Extreme Makeover: Dictator Edition

Don Imus, who has managed to defy science and prove that imbibing vast quantities of drugs can pickle and preserve your brain cells as long as a trophy wife holds your head back as you puke our your bile, had a fascinating interview on his Friday program with Tom Rose, the former publisher of the Jerusalem Post.

Although they were talking about the Hamas win, you could almost verbatim apply their conversation to what is happening in Ethiopia.

Both were stunned (to the extent that uber curmudgeon Imus can be stunned by anything other that his own greatness) that the world is stunned by the Hamas win. In fact, Rose, ever the contrarian, was contemplative about why Hamas did so poorly. (Someone had a side of glib with his oatmeal, um?)

Imus asked the million dollar question:

One of the things that occurs to me is, wouldn’t you think the geniuses at the State Department in this country would have recognized the potential for this outcome?”

Right then and there I knew I should have dropped acid in college.

That’s what a lot of us interested in Ethiopian politics have been asking: What did the State Department and the EU expect would happen after the May 2005 Ethiopian elections? In one of his speeches in London, Berhanu Nega, geek-God Economist and democratically elected Mayor of Addis Abeba (who is presently, um, in prison facing willowy charges-- inciting “genocide”, condoning “treason”, and going 60 in a 40m.p.h zone) said he had lunch with EU man Tim Clarke in the days before the elections. Berhanu asked Clarke what contingency plan the EU and donor nations had if the opposition won. Tim coughed delicately into his monogrammed handkerchief and patted Berhanu on the head. Okay, that part didn’t happen. But Tim was very clear that it was the diplomatic world’s “understanding” that the EPRDF and Ato Meles would be the clear winners, sans perhaps a few seats, which would prove that this was a democratic undertaking. “Now,” said Clarke, “Can we order some sweet and sour chicken?”… Okay, I made that last part up. (In fact he had ordered ginger sautéed beef.)

It didn’t even enter the smallest recesses of EU’s mind that there was the slight probability that Ethiopians were sick and tired of being sick and tired of Prime Minister Meles’ gloriously inept government. Prime Minister Meles, after all, was Tony Blair’s buddy, an ally in the war on terror, hell, Meles was notorious for wearing suits and ties while sipping tea with his pinkie raised. pinkies.

Waiter, I’ll take my fortune cookie now.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to democracy. EPRDF had its behind handed to it, all gift wrapped with pages from “Revolutionary Democracy.” Dilemma for the West. Stunned, they were, much like the same state of stunnhood we all are that Hamas, freakin’ Hamas won a democratic election!

So, wasn’t the west promoting democracy in Ethiopia… and in Palestine?

Tom Rose on the Hamas win:

The [US] administration and Israel to a certain extent, has done precisely the opposite. We’ve been propping up the corrupt regime, we’ve been supporting a corrupt regime, we’ve been letting the Palestinian organization off the hook, we haven’t been making demands of it to change. We’ve always been positioning Hamas as the evil straw man, that if we don’t support Fatah with more power, more support… We are largely responsible for this outcome.

A thing of beauty when déjà vu moments collide.

Even with the Prime Minister Meles’ appalling human rights record, his ravenous appetite for crony capitalism and predatory tendencies towards those who oppose his will (Donald Levine is on record as saying that PM Meles said if the opposition wants power it should do what he did: raise arms and fight. Hm. Add two cups of Lithium and drink slowly), the west convinced itself that once Ato Meles started traveling in private jets and using electric razors things would change. Let’s give the boy a good bath and scrub and ta-da! Meet your statesman. Blair asked Ato Meles into the Africa Commission. How can anyone, anyone, so the thinking went, who was personal friends with angel-faced Blair not magically transform into a democracy-loving, freedom-y smelling, bundle of liberty?

So money poured into Ethiopia. But Ethiopia still remained one of the poorest nations in the world. Head-scratcher of a dilemma. Give it time, we were told. Exfoliate Ato Meles’ pores, push back his cuticles and lance that boil. Voila! (Queer Eye for the Dictator Guy.) And we waited. Still Ethiopia was poor, drought and starvation ravaged the land, genocide raged on in western regions, people refused to be dazzled by the after effects of Ato Meles’ Glycolic Treatment Facial. Bloody hell, as the Brits would say. But how can this be? He was even taught how to use hair products! People who mousse don’t kill mothers in front of their children!

