Posted on 04/25/2021 7:41:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
There is an assumption in America that new political leaders across the world campaigning against long-term incumbents or establishments must, naturally, share the full spectrum of western, liberal and democratic values cherished in Washington D.C.
The premise is as dangerous as it is mistaken. Recent decades are scattered with “great western hopes” that have not only disappointed when they finally reached office - but even turned out worse than those they replaced, with civil unrest, rollbacks of human rights, and severe deterioration in the lives of minorities.
There is Aung San Suu Kyi. Once named by TIME Magazine as one of the “Children of Gandhi”, she was for years a guest star at American and British liberal dinner parties. But her time as great helmsman of Myanmar – following a long opposition to the military junta – saw her government complicit in a genocide against the Rohingya, which she then insisted on defending personally at the International Court of Justice.
There’s the youthful prime minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed. He was the nation’s first leader who was Oromo, the largest ethnic group that had led opposition to one-party government for decades, campaigning against their own political and economic marginalization. Shortly after winning the Nobel peace prize, Ahmed was leading an ethnic war against Tigrayans, who had historically dominated the upper echelons of power in the country.
And then there’s Adama Barrow of The Gambia in west Africa. Ushered into office by American progressive lobbyists following the fall of authoritarian Yahya Jammeh, he has reneged on his pledge to serve only three years as president, quashed an attempt to restrict presidential terms (intended to avoid a repeat of the years in office of his demented predecessor), and renounced his promise to overturn the country’s violent anti-gay laws.
Equally, there are times when misguided support for those who have lost still has consequences. Emboldened, the loser claims the election was stolen without evidence, leading to mass civil unrest and the undermining of the democratic process. This is the case in Uganda.
There, the vote earlier this year saw opposition leader Bobi Wine go down to defeat. Feted by Western liberals as Africa’s new hope, Wine at least on the surface has much to offer: Glamorous, erudite, the anti-corruption campaigner is also a ghetto-to-hero chart-topping reggae artist.
More importantly, however, it is what he claims to be against that draws the international interest. The current president and governing party of Uganda has held democratic power for a generation in a country where the average age is 16. Whilst both have continued to be re-elected, stability and longevity have blinded many to the character of the challenger. A quick look at Bobi Wine’s past reveals some distinctly anti-liberal edges – particularly when it comes to LGBT rights – that should have been a cause for extreme caution when offering support.
In 2014, his emphatic homophobia was the reason he was denied a visa to UK. Slated to play in London and Birmingham, gay rights campaigners objected to allowing the artist to perform hate songs. The change.org petition stated: “Ugandan artist Bobi Wine writes songs with blatant homophobic lyrics and calls for gay people to be attacked, or killed… allowing such an artist to appear in public is clearly going to raise tensions”. They were referring to lyrics such as “burn all the batty man” and “All Ugandans get behind me and fight the batty man.”
This seems to have been forgotten by those in the West who rallied behind him. Of course, his views should not bar him from running for president, nor being elected. That is for Ugandans to decide – and, in a country where conservative views on the matter are prevalent, it should have even helped him. So it begs the question why, when he did not win, the State Department seems to be sustaining his claim that the election was stolen.
It is all the more surprising given Wine withdrew his petition to overturn the result before the courts. Though he claimed it necessary with political placement in the judiciary, for anybody who had been paying attention his allegations simply didn’t add up. On many recent occasions, the courts had ruled in his favor. They halted a legal attempt to deregister his party as the election was beginning, and then when security services surrounded his home following the election result, it ruled they leave immediately. Indeed, it was the same courts that rejected as unconstitutional an "anti-gay law" that would have made homosexuality in Uganda a capital offense, a law for which Wine’s song had rallied support.
The real reason for Wine’s withdrawal was lack of evidence, especially given the scale of his defeat (nearly 2.5 million votes behind from a turnout of 10 million). But it is easier to win in the “court of public opinion,” so that is where he has taken his case. Meanwhile, his actions cause the democratic process and rule of law in Uganda to be eroded in the eyes of his supporters, the electorate as a whole, and the international community.
For Africans, and certainly Ugandans of a certain age, the West’s often unquestioning – and often barely researched - support for political figures such as Wine has troublesome echoes of the past. In the late 1960s another young Ugandan opposition leader seemed at least on the surface to have much to offer: “A splendid type… not very bright…completely reliable” is how the British described the deranged dictator Idi Amin in the years immediately before he staged a coup and declared himself “King of Scotland.”
“There is Aung San Suu Kyi. Once named by TIME Magazine as one of the “Children of Gandhi”...saw her government complicit in a genocide against the Rohingya, which she then insisted on defending personally at the International Court of Justice. “
FAKE NEWS - there was no ‘genocide’ of the Rohingya. They were Muslim terrorists and they were driven out (at least many of them) to a Muslim country (Bangladesh). Genocide is when you simply kill people for being ‘different’, and if Burma’s military wanted them all dead, they would ALL be dead today.
Ethnic Cleansing yes, genocide - NO!
What? The US has started an intelligent logical recount of its 2020 presidential election yesterday five months later after the obvious to all choice of the electorate has been exiled by the rest of the government
Gambia? What?
Is this writer thinking Biden has some kind of foreign policy?
We’re having an incursion through our national border of questionably covid carrying completely inverted aliens many children some as young as six months traveling alone used by their parents, cartels and primarily the Biden administration. The Biden family while Biden was Vp collected fortunes from the Chinese government...
What?
Read Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Shakespeare, Manzoni or Freud. Given the perennial, recurring essence of human nature, history and events chronically repeat. These leaders, their personalities, motivations and actions have existed throughout recorded history. BTW, the same characters live right here in America. Biden is not the first amoral, corrupt, demented man to become the leader or the figurehead of a great nation. Sadly those nations almost always pass into the annals of history.
Answer to article title, (no i did not need to read the rant):
“No money to any darn foreign leader we like, or dislike! Keep our over-borrowed money here for THE CITIZENS, and none for any illegal anybodies!”
Life was a lot easier during the Cold War - back then no one fooled themselves into thinking that Third World people could live like First World people - so we picked leaders that you knew were bad, but they helped this country. Something that Russia and China seem to understand to this day, but the Neocons still can’t get through their thick heads.
If they haven't figured it out yet, they soon will.
The Shah, for example. He may or may not have been the best guy ever, but he was better than what followed, even for Iranians.
If the CIA is able to install leaders in countries around the world - we should assume they have done the same here in the USA.
I was at a party talking to a died in the wool neocon once and he was actually honest unlike most of them. He made no bones about it: war is good and it doesn't matter who we support or where the war is. It's the war itself that advances American interests (in the neocon way of thinking), not the cause. His rationale: America is the only superpower. The world needs to see that we CAN go to war and WILL go to war and therefore stability will follow. Some will wish to be client states of the powerful USA, some will fear consequences and get in line, the few near peer powers will check their ambitions.
Bottom line: they view war as a strategy in some elaborate game where we throw American lives away in meaningless third world dumps just to send a message. Forever.
Disgusting.
...ya...for the last 70 years....
PING
Esp. see # 10.
Not new. During the Cold War this was presented as the way to keep the commies on notice that we would fight.
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