Sunday, November 12, 2006

The Limits of Misery

So many like to say we should never help dissidents against dictators. We can't impose freedom and democracy, these critics say. It must come from inside the country.

You know, we should have just let the Shias rise up on their own to overthrow the Baathists. Back in 2002, the opponents of regime change in Iraq said the Baathists were so feeble and unpopular that the people should change the regime themselves. Just how that could have happened against the ruthless Sunnis, I don't know.

In Zimbabwe, we see how the regime opponents of a regime that is bloody, driving the economy to ruin, and and alienating the world are doing to topple the Mugabe regime:

Once seen as a good bet to wrest the reins of power from the Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is now divided into two factions and appears to be expending as much energy on internal battles as ending Mugabe's 26-year rule.

"The MDC can never be the same again," Harare-based political scientist Edmund Masunungure told AFP.

"The MDC is obviously weaker since the split. Each of the two factions has its own strengths but it is not the same as the strength of the two groups combined."


Hmm. Not so well as it turns out.

And today, we don't need to contemplate attacking Iran, changing the regime, or even imposing non-trivial sanctions. We can just count on the Iranian people, who hate the inept and violent mullah regime, to overthrow that regime on their own and save us from a future of nuclear-armed mullahs!

And to think I was worried!