. . . compares favorably with the loss of Afghanistan, Tibet, Hong Kong, and China to the Socialist/Communist ideologues elsewhere. Of course, the Anglo-American world Realpolitik has suffered it's share of losses to Right Wing Ideologue regimes, as well. Look no further than France, Italy, and Iran among others. We could even mention America in this context. The problem for a long time in Europe, and continuing today in America and of course in the blood feud politics of so-called "Third World" nations and polities, is that citizens are always given nothing but these Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum choices between a rock and a hard place, Right versus Left, Dialectical versus Materialism, extreme ideologues over here versus extreme ideologues over there. These choices are not happy ones, nor are the people forced to make these Pyhric or "false victory" choices.

I did not know about Robert Mugabe's loss of his beautiful Ghanian wife Sally until reading this Christopher Hitchens article today, nor did I know of Mugabe's jealousy of Mandela's sterling champion political reputation. It humanizes the elderly Robert Mugabe to me, who otherwise appears utterly power mad and deranged, a political vestige of previous decades of conflict and cold war. Certainly, back in the 1970s, Mugabe was the Western choice as a bulwark against the threat of Communism in Africa, in the form of Cuban troops in Angola. As for Mandela, I took his full measure, when he turned his back on Jesse Jackson, the American liberal Democrat politician from Chicago, as he visited Washington DC during George Bush Senior's White House tenancy. Nobody worked harder to benefit Mandela and his vision of South Africa, than Jesse Jackson. Maybe this explains both Mandela's ongoing nimble reputation self-aggrandizement, and Mugabe's frustration with his own crumbling and diminished political reputation and power. The case can be made that Robert Mugabe saved Africa from Communist influences during the Cold War era, and for that he should be thanked, and not just by rich Westerners, but by Africans themselves. However, that salvation has proved incomplete and ephemeral, since China's inroads into Africa, in the form of the murderous regime in Sudan and elsewhere, and the economic, political and social failures of South Africa, more apparent every day to anyone who cares to look, Christopher Hitchens and Jesse Jackson among them.

Political experiments and failures are always ugly to look at, and not just for the inartfulness of the disaster, but for the human consequences, which can be both deadly and long lasting.

Some might suggest that money rules politics. Money and economic interests have their place in political calculations, of course. But men like Mugabe and Mandela change history, for better or for worse. Regardless of the results, these men should be appreciated for their exceptional abilities, character, and leadership, even as history relegates them and their past glories to our History textbooks.

The main lesson to be learned in politics, I would offer, is that nobody ever says, "Thank you" for a job well done. The irony is that no theater of human endeavor has nearly so much import on the lives of real human beings, save maybe architects, scientists and engineers, and philosophers along with the occasional religious leader. As for Artists or Poets, I think Plato had it right, when he suggested outlawing or banning them from civic society. The heart of political genius is not extreme ideology or clever propaganda; rather, it is the talent for recognizing human strengths and weaknesses, and accommodating one's governance towards realities, necessities, and the needs of others. In other words, we have no modern political geniuses. You cannot forget, ignore, or fail to learn about the past, and be effective in the present, with import on future events. China fails this test in Tibet; America fails this test in Iraq and Afghanistan; and Europe, well, Europe is doing nobody any good of late. Maybe these failures are why the World continues to experience these wars, leadership "crack ups" and genocides. People elsewhere are suffering the most severely for our own Western World political leadership failings. I do not believe either Robert Mugabe or Saddam Hussein, or for that matter America's erstwhile ally Osama bin Laden, would have ended up lost as thoroughly off the deep end of History's final chapters, had our own political leadership been up to the challenge of assisting them in their quite difficult undertakings and evident successes in our own behalf. We cannot just accept the benefits from these extraordinary people, and then just walk away from them and watch them flame out in miserable and wretched ignominy, as we did Diem of Vietnam, Ferdinand Marcos of The Philippines, the Shah of Iran and so many others. Politics is a very strange business, whereby the more powerful rarely acquire deserved responsibility for their misteps. I believe the operative word might be "Accountability." The lesser politicians of our modern era are expert and foisting their accountability onto others, who pay the price, sometimes with their lives. But in terms of this forum today, I choose to assign responsibility where it belongs: with the Anglo-American "Higher Up" political authorities. For this Anglo-American empire of feminist, ideological, and feckless foreign and domestic policies, Christopher Hitchens is the Roving Ambassador of Apology.