The NYT's hollow cant on Zimbabwe

Sometimes it’s not hard to see why the New York Times has been shedding readers. Witness, for example, today’s editorial “Zimbabwe at the Breaking Point.”

Zimbabwe is a mess. There are drastic shortages of food and fuel, the rates of inflation and unemployment are soaring, coercive land reforms have shrunk agricultural production, and public frustration is at a breaking point. Mr. Mugabe, one of the main leaders of the struggle against white minority rule, blames whites, political opponents and Britain for his woes. But nobody really questions any longer that the greatest blame lies with Mr. Mugabe's inept, corrupt and brutal rule. In national elections last year, Mr. Mugabe's victory was so tainted that Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth.

But their solution reveals the kind of childlike naiveté that could only exist in the polished halls of Berkeley, the New York Times, or the United Nations.

It is imperative for the [African] presidents — Mr. Mbeki, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and President Bakili Muluzi of Malawi — to demand that Mr. Mugabe open immediate talks with the leading opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, on ways to end the crisis and hold free and fair elections.

This is the plan? What possible evidence does the NYT have that would suggest the monster Mugabe would listen to these men? This cheap feel-good moralizing in the face of real suffering is worse than useless. But at least the NYT got one thing right in the final sentence:

Zimbabwe cannot endure five more years of Mr. Mugabe's misrule.

Too bad the NYT’s answer is of little more use than slapping on a “Free Zimbabwe” bumper sticker.