Robert Gibbs and Obama: no more Mr. nice guy

The New Neo Posted on by

The curious and troubling tendency of President Obama to use his communications and political aides as advisers on everything under the sun, including foreign policy, has been documented before. That wouldn’t be so bad if any of them had expertise on these subjects, but for the most part they are strictly political creatures.

Robert Gibbs is a case in point. One of the least appealing of Obama’s inner circle (and that’s saying something), he is also one of the most visible in his role as Obama’s press secretary. Look at his bio and tell me whether you can see anything there that would qualify him to give advice to fellow-neophyte Barack Obama in any policy field, much less foreign affairs. He is a political animal, specializing in campaigns and communications.

Nevertheless here’s a piece from the WaPo about his tremendous and growing influence on policy in this administration [emphasis mine]:

…Anita Dunn, the Obama administration’s former communications director, [says,] “[Gibbs] is one of the very few people who can sit in on anything he wants to sit in on.“…Much of Gibbs’s day is spent sitting in on a broad swath of policy meetings in the Oval Office, educating himself for his public performances, but also for the greater private role to come. Some policy advisers have wondered why the administration’s flack is so often in attendance, but insiders fluent in the administration’s power dynamics know Obama values his views…

Gibbs is also a regular at foreign policy meetings. He volunteered that he attended all 33 hours of the Afghanistan briefings, though he noted that he never said a word. He did chime in during last month’s escalating tensions with Israel, if only to make sure the president understood the “conventional wisdom” promoted in the media, that Obama’s toughness with Likud hard-liners would potentially erode his domestic Jewish support. “For a lot of reasons, he would discount that,” Gibbs said, referring to the president.

So it appears that all of Obama’s foreign policy decisions are vetted at the outset by Gibbs for their potential political repercussions. If so, he seems to be doing an abominable job; Obama’s polls continue to fall. Or perhaps Obama just doesn’t take Gibbs’s advice, although he certainly solicits it.

What’s more, the abrasive and condescending Gibbs appears to have alienated virtually the entire Washington press corps, not an easy feat in that formerly Obamaphilic crowd [emphasis mine]:

There are a few things about Gibbs that irritate even the least excitable reporters in the briefing room, though none of them would speak for the record out of fear of retaliation. One reporter expressed frustration with the way Gibbs has compared reporters — and even Sen. John McCain — to his 6-year-old son because he didn’t approve of the way they were behaving…Unlike press secretaries past, who would make rounds of calls to reporters as they neared deadlines, Gibbs is notoriously tough to get on the phone. His soliloquies are full of “first and foremost” and “I will say this,” and he relies on escape-hatch promises to “check and get back to you.”

Initially it seemed surprising that the supposedly charismatic, calm, and likeable Obama would surround himself with so many downright unpleasant people. But that aspect of Obama is a mere facade, and he selects his aides very carefully. The pattern that emerges is that they are amoral thugs who insult, intimidate, and lie, while providing an increasingly thin cover for the very same aspects in Obama’s personality and methodry.

The pattern was apparent even before the election to anyone who cared to look at Obama’s history. Taken separately and looked at by the naive, Rezko and Ayers and Wright seemed to be curious anomolies. But one would be hard-pressed at this point to find any close friend or adviser of Obama who doesn’t fit this mold.

On David Remnick, Jack Cashill, and the authorship of “Dreams From My Father”

The New Neo Posted on by

I happened to catch David Remnick on television the other day pluggng his new biography of President Obama, The Bridge. It was the first time I’d ever seen New Yorker editor Remnick, and I was transfixed by the hushed and awed NPR-ish tones in which he spoke almost worshipfully of Obama.

We were used to hearing that sort of Obama veneration during the campaign. But it’s extraordinary that Remnick has managed to hold onto it so long, in the face of so much evidence that would tend to topple the pedestal on which anyone but a man who had long ago abandoned any pretense of objective critical thinking might have placed Obama.

