(FinalCall.com)–Is President Charles Taylor the first victim of regime change on the African continent at the hands of western nations? It is clear that they do not want any African leader in power who will interfere with their long-term goals and plans for Africa. We all thought that the first victim of regime change under the Bush administration would be President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, but it is obvious that they have run into some problems in trying to remove Mugabe from his legitimate position as the elected president of Zimbabwe as quickly as they would have liked. America, under the Bush administration, tried to put the icing on the cake by issuing an executive order in the form of sanctions against 72 members of the government of Pres. Mugabe, and also other sanctions, including a ban on the spending of U.S. currency by Americans in Zimbabwe.

The media coverage throughout the world report that Pres. Taylor has been indicted on war crime charges by a UN-sponsored court. What a “UN-sponsored court” is remains to be seen. After the Iraq war, the United Nations, which has virtually lost all of its credibility, is now turning to Africa to try to flex its muscle by issuing an indictment against Pres. Taylor in conjunction with the courts of Sierre Leone, a country which is struggling for its own balance. How does this indictment help to stabilize Africa?

The other issue that we must look at carefully is that Pres. Taylor was in the country of Ghana pursuing a peace accord with the rebels. Pres. Taylor left his country to meet with those whom he thought could bring an end to the fighting. At the same time, the indictment is issued and Ghana is pushed to arrest Pres. Taylor, which would only create additional chaos and confusion in West Africa. President John A. Kufuor of Ghana showed great strength in not playing into the hands of those who wanted President Taylor arrested. To get another African government, Ghana in this instance, to execute on the arrest while the man is pursuing a course of peace should be totally unacceptable to African leadership.

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The hypocrisy of what is happening to Pres. Taylor is that America and Europe preach democracy and democratic reform around the world. If governments, such as the UK (England), France and America, do not like the results of an election after African leaders under very trying circumstances move towards a democratic process to elect a president, they (UK, France and America) push to create chaos and confusion in those countries. Through the chaos and confusion, they attempt to remove or overthrow the legitimately elected president. This latest attack on Pres. Taylor and the threatened arrest only serves to further escalate the crisis.

This is the importance of strengthening the African Union. President Olusegun Obansanjo of Nigeria and President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa were in Ghana trying to help negotiate the peace. I wonder what their reaction was when they heard that there was a warrant for the arrest of Pres. Taylor and that the host government of Ghana was being pushed to execute on the arrest. When the news of the indictment hit the media, David Crane, an American and a former U.S. Defense Department official, was answering all the media’s questions and pushing for Pres. Taylor’s arrest. David Crane is the prosecutor for the special court of Sierre Leone. He was deeply involved in the pursuit of having Pres. Taylor arrested.

In these times we wonder, why Liberia and why Charles Taylor? Liberia is a country that is rich, rich, rich. It has abundant oil reserves off the coast; it is rich with gold, diamonds, timber and iron ore. It also has the rubber tree plantations. It is obvious that the long-range plans for this part of Africa does not include leadership such as Pres. Taylor. If he were being arrested for his support of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierre Leone, what would make it not possible for the next step to be the indictment and subsequent arrest of the Leader of the Libyan Revolution Muammar Gadhafi and President Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso? The grounds would be their support of President Taylor during the days of Liberia’s civil war, when President Taylor was struggling against the forces of former President Samuel Doe. We must remember that America backed, paid and protected former President Doe. America set up one of their main CIA offices for sub-Sahara Africa in Liberia. When the CIA saw that former President Doe was on the ropes, they abandoned him and allowed him to be killed in a very vicious manner.

When you begin to charge Pres. Taylor, you have to look at the historical background. This is why in Africa, the African Union and its strength is important. The Western nations, (G-8) have been working hard to weaken the African Union and its movement by instituting the campaign to fund the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), as a counter plan to thwart the African Union.

In President Taylor’s case, one can compare it to the days of slavery in America. When the slave master caught a slave who was running away, starting a rebellion or just doing something that the master disapproved, he would beat or maim the slave in public in order to instill fear in the other slaves. The removal of Pres. Taylor as the legitimate president of Liberia is the same case: Instill fear in the other African leaders by demonstrating to them that this is what we will do to you if you get out of line with us. In this instance again, Pres. Mugabe of Zimbabwe is a prime example. He is an African leader who had the audacity to reclaim stolen land from the White settlers. For this act, the western world wanted to make an example of him by instituting sanctions to warn other African leaders not to try this.

These two presidents have been charged with similar human rights violations. As far as them being guilty of human rights violations, we have to say to the Americans and Europeans, “He who is without human rights violations, let him cast the first stone.”