History has shown repeatedly that it is difficult to establish a democratic republic in nation with a tradition of rule by repressive regimes, monarchies, or theocracies. It's even more difficult if one of the goals of the transition is to do it bloodlessly. The United States remains very nearly the only nation to have a revolution, and consequently establish a republic, without a prolonged period of chaos, such as was experiened by France. Their revolution produced the Reign of Terror, and ultimately, the quintessential Man on Horseback in the person of Napoleon.

(As I was writing this this afternoon, my good friend Napalm with a comment reminded me of the sad attempts of Cental and South American nations to create stable lasting democracies, despite all manner of encouragement and aid we've given them)

Even in our history, it was a near thing. We were quite fortunate that a remarkable group of (states)men, children of the Enlightenment, collectively known as the Founding Fathers, were able to forge a lasting union from thirteen extremely cantankerous states. Their first attempt was flawed, and failed. Their second attempt, still imperfect, was just barely good enough. It took later revisions and a Civil War to even approach being a final product.

Many would argue that our government did not emerge from it's awkward adolescence to full responsible adulthood until after the Civil Rights movements of the sixties, well over a century after that war. This is the history of world's most successful republic.

Given the demonstrated difficulty of this process, it should not be surprising that we should attempt to study it, learn the strategies and principles that would allow us to clone it, as we face the challenges of nationbuilding in those parts of the world that still suffer under the various flavors of unfree regimes. One would expect that the academic world would be leading the charge in this effort. It seems that they are, but in a most peculiar manner.

Reuters reports that Boston University, as part of it's African Studies program, will be importing former African rulers to serve as professors, teaching the lessons learned from their experiences as heads of state.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I actually sat on the story before I blogged it for a few days, as I thought it might be a hoax. I could only find it in the UK national version of the Reuter's website, not in the US version, which I thought was curious as it's BU we're talking about here. After the WSJ picked up the story today on the Op-Ed page, I figured if it was good enough for them, it was good enough for me.

The first head of state they signed on for the program is Kenneth Kuanda, who ruled Zambia for 27 years under a one-party regime. Eight years into that term of office, he banned any other political parties other than his own. He left office in 1991, after mounting domestic opposition to his failed policies pressured him into allowing an election where there was actually a competing candidate, which he lost.

His loss is attributed to his policies that destroyed the Zambian agriculture, and made the national economy totally dependent on the export of copper. When copper prices fell, the economy was wrecked.

His current status as an African statesman is based primarily on his status as a victim. The followon regime was in fact even more corrupt than he was, and jailed Kuanda in 1997 for allegedly participating in a coup attempt. He was freed only after much protest by such leaders as Nelson Mandela. His recent lobbying for more aid to fight AIDS in Africa lends to this aura. The sad fact is, that as African heads of state go, he is about as good as it gets.

Kaunda will give lectures, and participate in seminars on campus, and around the country. According to a BU press release, Delta airlines has donated twelve round trip tickets to help Kuanda travel about, so that even more of us can benefit from his lessons learned. Meanwhile his papers will be cataloged and archived for further study.

Charles Stith, who runs the program at BU, is quoted as saying that he hoped Kaunda would be the first in a long line of African leaders to take part in the program. "What we're doing represents an example of the potential opportunities after the presidency. If that can serve as the impetus for some folks to move on (and leave office), then we're happy," he told Reuters.

The university evidently thinks that the prospect of spending a year in a comfortable academic sinecure might help encourage some of the despots to resign before they get tossed out of office.

I have to wonder what on earth we can hope to glean in the way of useful information from this man. Perhaps seminar topics can be titled "How to Destabilise the Economy," or perhaps, "Longevity in Office: Techniques For Circumventing Term Limits." Perhaps the theory is that we should study these leaders as examples of what not to do.

Africa seems a most unlikely place to harvest truly democratic leaders to study. Perhaps BU's next program will be to seek out and study virginity in whorehouses, economic successes in centrally controlled economies, or astrophysicists named Anna Nicole.

However, the story turns from simply stoopid to beyond bizarre. Stith, a former US ambassador to Zambia, will be looking to recruit many other former African heads of state for this program.

Per Stith, the only qualification needed is for the leader to have stepped out of office peacefully, even though the leader may have, as Kaunda did, strayed a bit to the repressive path. Even Robert Mugabe has not been ruled out. "Anybody who falls under those criteria, we're certainly willing and interested in considering," he said. "Depending on what President Mugabe decides to do, if for instance he stepped aside at a duly scheduled and legitimate election, we'd certainly look at it."

Evidently staying in power by virtue of a rigged election is not a disqualification.

How wonderful. This will allow the BU students a much greater breadth of knowledge. They could round out their studies with such lessons as "Starvation and Solidifying Support," or "Make That Tool a Political Tool; Rape as Revenge."

