Do you remember the climactic scene from the Wizard of Oz? Dorothy, Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion are trapped by the Wicked Witch and her Praetorian guard. The Witch taunts Scarecrow with fire, as is her wont, and then sets him alight. Dorothy reacts instinctively, grabbing a handy pail of water from the castle wall and dousing both the scarecrow but also the Wicked Witch with it. The water liquidates the Witch. For a moment it is unclear what the Witch's henchmen will do, but they announce “All Hail, Dorothy” and give the little girl the Witch's broom to allow them to fulfill the great and Powerful Wizard's task for them.
Of course, had the Witch's personal defense force reacted differently, there would have been nothing left but straw and tin and lionine flesh and the tatters of a teenaged girl's gingham dress. Dorothy, more than anything, got lucky.
Jeff Jacoby, the arch-conservative columnist of The Boston Globe, apparently never considered this lesson when watching the Wizard of Oz. In a column yesterday, Jacoby presented a well-written, ardent, impassioned, clear argument for either the United States or Great Britain invading Zimbabwe. He also could not be more wrong.
Jacoby uses Pius Ncube's recent statements about the prospects of a Zimbabwe invasion as a springboard to justify foreign miliary action (a belief that, as you may recall, Jacoby is not alone in considering, though he may be alone in his blind optimism). And Jacoby believes that such an invasion would be easy:
“Countless lives could be saved, and incalculable suffering ended, if Mugabe were forced from power. A detachment of US Marines, I wrote on this page in 2002, could do the job on its lunch break. The British could do it. South Africa could do it.”
First off, one would think that Jacoby would not be so blithe about the American military's capacity to overthrow a dictator without any serious difficulties in light of what has gone on in Iraq. As we have seen, the overthrowing is the easy part. What comes next is what becomes a nightmare. Once lunch break is over, then what? How does a US or British (or South African) force then deal with the aftermath, which is sort of the important part? What will the succession struggle look like? Will chopping off the head end all of Zimbabwe's problems, or will doing so serve as a multiplier effect and simply add to the misery?
Second, how does such an invasion take place? Zimbabwe is, if Jacoby has not noticed, landlocked. Which African countries allow a foreign troop presence to use their country as a staging ground for military action that might work to remove Mugabe from power but that almost certainly will fuel chaos across the border? And which countries allow the troop presence of either a former colonial power or of a United States that has not exactly acquitted itself well in recent years when it has come to foreign invasions?
Third, the mission matters. Observers (myself included) have long said that a few thousand troops could have prevented the genocide in Rwanda. Similarly, many believe that a similar number of troops could ease the suffering in Darfur. But these would be preventative measures — the troop presence would serve to stop members of paramilitaries from attacking and killing civilians. That is a far cry from forcing regime change, even if regime change is necessary and justified.
But most significantly, will such a presence get lucky, as Dorothy and her friends did in the castle? Will Mugabe's military and police, will his private guard, simply accede to the death of their leader? Surely some will. But many won't. And those that won't will come from the revolutionary generation, the generation that knows the bush, that has fought in the bush, that has benefitted from Mugabe's cronyism and kleptocracy, and that will want to have a serious say in what is to follow. Dorothy, remember, got lucky.
This is not to say that the military option should not be on the table. But it is to say that blithe assertions of the ease with which a British or American military effort could solve the crisis should not be taken seriously. If SADC or the African Union choose to pursue the military option and if they ask the US or UK for support, that is one thing. But to propose such action to derive from Washington or London, Pius Ncube's frustrated talk notwithstanding, is to live in Oz, a wonderland detached from reality where the roads are golden, the scarecrows talk, and monkeymen fly. It is, in short, to live in a fantasy world.
