Where is the world?

I was in Europe at the time of the Zimbabwean election, which meant that we heard a lot more about the story of the regime's stonewalling in the face of obvious electoral disaster than you did back in the States; the BBC covered it intensely, and CNN World is much more attuned to news out of Africa than it is in the United States.

In the past two months, the tragedy has only deepened. The world has stood by as the unbelievably incompetent, incredibly corrupt and amazingly brutal government party has worked to steal power from its rightful holders. And, not all that surprising, the world is letting Mugabe and his thugs get away with it. Taking cover behind Thabo Mbeki, Mugable's ally in fact if not in name, the rest of the world barely musters the energy to mouth meaningless protests at the outrages. When Mugable announces, on June 28th or 29th, that he has won another term, the rest of the world will tut-tut about "electoral irregularities."

Zimbabwe and Burma (a/k/a Myanmar), allies in the Coalition of the Brutal and Incompetent, each need another Kemal Ataturk. Ataturk, in case you've forgotten, overthrew the rotten and corrupt regime of the "Young Turks" in the Ottoman Empire. (Yes, that's where we get the phrase.) Ataturk laid the foundation for modern Turkey and, looking ahead to the time when he could no longer rule, set up a two-party system that led to today's near-democracy. Though by no means perfect, Ataturk was a true patriot, motivated by a vision for his nation, not the desire to line his own pockets. Unfortunately, people like him are rare.

(To give you an idea of the kind of man Ataturk was, in 1915, under his birth-name Mustapha Kemal, he had been assigned as a junior general to a backwater region--the price of his opposition to the Young Turk regime. The backwater was the Gallipoli peninsula south of Constantinople (now Istanbul). When British Empire forces stormed ashore, intending to force the Dardanelles, knock Turkey out of the war and open a supply route to Russia, there was only about a regiment or maybe a battalion available to oppose them. Kemal lined his few men up and said to them, "I do not order you to attack. I order you to die." He then sent them forward, where they checked the first wave of invaders, leading to the prolonged stalemate and ultimate disaster of Gallipoli.)