Players on the World Stage -- Mad Bobby Mugabe, Maryam Namazie, and Dubya

Now this is disturbing.

It is outrageous that a mad monster like Robert Mugabe should be provided an international forum from which to spout his vile blend of Marxism and racism. Even more outrageous is the fact that the forum was sponsored by the United Nations, an organization purportedly dedicated to the advancement of human rights [the very rights Mugabe has denied citizens in his homeland], and the ultimate outrage is the fact that the occasion was to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation [at a time when Mugabe has systematically destroyed his nation's agricultural production and is starving much of its population]. Yet that is what has happened.

Reuters reports:

ROME (Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe denounced U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as "unholy men" on Monday, comparing them to fascist leaders trying to dominate the world.

Speaking at 60th anniversary celebrations of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Mugabe said the United States and Britain had illegally invaded Iraq and were looking to change governments in other countries.

"Must we allow these men, the two unholy men of our millennium, who in the same way as Hitler and Mussolini formed (an) unholy alliance, formed an alliance to attack an innocent country?" Mugabe told the conference.

"The voice of Mr Bush and the voice of Mr Blair can't decide who shall rule in Zimbabwe, who shall rule in Africa, who shall rule in Asia, who shall rule in Venezuela, who shall rule in Iran, who shall rule in Iraq," he said.

Delegates attending the FAO conference applauded Mugabe at the end of his speech.

Read it here.

They applauded!!!

Nick Cohen, writing in the Observer this weekend noted a fundamental rupture that characterizes today's Left.

He introduces us to Maryam Namazie, an Iranian-born crusader for women's rights, who expresses outrage at the decision of Canada's liberal government to allow sharia law to govern family disputes in Muslim communities -- a decision that condemns thousands of Muslim women to a brutal patriarchal oppression.

"Why was it, [Namazie] asked, that supposed liberals always give precedence to cultural and religious norms, however reactionary, over the human being and her rights"? Why was it that they always pretendd that other cultures were sealed boxes without conflicts of their own and took "the most reactionary segment of that community" as representative of the belief and culture of the whole.

In a ringing passage, which should e pinned to the noticeboards of every cultural studies faculty and Whitehall ministry, she declared that the problem with cultural relativism was that it endorsed the racism of low expectations.

"It promotes tolerance and respect for so-called minority opinions and beliefs, rather than respect for human beings. Human beings are worthy of the highest respect, but not all opinions and beliefs are worthy of respect and tolerance. There are some who believe in fascism, white supremacy, the inferiority of women. Must they be respected?

Obviously not, nor should we respect those ideologies of the left that would similarly destroy the integrity of the human individual in order to promote collective interests. The rogues gallery of leftist monsters is even more horrific than that of the right.

Cohen continues:

Namazie is on the right the great intellectual struggle of our time between incompatible versions of liberalism. One follows the fine and necessary principle of tolerance, but ends up having to tolerate the oppression of women, say, or gays in foreign cultures while opposing misogyny and homophobia in its own.... The alternative is to support universal human rights and believe that if the oppression of women is wrong, it is wrong everywhere.

The gulf, Cohen concludes, is unbridgeable.

Read it here.

He's absolutely right. The principle of tolerance, admirable in itself, cannot be allowed to blind us to the great injustices and horrors of this world. In the hands of a monster like Mugabe it can be a defense of unspeakable terror. Those moral imbeciles who applauded Mugabe's ravings, or who ignore or excuse the inconvenient horrors Namazie protests, make themselves complicit in crimes against humanity, but such is the poisonous legacy of racialism and anti-colonialism that they feel their stance to morally justified.

James Lileks, in his Screedblog, highlights another aspect of this moral quagmire.

The day after Iraqis voted on their constitution I passed a knot of protesters standing on three corners of a wide suburban interchange. The signs had peace cymbols, and the text encouraged all to honk if we wanted peace....

What struck me was that these people standing by the shopping mall were protesting the means by which the right to vote had been secured. It seems like protesting Meals-on-Wheels because the truck broke the speed limit and had expired tags.

My point? No point. Just that the day the people of Iraq went home with purple fingers, some folks in a nice safe suburb of Minneapolis reacted by standing on a streetcorner with transcribed bumperstickers urging the US to abandon Iraq tomorrow.

Then he delivers the hammer stroke:

Who would Jesus bomb? I cannot presume to speak. If you think he would have bombed Afghanistan, Iraq, AND Yugoslavia to strike at tyranny, well, you must hold the current president in contempt. He’s two for three.

Read it here.

This is the great irony -- one that exposes the moral emptiness of the Left. The great Satan, the hated Dubya, has done far more to advance the cause of human rights and dignity than has any, or for that matter all, of the heroes of the left. What is more, he has done so consciously, out of moral conviction, not just as an incdental by-product of baser desires, while the moralizing posturers who protest his actions slide farther into their swamp of vicious paranoia.