنجري] من ه فرضه على نفسه [سمبث-سكينغ] حالة نفي.

يقول [تسفنجري]: "مثل يوقن بما أنّ يرتفع الشمس في الشرق ويثبت في الالغرب, [موغب] لا يذهب أن يربح هذا إنتخاب." عن صفح واحدة كنت ل يفكّر أنّ المراسلة يقابل [تسفنجري] كان قد سأل حول [تسفنجري] منظرات على رئيس [موغب] فرص من يربح الإنتخاب.

سألت [تسفنجري] كان بوضوح حول ه خاصّة توقعات وفرص من يربح الإنتخاب غير أنّ, [أف كورس], هو يعرف أنّ خاصّتي يربح يستطيع لا يكون أخبار أمام رئيس [موغب] يخسر إنتخاب. هذا ال [كردو] على أيّ واشنطن يكون يوجّه عمليات في هاراري.

ليس الإنتخاب حول سياسة أو إصدارات يأثر الخير [زيمببون]. هو حول يجابه رجل الذي قد أغضب الإمبراطورة. هو حول يهزم عملية ثوريّة أنّ قد وقف في الطريق من [أوس-ووند] رأس مال دوليّة. هو حول يجابه ثورة أنّ قد فكّك المؤسسة إمبراطوريّة زراعيّة أنّ مرّة حكم عليا في الشؤون زراعيّة [سوثرن فريك].

[تسفنجري] يعرف [فري ولّ] أنّ سيستهوي [مكج] لن يكون أيضا حول ه [تلك بووت] كيف هو ينوي أن يربح الإنتخاب. هو يعرف أنّ ليس هو القطعة مركزيّة من ال [بوور بلي] سياسيّة. هو يعرف أقلقت كفيلاته أكثر حول رئيس [موغب] من هم يهتمّون حول خاصّتي يربح أو ماذا يصبح من ه بعد [أني سوش] فوز. هو يعرف هو رهن في العظيمة لعبة [بيتّينغ] [زنو-بف] وأسياده في ال [رولرشيب] بريطانيّة.

[تسفنجري] دور في الارتفاع سريع إلى الدورة حاسمة أن يظهر أن يكون [كمبتينغ] دكتاتوريّة قاسية [أس ولّ س] أن يكون رأيت أن يكون روّجت حرية وحرية. ليس دوره أن يقدّم زمبابوي قيادة جيّدة وهو يبدو أن يكون صادقة بكفاية لا أن حتّى زعمت أن يكون زعيمة واعد. عندما يتحدّث هو من طعام, أشغال وحياة جيّدة, هو يجعل هو فسحة أنّ "صديقاتنا من الالمجتمع الدولي" سيأخذون عناية من أنّ. في الدورة أولى إنتخابات, تلقّى [تسفنجري] حتّى أرقام من [هوو موش] مال كنت أتى في الأولى 100 أيام من ه "حكومة".

قلت مقترعات كان أنّ المبلغة كان [أوس$10] بليون وكثير