I cannot help but say a little something about the country I know best, aside from the USA of course, Zimbabwe. Colin Powell is right to make the disintegration of the country under Mugabe's solipsistic tyranny an issue. Not because Zimbabwe is vital to our national interests, it's not, but because the continent of Africa is important. While the world moves forward into the 21st century at various speeds, including the emerging Asia, Africa remains the "Heart of Darkness" for most Westerners. Corruption, instability, post-colonial strife, and AIDS have ravaged a beautiful continent filled with ambitious bright minds, eager laborers, immense natural resources, and desires no different than ours. Zimbabwe is important because it serves as a litmus test for the civility and words of the rest of the continent. Its decay and human rights catastrophe will exist only so long as its neighbors allow it to.

It's time for the once-estimable Nelson Mandela to stop lecturing Bush & Blair and end his creepy coziness with dictators. Mugabe is cut from a cloth not that different than Saddam and Mandela has made excuses for both. If Mandela rejuvenated his former moral influence and galvanized southern Africa to support human rights and apply pressure to Mugabe, he would do the people of Zimbabwe a huge favor. I suspect, unfortunately, that Mandela will continue to castigate anyone who criticizes Mugabe as a neo-colonialist and continue to bizarrely erode his once powerful moral authority.