Ethiopia’s Little Tienanmen

Another U.S. “ally” does a mini-Tienanmen–this time, in Ethiopia, with 24 gunned down and many more injured. The White House has issued a statement, but is it prepared to build a united, multi-ethnic opposition that can win an election, take power, and maintain law and order? Recent elections appear to have been a sham.

The current Ethiopian regime is one of several rival tribal militias–all nominally adherent to some loony form of Marxism. The current rulers are Tigrayan, and drove the Amhara-dominated army of Stalinist thug Mengistu Haile Maryam out of power in the 1990s. Mengistu was famous for several fairly unoriginal forms of state sociopathy: killing Emperor Haile Selassie and burying him under Mengistu’s desk; a Red Terror in which friends of mine described shootings and strangulations with electrical wire on the streets; and of course, the engineered famine of the 1980s–remember?–that killed millions while most of the food was diverted to the military.

Sound familiar?

In nations as in families, tyranny has heredity. I wouldn’t be surprised if ethnicity and vengeance played a role here.

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