For example, take the title of Remnick’s book, which, according to a review in the New York Times:

…refers to the bridge in Selma, Ala., where civil rights demonstrators were violently attacked by state troopers on March 7, 1965…[and] the observation made by one of the leaders of that march, John Lewis, that “Barack Obama is what comes at the end of that bridge in Selma”…[and] the hope voiced by many of the president’s supporters that he would be a bridge between the races, between red states and blue states, between conservatives and liberals, between the generations who remember the bitter days of segregation and those who have grown up in a new, increasingly multicultural America.

This reference to the racial-healing promise of Obama doesn’t appear to have been meant in an ironic, wistful, looking-back sort of way. According to the Times review of the book, Remnick seems to believe that Obama is still a bring-us-all-together kind of guy, whose ” impulse was to try to reconcile or synthesize opposing views. Perhaps it’s also an inclination that explains why he made such a concerted effort last year to try to get Republican support on a health care bill.”

Yes indeed; some “bridge.” The only reconciling effort that occurred there was the use of reconciliation to pass that one-sided monstrosity.

Jack Cashill has a different take on Remnick’s book. Cashill is the man who’s been asserting for quite some time that Bill Ayers ghost-wrote Dreams From My Father for Obama, and he thinks that Remnick’s research has unwittingly supplied more support for Cashill’s case, as well as adding some other interesting information about Obama’s academic history.

First, just to let you know how Remnick operates, here’s Cashill on Remnick’s presentation in The Bridge of Cashill’s credentials:

In the way of credentials, Remnick allows me no discernible Ph.D. in American studies, no Fulbright, no articles in Fortune or the Wall Street Journal, no well-received book on intellectual fraud, no books at all.

Remnick describes me a “little-known conservative writer, magazine editor, and a former talk-radio-show host.” The “little-known” stands in obvious contrast to the well-known, Princeton-educated, Washington Post-groomed New Yorker editor Remnick. The “talk-radio” I did as a sideline more than ten years ago. Remnick intends the reference as a slight.

More damning still, I have done my writing for “right-wing Web sites, including American Thinker and World Net Daily,” obscure dwarf stars in the “Web’s farthest lunatic orbit.” (FYI, the American Thinker editors have better credentials than Remnick or I.)

Next, we have from Remnick the first news of Obama’s undergraduate academic record that I’ve ever come across. And remember, the information Cashill cites here hails from a book written by an Obama admirer:

At Columbia, Remnick tells us, Obama was an “unspectacular” student. Northwestern University communications professor John McKnight reinforces the point, telling Remnick, “I don’t think [Obama] did too well in college.”

McKnight, a Chicago friend, wrote a letter of reference for Obama to attend Harvard Law School. Remnick assures us that Obama was a “serious” student at Columbia, just not a particularly good one. Still, Obama finessed his way into a law school that chooses its 500 new students each year from 7,000 applicants whose LSAT scores generally chart in the 98th to 99th percentile range and whose GPAs average between 3.80 and 3.95…Obama certainly did not write well when he was at Columbia. Remnick charitably describes the one article Obama wrote for Columbia’s weekly news magazine, Sundial, as “muddled,” and he is referring only to the content.

But Cashill is especially interested in this:

Unfortunately, as Jerry Kellman, the organizer who recruited Obama to Chicago, informed Remnick, “[Obama] told me that he had trouble writing, he had to force himself to write.”…[and] Still, for all of Obama’s presumed literary talents, it strikes even Remnick a bit strange that “he never published a single academic article.”

The plot (to coin a phrase) thickens even more when we come to Remnick’s treatment of the writing of Dreams From My Father (which he believes was most definitely written by Obama). Here’s Cashill referring back to Remnick’s book and the information contained therein:

In 1991, Obama also began to work in earnest on the book that he had contracted to write for Poseidon, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. “The advance was reportedly over a $100,000,” Remnick writes. “Obama received half of that amount on signing the contract.”

