Over at The New Republic James Kirchick (whose work, frankly, I have little use for most of the time) wonders, based on idle comments from Bulawayo's Archbishop Pius Ncube, whether Great Britain should invade Zimbabwe and remove Mugabe. While Kirchick makes some fundamentally (if somewhat obvious) decent points, I’m not certain that an invasion of Zimbabwe, initiated from a former colonial metropole, is viable, practical, sensible, or desirable. But Kirchick's article does point out the frustration that at least a few outside observers have over Mugabe's ability to run roughshod in Zimbabwe, eliciting little more than finger waving, if that.
While a Great Britain-initiated invasion seems like a bad idea, what about a South Africa-initiated and led invasion to which western powers provid some overt support? Mugabe is old, but depending on old despots to die away too often results in significant and unfortunate outliers from actuarial tables while in the meantime those subject to the despot's rule tend to suffer, never mind what could result in the succession crisis.
The current world climate has created an environment of knee-jerk opposition to the use of force, and that response may even be understandable. But current circumstances should not blind us to the fact that force is sometimes necessary to counter force, and Mugabe is nothing if not forceful. Maybe military action should not be the option of first resort, but we are sort of beyond talk about “first resorts” now anyway, are we not?