Video: Godwin: Zimbabwe crying out for international help

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   >>> peter is the author of the new book "the fear," peter, zimbabwe, a nation that we could all say, you know why these people need help. one of the factors in your book, no oil to give, governor rendel just mentioned, what are the differences here? why do we pick one spot and not the other, the united states ?

   >> zimbabwe in many respects have been try crying out for some sort of international intervention for ages, there's been large loss of life there, and in my view it lacks the two essential exports that trigger an international intervention and those two exports are oil, primarily and the second one is terrorism. it doesn't export terrorism and without either of those two, it's really not seen as strategic enough to take the risks of any sort of intervens interventi intervention.

   >> so we sit back and watch another country fall by the wayside because it poses no national security threat to the united states ?

   >> right. and i think that i can understand why -- i realize that the u.s. can't be the universal policemen, it can't respond to every international 911 call. but i do think that one's got to be honest about one's motive for intervening, if we are going to say, listen, we're going in on humanitarian grounds to stabilize situations because we can't live with a loss of life and i think that's perfectly electr legitimate, if that's not our motive, then we need to fess up and say that's not enough on its own, we have got to add this strategic overlay to it.

   >> patrick buchanan in washington.

   >> when ugabi took over, he massacred people in the thousands. is that true, those allegations and if true, what did the international community do about that?

   >> i was a very young rookie reporter at the time and was -- wrote some of the very first stories about that and we still don't know how many people were killed in those massacres. but we think that probably in excess of 20,000. and the fascinating thing about that and i know it was alluded to earlier is that if you look at the date of that massacre, it was before 1990 . in other words the cold war hadn't ended and in those days because mugabe was seen as our ally, we didn't care. and in those days we supported different dictators. we didn't care at all. in those days the only thing that mattered was that you weren't pro communist. and then in 1990 , the world changed. and we said it's about accountability and these various other things. but in those days, nobody did a thing to mugabe at all.

   >> you have studied mugabe , is he a sociopath? how can he kill with such apparent lack of feeling or remorse?

   >> i think what happens in certain regimes and you've got them in southern africa , you've got them in cuba too, where you have had an anti- colonial war , you have this kind of liberation aura, this mythology that basically if you're the freedom leader, if you're the leader who freed the country, you can do no wrong and you have a kind of messianic feeling creeps in. and i think mugabi has that. he's essentially declared war on his own people in the last couple of years. the country has gone from being the wealthiest in africa with the highest education to one of the very lowest. it's one of the fastest contracting economies in the history of the world . so it's a historic achievement.

   >> we have been talking all morning about why the arab nations haven't gotten involve in this libyan effort. and you made the point before on camera about the oasd organization of african states getting involve. can you explain that to our viewers?

   >> one of the points you made with arab not going with this current intervention is that actually multinational african forces are involved in places like the congo and in somalia, so they have actually stepped up to the plate. it's interesting because in a sense, libya's also in africa as well as being in the middle east .

   >> why sit so hard to get the united states of american people --

   >> one of the problems is that they tend to regard africa as one great undifferentiated amophis continent. if i talk about belfast in the same sentence, you would laugh at me.

   >> isn't it true, peter that there's enough real national resources in africa that it can be a huge economic driver for the world?

   >> absolutely and will be i'm sure.

   >> the book is "the fear."

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