By 1991, Obama had met Michelle, and the two indulged in a social life that would have left Scarlett O’Hara dizzy. Writes Remnick, “He and Michelle accepted countless invitations to lunches, dinners, cocktail parties, barbecues, and receptions for right minded charities.” Obama also joined the East Bank Club, a combined gym and urban country club, and served on at least a few charitable boards.

Obama’s obligations were taking their toll. “Obama had missed deadlines and handed in bloated, yet incomplete drafts,” Remnick tells us. Simon & Schuster lost patience. In late 1992, weeks after the Obamas’ marriage, the firm canceled the contract…

At the time, the Obamas, still childless, were making well into six figures between them as they partied their way through progressive Chicago’s frenzied social life. According to Remnick, Bill Ayers and weatherwoman bride Bernadine Dohrn played a highly visible role in that life. Remnick calls them collectively the “Elsa Maxwell of Hyde Park.”

After his agent secured Obama a smaller contract with the Times Books division of Random House, Barack decamped to Bali — Bali? — in early 1993 in the hope that he would be able to finish the book without interruption. The sojourn proved fruitless. He still could not produce.

Remnick papers over the two years between Bali and the book’s 1995 publication. He quotes Henry Ferris, the Times Book editor, to bolster Obama’s claim to authorship. Ferris “worked directly with Obama,” Remnick tells us, but Ferris edited in New York while Obama wrote in Chicago. Ferris would have had no way of knowing just how much of the editing or writing Obama was doing himself.

In late 1994, Obama finally submitted his manuscript for publication. Remnick expects the faithful to believe that a mediocre student who had nothing in print save for the occasional “muddled” essay, who blew a huge contract after more than two futile years, who wrote no legal articles, and who turned in bloated drafts when he did start writing, somehow found the time and inspiration during an absurdly busy period of his life to write what Time Magazine would call “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.”

Cashill (with the assistance of Remnick) reports. You decide.

Spambot of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

Help-seeking spambot who has has attempted to master the American vernacular:

Dang
I just spent ages typing a long comment, and when I tried to send it my FireFox freaked out. Did you get it or is it lost and I have to do it again?

Next on Obama’s hit list: small contractors

The New Neo Posted on by

It may have slipped under your radar screen, as it almost did mine. But I was talking to a friend who owns a small home remodeling business and he reminded me that on April 22 (Earth Day!) new EPA regulations go into effect that could take down many a small contractor.

It’s all about the rules on lead paint removal, which heretofore had been enforced only for work on homes that were old enough to have lead paint and in which small children or pregnant women (the populations at risk) resided. But that’s not good enough for our nanny state; oh no. Now the rules will apply to work done on any home built before 1978, eliminating the previous sensible escape hatch whereby a homeowner could opt out of the regulations if there were no at-risk individuals living in the house.

You might ask why it is that a homeowner contemplating a remodeling job should be deprived of the ability to refuse to pay for costly lead protection procedures that are not needed. Well, here’s your answer: “this option (the opt-out) was ripe for abuse.” In other words, the government can’t trust people to do what’s in the best interest of their own children or pregnancies, and so we all must suffer.

And suffer we will, especially the contractors. To be in compliance by April 22 would mean that every contractor contemplating a job that would disturb more than six square feet of a home’s area (and this includes not just carpentry but plumbing, window installation, and heating and AC installation) would need to have completed a one-day course in the matter, necessitating taking a day off and spending about two hundred dollars. But since there are nowhere near enough certified teachers, therefore the vast majority of America’s contractors could not possibly comply by April 22 even if they wanted to.

But that’s relatively minor compared to larger problems connected with the new rules, such as the fact that they will increase the costs of renovation for both contractor and homeowner just at a time when the industry and the consumer can least handle it. And lest you think there aren’t so many homes built before 1978 (and there sure are in my neck of the woods, New England), the statistics are that this will affect two-thirds of US homes and apartments nationwide.

