To me, Rhodesia is THE standard for understanding the catastrophic failures of liberal western foreign policy.
I'm no expert on Rhodesia, but I've read everything I can on it, and enjoyed time I've spent with Rhodesians/Zimbabweans trying to get a grasp on what happened.
The way I understand it(based on reading and talking to Rhodesians) Ian Smith and the Rhodesian Government/people/tribal chiefs has a plan that would have seen an achievable transition to majority rule in approx 25 years.
And the West dropped them like a hot potato for not moving fast enough.....like all of the "insta-democracy" efforts of the era that pretty much all ended in abject failure.
Which to me is a bit like insisting on driving a dangerous but achievable journey at an arbitrary 5X the recommended speed limit just to get to the destination faster.
What could possibly go wrong? Right?
I have the utmost respect for veterans from the US/Canada/UK/OZ/NZ who volunteered to serve there.
How much negative press did Mugabe, the left's darling, get when his North Korean trained 5th brigade committed mass genocide with the Gukurahundi....executing tens of thousands in ethnic cleansing of the Matabele people(Mugabe is Shona) and power consolidation?
Not nearly as much as Op Dingo and other cross border ops into Mozambique, where a handful of RLI/SAS/Selous Scouts Rhodie Security Forces attacked legitimate insurgent camps supporting incursions into Rhodesia with great success only to be bashed in western mass media for "slaughtering innocent civilians in refugee camps".
As I understand it, Ian Smith was able to walk freely in Harare's worst ghettos and shanty towns without fear of reprisal until he had to move to South Africa for health reasons in the middle of the last decade.
Whereas Mugabe can't seem to go anywhere in less than regimental strength.
I was there in 2009 when President Obama "won" the Nobel Prize.......when Morgan Tsvangirai in Zimbabwe had literally been to hell and back leading the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe paying an exceptionally high personal price for his efforts.
The average African I met was mostly asking me "WTF just happened?"
But the Nobel Prize for Peace is another corrupt and polluted institution.
Meh.....makes me angry.....especially the Left's failure to reflect on it's failure and instead effectively erasing it from ever having happened.
Thank god for the internet, some decent books, and the opportunity to travel and meet folks who lived it.
At least I was able to procure some valuable training aids while in the region for my sons when they grow older, in the form of twenty Zimbabwean 50 Billion Dollar notes.....a trillion bucks. To teach my kids about inflation and tyranny.
Hybrid Mode