If Hamas was the West’s bogeyman in the Middle East, Ato Meles’ fertile imagination made sure the donors’ lips quivered with fear whenever he mentioned the “chauvinist” opposition that stood on guard to unleash a Rwanda style genocide on the land. And when that didn’t work like a charm, nothing like a little “if I go jihadists will take over the Horn of Africa” to make the western donors hold their noses as they cut another check.

Imus asked Rose again why the West failed to see the outcome of the Hamas victory?

Rose hits the nail square on the head:

Because we can’t for some reason, and by ‘we’ I mean Americans, Europeans and Israelis, we can’t get past, we can’t break out of this notion or concept that free societies are not created from the bottom up and not the top down. You can’t invest authority or power into a corrupt leader and then expect him to transform a society into one that is consistent with and in sync with democratic principles and the ideals of co-existence and peace.

Imus and Rose share a frustration: “When the hell will we ever learn?” How can the west keep on making the same mistake over and over again? Young men and women, and in some cases boys and girls, are facing down Ato Meles’s army of thugs. These kids have been rounded up, beaten and killed, yet they come back and face an army that has been instructed to aim at their heads. And yet the kids come back with nothing more than anger, strong will and stones.

And yet, for the umpteenth time, the West, instead of being on the side of people who want to raise the ‘V’ sign without being arrested, finds itself on the side of the folks who run around in Humvees, occasionally using kids as target practice. It’s almost like an addiction.

The EU and the US now find themselves in the tawdry position of making excuses for a government that has unleashed wave upon wave of violence on its people. Ouch. They are forced into gently asking for a “speedy trial” for the 131 political leaders, journalists and brewers of “genocide” (including a 14-year-old-boy, by the way). Remember when the west had the moral upstanding to say STFU to miserable, boy-dictator warlords? Tom Rose says that free societies are created from the bottom up. I am gonna guess and say that the kids who are shouting “yifetu!” (“free the prisoners”) are the ones on the bottom. For once, just for a change, can we be on their side?

A Rose by any other name is still a Rose. Speak, oh, outraged one:

We have done nothing, virtually nothing to encourage independent Palestinians to develop and economic and political platform designed to better the lives of Palestinians. Instead what has happened is there was one alternative to the corrupt, horrendously corrupt, ossified organization Fatah-- and that was Hamas, which we let the corrupt Palestinian leadership always appear as our bogeyman. “You gotta support us or these bad guys are gonna win.”

Now why does that sound familiar in the Ethiopian case? Ethiopundit brilliantly debunks the theory that Ato Meles is the only able partner in the war against terror in what has become bible for people with triple digit IQs. No More Appeasement is a must read.

Tommy boy, bring us home:

Well, there was a third option which we punted on and the irony here is that the President Bush’s three-and-a-half year campaign to promote democracy missed a central message here which is surprising and shocking to me, and that it is our middle east approach has lacked the very moral clarity that the president had demonstrated quite admirably vis-à-vis Afghanistan and Iraq and the need for freedom and free institutions around the world.

People who are free and societies which respect that freedom are in the West’s interest. When Ethiopians see the EU/US siding with a government which has been fiddling with elections, torture and killings, seeds of anti-west sentiments are sown. And the last time Ethiopia was anti-west, well, Mengitu happened. How can that be good for the West and for Western values?

Something has gone horribly wrong when in the 21^st century communist freaks lead countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia. And the scary thing is that it doesn’t seem to be a trend that is ebbing. It is lucky for the EU/US that the opposition in Ethiopia is economically and politically more pro-west that the current Marxist-in-polyester-suit government. There is still a tiny sliver of hope, and maybe after what has happened in Palestine, the west will take a breather and ask, “What the hell is going on?” Where has propping up ruthless dictators worked? And when these dictators fall and a virulently anti-west government takes over, why do we scratch our heads and say, “Woah. Didn’t see that one coming.”

Still, Tom Rose is optimistic.

The silver lining is, and I am somewhat reluctant we’ll learn the lesson, we can finally learn the lesson that freedom comes from the bottom up and not the other way around.

Imus interrupts Rose. “Well, that’s not going to happen.”

Ethiopians will eventually take care of Meles because they have the will to do so and because moral clarity is on their side. It just would have been nice, just for once, to know that the EU and these great United States were on the side that was standing up to tyranny.

"All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know...
the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

- President Bush