As this article states, pre-1978 homes being renovated will be turned into the equivalent of hazmat sites. Some contractors will decide it isn’t worth the hassle—and the risk of lawsuit—to work on older homes. As it is, fines for contractors who violate the rules could run up to $37,500 per day. Tons of paperwork will be required of the contractor to document every step of the process.

In addition, my informant filled me in on a few more details that aren’t in the articles. He said that on such a job, a great deal of the work of sawing would now be required to be done outside, which will necessitate a lot of time-consuming back and forth to and from a protected outdoor workplace to the inside of the home, increasing the expense. The plastic coverings, with all the supposed lead-paint dust they contain, will be sealed up and deposited in landfills (will the lead never leach down into the water supply thereafter?). Prior to that, the plastic cannot sit outside the home in a dumpster for more than 48 hours, a rule that will require many more dump runs and the fees that go with them. A black market in under-the-table construction will no doubt spring up—populated by the more libertarian, plus the more unscrupulous and less law-abiding.

Perhaps, as with specialists and/or health insurance companies under Obamacare, this will drive a lot of small contractors right out of business. Just what the doctor ordered..

But hey, who needs renovations, anyway? They’re for the rich capitalist pigs—although I don’t think it’s the rich this will hurt the most (and it will be a nice cash cow for the lawyers).

Oh brave new world, that has such people in it!

Obama’s no Reagan on nuclear issues

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the memes the left is currently employing in response to criticism of Obama’s nuclear policies is some variation on the theme: “But Reagan wanted a nuclear-free world too.”

Sure he did. Doesn’t everybody? But just because the two men wanted the same distant (and probably unobtainable) goal doesn’t not equate them, as James Carafano points out today in the Washington Examiner:

Like Reagan, Obama believes America must lead the way to nuclear disarmament. Unlike Reagan, he believes this requires an assertion of “moral” leadership, to be demonstrated simply by reducing our nuclear stockpile and refusing to modernize the U.S. arsenal. It’s a false premise…

Reagan recognized that the ultimate goal of arms negotiations is to make the world safer, more stable and more free. To eliminate the need for large nuclear arsenals, he went about eliminating the dependence — both ours and others’ — on massive nuclear attack as the guarantor of security.

Thus, the first items on Reagan’s agenda were building up U.S. conventional forces and introducing missile defenses. That allowed his negotiators to approach arms control agreements from a position of strength.

Obama has it backward. He started with cutting back on defense — especially in acquisition programs. Bye-bye, F-22.

He also cut missile defense, starting with systems to protect the homeland. But even that wasn’t enough to make the Russians happy.

“The problem is our America partners are developing missile defenses,” objected Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last December. “Our partners may come to feel completely safe.” That sounds like a leader who still thinks that maintaining the threat of nuclear attack is a good idea. If not, why is it a “problem” for Americans to feel safe?

Reagan understood his adversaries. Obama does not.

Russia remains our adversary, although not in exactly the same way as before. To the problem of Iran and North Korea, two countries that were already adversaries back when Reagan was president but which have now become (or are about to become) nuclear adversaries of ours as well, Obama has no answer. Bush had no good answer either, but at least he did not telegraph a posture of appeasement and weakness, as Obama has.

Of course, it depends what you think Obama’s goal is. I believe that Obama wants to weaken our standing in the world vis a vis other nations, but even I don’t believe he wants us annihilated in the process. Following that logic, his stance on the subject appears to be the combination of knave and fool we’ve come to expect from the man.

Death of Polish President Kaczynski

The New Neo Posted on by

It is impossible not to suspect that foul play was involved in the plane crash death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski in Russia:

Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of the country’s highest military and civilian leaders died on Saturday when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia, killing 97, officials said.

