African leaders are calling for unity in Zimbabwe after Friday’s sham election – an election that points out how a regime can abuse its power and use fear and violence to achieve political ends. The story of Zimbabwe should be seen not just as a tragedy, but as a cautionary tale of what can happen when one man or one branch of the government has too much power and when those with power chose to ignore the humanity of others.

While the administration of George W. Bush has condemned the fraudulent elections and the violence, the power and prestige of the United States is greatly diminished. Beyond the problems here with the 2000 and 2004 elections, the torture of prisoners at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition of prisoners to foreign countries, and the wire-tapping of American citizens without a warrant has undermined the claim to moral authority that the United States could have made in the recent past. John F. Kennedy’s shining city on a hill has gone dim under the shadow of the Bush administration and its policies and the world no longer looks to us for moral leadership.

While Reuters reports that Mugabe leaves summit under pressure from AU rebuff, it has largely been pressure from African nations and the European Union that seems to have caused President Mugabe to head back home. At one time, the U.S. would have lead the way in condemning the sorts of abuses that have happened recently – from election fraud to violence against political opponents and their families.


Here is an article from the June 30, 2008 online edition of Newsweek that details some of the most recent brutality.



What Freeth went through is related in the following video [CNN] New Wave of Violence follows Zimbabwe Election:



Sadly, there are many more stories like this one to relate - with innocent civilians paying the price of an unjust regime's effort to stay in power at any cost.

Take this recent story from the Daily Telegraph:


Sadly, this is not the first incident of political violence. Take this story from the Times of London from June 12, 2008 (Yes, Rupert Murdoch owns the paper – but there are many reports like this.)




Yes, not even children are safe from the political violence, as can be seen again in the case of another young child. (Again, from the Times of London on June 29, 2008)






Blessing may never be able to walk properly because of his injuries. If this is indeed the case, I can only imagine the difficulty that Blessing Mabhena's parents will have in trying to explain his injuries and the cruelty of those who caused them. I do not use the word evil lightly, but I will use it whenever innocent people are terrorized, harmed, or murdered.

While no country on the planet is perfect, the abuses in Zimbabwe are very troubling. However, the United States of America is now in a weaker position than in any time since the end of the Vietnam War to claim the moral high ground. This is a sad and unintended consequence of the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” (The Bush administration has perhaps cornered the market on unintended consequences, including ironically being the most effective recruiter that Osama bin Laden could imagine.) Now when we criticize the actions of other countries and their leaders - even when such abuses are apparent and well-documented - they can now point back at us over the horrors perpetrated by our own government in places like Abu Ghraib an Guantanamo. Like one of the symbols in the poem, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, these places and the actions of the Bush administration have become a rotting albatross around our necks that we must chose to remove and acknowledge, even as we confront the cruelty around us and seek our own expiation.

The next administration has many tasks ahead of it, but one of the hardest will be to change the image that many now have of America. On September 12, 2001, the world stood with us. Indeed, there were demonstrations in SUPPORT of America in Tehran. Now, after the war in Iraq, there are many more people who will look at American claims to moral superiority with utter disdain.

Too often, when people read of tragedies in distant lands, they only think of numbers and statistics. While numbers and statistics are important in telling a story, we must remember that behind every statistic of injury and death that we read about from Zimbabwe, Iraq, Darfur or elsewhere, are human beings. They are someone's father, brother, son, mother, sister, or daughter. If, as I believe, every single human life is unique and precious, then the statistics are not just numbers. They represent affronts to both our common humanity and the uniqueness of each individual. The only way that the atrocities that are being committed against other human beings can occur is by someone choosing to deny the humanity of others. In war and in the commission of atrocities, the first step is always to demonize someone and set one's own group up as superior to others.

So, in addition to the American casualties, the allied casualties, the Afghani casualties and the Iraqi casualties, there are perhaps another category of uncounted victims of the failures of the Bush administration. They may be seen in places like Zimbabwe and Darfur, in Burma, in Tibet, and so many other lands as well. These are the people that the United States could have helped by more forcefully arguing for human rights and human dignity. We cannot save those who have been beat, tortured, or murdered while our eyes were focused elsewhere, but bringing an end to the failed foreign policy of the Bush administration means that we can perhaps begin to regain our credibility in the eyes of the world – and use that credibility and influence to try to discourage the sort of horror that has become all too commonplace in this new century.

Let us remember that even in the face of horror, people are not powerless. Brave men and women can take a stand, whether it is to pressure governments or to act individually as was done by such people as Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg in saving Jews from the death camps or Paul Rusesabagina chosing to save Tutsi refugees in Rwanda. Each in their own way denied the claim of tyrants that their power was absolute and that the people who were terrorized and killed were unimportant - or not even truly human. They remembered the humanity that the tyrants and their agents willfully ignored. They kept a humanity that too many people chose to abandon.

There is an old Jewish saying from the Talmud -"He who saves the life of one man, saves the world entire." This saying was inscribed on a ring by some of the people whom Oskar Schindler rescued. Schindler used the ring and a letter from the people he rescued to convince the Red Army that he was not of the perpetrators of the evil that they saw, but a man who did what he could to oppose it. As we reflect on the tragedies that we see in Zimbabwe and elsewhere, let us remember that we have the power to both save and change lives and the world - if we but find the courage within ourselves to take a stand in our own way and in our own time. In doing so, we may also save ourselves and our own humanity.