After almost three months of sitting on the sidelines, the UN Security Council finally took some action on Zimbabwe — by going only as far as declaring reality.  The UNSC met last night and condemned the Robert Mugabe regime for its campaign of violence, and declared that the Friday run-off election would be a travesty and unrecognized by the international community. However, they stopped short of the first real, meaningful action that they could take:

Outraged at the turmoil in Zimbabwe, the U.N. Security Council declared that a fair presidential vote is impossible because of the “campaign of violence” waged by President Robert Mugabe’s government.

“Outraged”?  Well, not quite.  The US, Britain, and France tried to put some teeth into the resolution by declaring Mugabe’s rule illegitimate in light of the March election, and recognizing Morgan Tsvangirai as the elected president of Zimbabwe.  That effort got quashed by the usual suspects — China and Russia, the latter of which didn’t even want the matter discussed at the UNSC.

South Africa also opposed the stronger measures.  The Thabo Mbeki government, which has thus far managed to keep its lips firmly gripped to Mugabe’s gluteus maximus, offered a howler instead.  Their UN ambassador suggested that the UNSC leave it to Zimbabweans to determine whether to hold the run-off or rely on the March elections to determine whether Tsvangirai is the legitimate president.  Of course, if they could do that, the issue wouldn’t be at the UNSC at all.  Maybe South Africa missed the headlines, but Mugabe’s army and militias are raping, pillaging, and murdering through the districts that supported Tsvangirai, which makes it just a tad difficult to believe that Zimbabwe can hold any kind of poll or referendum at the moment.

I suppose we should be grateful that the UN has done anything after three months of inaction, but this shows once again how useless they can be.  Once again, China and Russia prop up murderous dictatorships, and once again, the UN winds up issuing declarations and refusing to take any action at all.  They’ll be the first to insist, though, that we need to send billions of dollars to feed Mugabe’s victims over the next few years, rather than act to solve the problem now.