Russian and Polish officials said there were no survivors on the 26-year-old Tupolev, which was taking the president, his wife and staff to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

But that does not mean the suspicions are correct. Even the Soviets could not have made the weather foggy, for example. Nor could they have packed the plane with so many high Polish officials at once (perhaps I’m wrong about this, but wouldn’t it be standard to use several planes for the trip, so that in case of just such a disaster so many members of the government would not be wiped out at once? The article hints at the answer: the Polish government is strapped for funds.)

The crash devastated the upper echelons of Poland’s political and military establishments. On board were the army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of the air and land forces. Also killed were the national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, Olympic Committee head, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said.

At this moment, we cannot know if foul play was involved. But one thing we can unequivocally say is that the deaths are tragic for Poland, and deeply ironic as well. After all, the Polish president and all the others were flying to Russia to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, in which the Soviet secret police killed thousands of Polish officers who were prisoners of war, an act which the Soviets had denied and covered up for years, only admitting it in 1990.

If this were the plot of a movie, it would seem too wildly coincidental. But it is true:

“This is unbelievable – this tragic, cursed Katyn,” Kaczynski’s predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, said on TVN24 television.

It is “a cursed place, horrible symbolism,” he said. “It’s hard to believe. You get chills down your spine.”

And speaking of chills, Russian PM Vladimir Putin has taken charge of the investigation into the crash. You might say he’s highly qualified, having once been a member of the KGB.

Sarah Palin, Obama’s needler-in-chief…

The New Neo Posted on by

…expounds on the Obama Doctrine, and a few other things as well:

Such a relief that we dodged that Palin-VP bullet in 2008.

[NOTE: In the clip, Palin describes the Obama Doctrine this way (at 0:50-0:59: “coddling enemies and alienating allies.”

I’m not entirely sure, and I could be wrong about this, but I believe I just may have been the first person in the blogosphere or media (or at least one of the first) to use the phrase “Obama Doctrine” in that manner, back on September 17, 2009, when I wrote:

[Obama’s scrapping the missile shield for Eastern Europe] sends a larger signal to all the parties involved, one that is completely consistent with the one I previously stated here: offend our allies and friends, and cozy up to our enemies.

The Obama Doctrine.

I’m not accusing Palin of plagiarizing; not at all. I think it’s more a case of great minds thinking alike.]

[ADDENDUM: On further perusal, I managed to find this, from June of 2009. Perhaps the originator of the joke?]

Obama and defense expert Gates: on being “comfortable” with the nuclear posture

The New Neo Posted on by

In a recent interview with George Stephanopoulos, President Obama had this to say in response to Sarah Palin’s criticism of his nuclear posture:

The last I checked, Sarah Palin is not much of an expert on nuclear issues…What I would say to [critics] is, is that if the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff are comfortable with it, I’m probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin.

Except for one thing—note Obama’s use of the odd phrase “comfortable with it.” If this NY Times article is to be believed, Gates initially opposed Obama’s decision but was overruled by Obama, who did not take his advice [emphasis mine]:

Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

Guess the Times let that cat out of the bag. But don’t sit on a hot stove waiting for its writers and editors—or many others in the MSM—to call Obama on this one. After all, Gates is “comfortable” with it all now, isn’t he? But perhaps it’s only because Obama is his Commander-in-Chief.

More on Obama’s nuclear posture

The New Neo Posted on by

Charles Krauthammer lambasts Obama’s recent declaration of a new nuclear posture, repeating some of the main points from this already-discussed video. But in print Krauthammer adds the following illustration of how the policy of no-nukes for signers of the Non-Proliferation Treaty even if they attack us biologically or chemically is an absurdity:

This is quite insane. It’s like saying that if a terrorist deliberately uses his car to mow down a hundred people waiting at a bus stop, the decision as to whether he gets (a) hanged or (b) 100 hours of community service hinges entirely on whether his car had passed emissions inspections.

My first thought on reading this was: don’t give the administration any ideas. They’ll do that next.