We have the head of a major American university stating that they would be willing to bequeath a known genocidal maniac of a dictator a salary to teach classes at that school telling us how he pulled it off.

I feel like I've been paradropped into an episode of the Twilight Zone.

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One argument that I've seen the so-called liberals use in the debate on whether or not to go get Saddam and put his head on a pike is the one I'll call the "Well, What About Him?" argument.

In this lovely line of compassionate argument, they say, "Well, Saddam is a bad man, we admit that." They then argue that if we set this precedent, it would somehow be unfair. What about North Korea, and China, and whomever else they can think of? We can't take all those Bad Guys down, can we? They have big armies and nukes. It'd cost a lot of blood and treasure that the people are reluctant to spend.

So, since we can't change things for the better everywhere, the only correct, moral, fair thing to do is ignore all the little tin-pot dictators with overgrown police forces and let them have their way with their citizens, too.

This sounds so zany to me that I have a hard time believing folks who otherwise seem intelligent can espouse this idea, yet they do. You hear it from both liberals and libertarians. Evidently, they've forgotten what the root word from which they both derive their chosen labels, liber, means. "Free."

I had one guy, who I'll let remain anonymous (I'm truly embarrassed for him), actually write and say, "Who's next, Zimbabwe?" as if it were some devastating argument that trumped anything I had to say about the humanitarian reasons to take down Iraq.

Yeah, putting Mugabe's head on a pike is OK with me. Except after reading this, I don't think he oughta be next. I think he oughta be first. It's not enough that he's starving his political opposition, now his troops are, by direction, raping the children of his foes on a grand scale. "Hundreds of girls as young as 12 are being raped or forcibly kept as concubines in rural Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe's youth militia as part of a campaign that human-rights lawyers have branded "systematic political cleansing" of the population."

Where are the liberals? Where are the feminist voices, where is the Church, and the ICC, and the EU, and the folks pissing and moaning that we were abusing the poor Taliban detainees by making them kneel while they were being photographed? Where is Amnesty International, the UN, John Paul and Sharpton and Jesse and Bill and Hilary? Where's Chomsky and Sontag? Where's Sheila Jackson Lee? Where are the black church leaders? Or the white ones? For that matter, where the fuck is Bush43?

For what sin are these people the world's orphans?

No soup for you, my Zimbabwe friends. Sucks for you that you aren't sitting on top of some vital American interest. Sorry your whole continent is one big freakin' abattoir, and none of the folks that got it that way (look straight north and you'll see who I mean) are willing to clean up the mess, if it means going to more effort than frowning a bit and signing a few resolutions.

Bush needs to drop the 82nd, or a few Marine Brigades, the Boy Scouts, me and a few rednecks, somebody, anybody, down there, right now, with the specific mission to kill Mugabe and everybody in his Rolodex. We can't go get Saddam for a few more months anyway, and this will only take about fifteen minutes. I don't give an amoeba's ass about nationbuilding, international law, or if the next guy in line is as bad as Mugabe. If he is, we'll take him down, too. We need to make it real clear that "regime change" means removing those that run them from amongst the quick to amongst the dead. Sooner or later, sooner I think, they'll figure out that being a Bad Man really lowers your life expectancy, and people will quit applying for the job of Head Henchman before we run out of ammo.

Two words for ya, baby. Pax Americana. Get used to it. It's the liberal thing to do.

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It's certainly not news that Iraqi air defenses and US air patrols are taking potshots at each other - it's been going on just about ever since GWI died down to the current low level of intensity.

But what we may be seeing here are the first salvos of GWII, where the critical field of battle will be the media. We smacked some Iraqi air defense radars today, and Saddam protests that we hit "civilian" targets. "At 0855 a.m. local time (12:55 a.m. EDT) today U.S. and British planes...flew 35 sorties using air bases in Kuwait," the Iraqi military spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency (INA).

"The enemy attacked civilian and service installations in Basra province, killing eight people and wounding nine others," the spokesman said."

Expect to see a whole lot more of this in the coming months, as Saddam tries to play the collateral damage card to undermine support for the war to toss him out of Iraq.

Meanwhile, Cheney made a speech today outlining the need to go and get him now, close on the heels of Tom Delay's speech on the same topic. The administration is starting to make it's case, as it should.

Meanwhile, the DoD has just informed reservists in many of the critical combat support billets that they are liable to be kept on active duty for up to two years, for the very first time since the formation of the all-volunteer forces in 1973.

For better or for worse, the decision has been made. The administation, Congress, and the press will all prance through the rituals of the kabuki, for custom's sake. We are now like the passengers in a rollercoaster, as it clinks and clanks it's way up the climb to start the ride - there's no getting off the ride now until the very end.

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