On the one hand, I have to give the Washington Post credit for frontpaging today's story on longtime Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe's campaign of police thuggery against opposition leaders.
Yet when I looked through the article, I found no mention that Mugabe is a socialist or leftist, nor was he labeled a dictator.
In fact, the only dictator reference came in a graph that noted that the latest high-profile victim of Mugabe's violence, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, has himself been accused by political rivals of having "dictatorial tendencies."
[more after the drop]
It's great that the Post is now bringing Zimbabwe's long, slow slide into economic ruin and political upheaval to the fore with its latest coverage.
But could it hurt to educate readers a bit about why the economy there has tanked?
Socialistic economic policies coupled with no rule of law and no free and fair elections are the perfect cocktail for Zimbabwean chaos anywhere.
It's a shame the Post doesn't delve into the role that despotism and discredited Marxist economics has played in the political and human tragedy that is Zimbabwe.
UPDATE/clarification (16:40 EDT): There is a graph in the article that mentions the seizure of farms owned by white property owners, and that the economy has tanked since then. But that policy as part and parcel of a long-standing tradition of socialism is not really explored, nor is it labeled socialistic in nature.