But my second, and more serious thought was that it’s an odd way to try to discourage nuclear proliferation—by reducing the penalty for other types of insidious and illegal warfare, therefore probably making them more likely to occur. What a bizarre tradeoff!

The actual wording of the Obama document gives us a better idea of what is being attempted here [emphasis mine]:

Since the end of the Cold War, the strategic situation has changed in fundamental ways. With the advent of U.S. conventional military preeminence and continued improvements in U.S. missile defenses and capabilities to counter and mitigate the effects of CBW [chemical and biological warfare], the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks ”“”“ conventional, biological, or chemical ”“”“ has declined significantly. The United States will continue to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks.

To that end, the United States is now prepared to strengthen its long-standing “negative security assurance” by declaring that the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

This revised assurance is intended to underscore the security benefits of adhering to and fully complying with the NPT and persuade non-nuclear weapon states party to the Treaty to work with the United States and other interested parties to adopt effective measures to strengthen the non-proliferation regime.

It’s hard to envision what sort of reasoning is behind this. The peacetime value that nearly everyone can agree that nuclear weapons have had throughout the sixty-five years of their existence has been as deterrence, both to nuclear and other types of attacks (as Obama knows, since his document clearly states this by saying that until now the United States has “reserved the right to employ nuclear weapons to deter CBW attack on the United States and its allies and partners”).

So, what would be the point of giving up that deterrent power? The implicit quid pro quo seems to be to get more countries in comply with the NPT. But even were that to happen, would the policy not at the same time encourage these other sorts of attacks, either on the US or its allies (if it has any left after Obama is through)?

Conventional weapons are fine and dandy, I suppose. But they hardly represent the sort of deterrence afforded by at least the threat of using a nuclear weapon. Of course, as is his tendency, Obama hedges even this new policy of non-nuclear-deterrence by saying (read the small print):

Given the catastrophic potential of biological weapons and the rapid pace of bio-technology development, the United States reserves the right to make any adjustment in the assurance that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of the biological weapons threat and U.S. capacities to counter that threat.

So basically Obama is saying “I didn’t really mean it. I’ll use those nuclear weapons if I feel like it, whenever I feel like it.” And although that’s somewhat reassuring (if you believe it) in placing back a certain uncertainty about the use of nuclear weapons, and therefore a small amount of the deterrent power previously provided by such a threat, it leaves one scratching one’s head. If there’s an escape clause like that, what’s the whole thing about, anyway? “Posturing” is really the best word for it; Obama puts forth a promise and reneges on it, within the very same document.

It’s really not known how believable the US’s nuclear threat has been in recent years. Were other nations really convinced that this country would retaliate so powerfully and aggressively? As the only country that has ever actually used nuclear weapons in combat, we did have some credibility on that score. But the point was that, although no one knew for sure, we presented a credible enough threat to at least give other nations pause.

However, this recent document of Obama’s is so confusing that I’m not sure what other nations will make of it. But it seems to me that it removes some of that previous deterrent threat while at the same time providing little that would convince a nation that joining the NPT would be in its best interests—which, after all, appears to be the main goal of the paper in the first place.

And it doesn’t even begin to address the fact that rogue states such as North Korea and Iran, which laugh at the NPT and its signatories, will go their merry way and are very likely to continue on their present nuclear paths. Obama’s new posture is less likely to reassure other, non-nuclear nations that he will keep his word to protect them, not more.

The document also contains a mind-boggling passage addressed to North Korea and Iran, although not by name [emphasis mine]:

In the case of countries not covered by this assurance ”“”“ states that possess nuclear weapons and states not in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations ”“”“ there remains a narrow range of contingencies in which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW attack against the United States or its allies and partners…

Yet that does not mean that our willingness to use nuclear weapons against countries not covered by the new assurance has in any way increased. Indeed, the United States wishes to stress that it would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.

What could be the purpose of adding this restrained language? Remember, it is addressed to rogue enemy states such as North Korea and Iran that are out of compliance with non-proliferation and clearly pursuing nuclear weaponry ends, and who might even use such weapons in first strikes against either the US or its allies. It projects conciliatory weakness at the same time it claims to offer a threat of strength.

Why not instead use language that goes something like this: “Our commitment to use every means available to defend ourselves and our allies against attack by countries not covered by the new assurance has remained as firm as ever”? As written, the document seems to be saying instead: “Don’t worry; you can get away with quite a bit before we’ll even consider striking.”

A country destroyed: Zimbabwe

The New Neo Posted on by

Read it and weep for Zimbabwe, a country that’s gotten so bad that its mainly black population pines for the days of white rule. At least they had jobs back then.

Liberal journalist Kristof is more PC than the people he interviews, who mince no words in describing their lot:

“When the country changed from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, we were very excited,” one man, Kizita, told me in a village of mud-walled huts near this town in western Zimbabwe. “But we didn’t realize the ones we chased away were better and the ones we put in power would oppress us.”

“It would have been better if whites had continued to rule because the money would have continued to come,” added a neighbor, a 58-year-old farmer named Isaac. “It was better under Rhodesia. Then we could get jobs. Things were cheaper in stores. Now we have no money, no food.”

Over and over, I cringed as I heard Africans wax nostalgic about a nasty, oppressive regime run by a tiny white elite. Black Zimbabweans responded that at least that regime was more competent than today’s nasty, oppressive regime run by the tiny black elite that surrounds Mr. Mugabe.

Kristof laughably thinks a thug like Mugabe would respond to pressure from the world. After all, his white predecessors did:

The tragedy that has unfolded here can be reversed if Mr. Mugabe is obliged by international pressure, particularly from South Africa, to hold free elections. Worldwide pressure forced the oppressive Rhodesian regime to give up power three decades ago. Now we need similar pressure, from African countries as well as Western powers, to pry Mr. Mugabe’s fingers from his chokehold on a lovely country.

Good luck with that, Mr. Kristof. Actually, I hope you’re correct. But that’s not my reading of Mugabe.

One person who did see what lay ahead—and I know it’s not PC to say this—was Rhodesia’s former Prime Minister Ian Smith, white racist and all. In a previous post about Mugabe and Rhodesia, where I wrote about how reluctant other African leaders are to condemn Mugabe, I added [emphasis mine]:

[Mugabe’s] history as a political prisoner of ten years’ duration in the 1970s under Ian Smith’s colonial government also gave him a linkage to Mandela, but their subsequent histories have been far different. Mugabe has been corrupted by power””or perhaps he was corrupt in the first place””and the course of the two countries have diverged significantly as a result.

But possibly the greatest irony of Mugabe’s vile rule is that it’s the Western post-colonial powers such as Britain who are speaking out against him, while his fellow African liberators are mostly silent or “gentle” in their chiding.

And Ian Smith, the widely-reviled final colonial head of Rhodesia and strong opponent of black rule, who insisted that Mugabe’s leadership would lead to the destruction of the country, turns out to have been, for all his flaws (and there were many), better for the country and even for its black population than the liberation hero Mugabe.

In an article in the Telegraph written on Smith’s death in November of 2007, Graham Boynton””who had once been a staunch opponent of Smith””came to the following realizations:

“Although the first 20 years of Mugabe’s rule saw a slow, somewhat even-paced decline, the calamitous collapse has been achieved in little more than half a decade, an extraordinary feat of self-destruction when one considers that it took more than a century for Ian Smith’s white antecedents to carve a modern, functioning, European-style society out of raw African bushveld.

But that has been the story of post-colonial Africa and, although this week’s obituaries will largely dismiss Smith as a colonial caricature, a novelty politician from another age, if you were to go to Harare today and ask ordinary black Zimbabweans who they would rather have as their leader””Smith or Mugabe””the answer would be almost unanimous. And it would not be Mugabe.”

Well, now Kristof has done the asking, and we’ve got the answer.