Harare — ANYONE would pity whatever country next has the misfortune of hosting James D McGee as the United States Ambassador.

Harare's rumour mill, however, has it that McGee is being retired.

Unfortunately, the capital's political grapevine has never been the most reliable source of information and some poor country might still have to contend with the impudent brand of diplomacy that McGee specialises in.

If it is true that he is being put to pasture a few months from now, then all credit must go to the Obama administration for realising that McGee certainly does not embody the "change you can trust".

To be true, from the time McGee stood before the US Senate in September 2007 and vowed to successfully steer through Washington's illegal regime change agenda, every Zimbabwean knew that we were to be in for a tumultuous ride.

But even then, no one really expected him to try and outdo his predecessor, Christopher Dell -- another man with a level of arrogance surpassed only by his ignorance when it came to matters about Zimbabwe.

Dell, as we know, still holds the distinction of being the only diplomat in this country to be placed under 24-hour surveillance after he took it upon himself to be an opposition activist.

McGee, though, did his level best to surpass Dell, and just like him, his tenure in Harare has not yielded the results that he prematurely promised to the US Senate; namely, finalising the illegal regime change.

In fact, McGee, a veteran of America's most ignominous war (Vietnam), leaves another tiny country called Zimbabwe both bruised and battered after seeing the main political parties side-step his machinations and go ahead with the implementation of a political agreement Washington swore it would never support.

But that is one common strain in American foreign relations -- they have never been gracious in defeat and the recent decision to lift the travel warnings on Zimbabwe are the first time the world has ever really seen Washington trying to eat humble pie.

And eating humble pie is something McGee is well-advised to do.

It is non-fattening, it does not clog the arteries with cholesterol, it does not interfere with the 18-rounds of golf and it certainly refines the character.

McGee, like the functionally illiterate cowboy called Bush who sent him here, had no faith in the inclusive Government and that is something we all know for a fact despite whatever semantic manouevering the American might engage in.

He never wanted it to happen for the simple reason that his brief was to ensure that the "monster" called Robert Mugabe was booted out of office at all costs.

For him, the only acceptable government for the people of Zimbabwe -- or so he and the other towering intellects and diviners in Washington had decided for us -- was one that did not have Robert Mugabe involved in any capacity, even as a mere district administrator.

That is why prior to the 2008 harmonised elections McGee was gallivanting all over the country in a misguided attempt to discredit the Government and Zanu-PF as if he was a public relations consultant working with the opposition's information department.

He breached diplomatic protocol, appeared to deliberately try and antagonise the State that was hosting him and on the whole treated Zimbabweans as a bunch of kindergarten kids who do not know what is best for them and have to rely on him for guidance on all matters to do with governance.

This forced the Government to summon and warn him in May 2008 about his abuse of diplomatic privileges.

The charge sheet was as damning as it was maddening for any Zimbabwean who understands the culture of political condescension that permeates America's foreign policy machine.

In a space of less than one week in May last year, McGee breached more protocols than all the Ambassadors in Zimbabwe have ever broken in their combined stay in this country.

McGee spoke as if addressing a political rally when he visited Avenues Clinic on May 9, 2008.

On May 12, he wrote a letter to the Press that read as if it had been authored at Harvest House in what was a clear case of interference in our domestic political affairs in violation of protocols governing diplomatic relations between countries.

The following day, he travelled beyond a 40km radius of Harare without making prior arrangements with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as is the norm.

The aggravations were so severe that later that month President Mugabe had to order McGee to behave or pack his bags and go back home.

But this writer must admit that as Zimbabweans we should have never lost our cool with McGee because there was no way he was ever going to change Bush's US policy on Zimbabwe.

Yes, we all harboured the slim hope that perhaps, with his slave ancestry, he would understand Zimbabwe's lot and do his best to ensure that Washington's appetite for resources and influence would not destroy this little Southern African nation.

We vainly hoped that perhaps that the African blood coursing through his veins might awaken the stirrings of a consciousness that has been repressed by a politico-social system that up until the 1960s did not allow blacks to vote and even lynched them for daring to ask for that right.

Some will say that the talk of unity by dint of tint is an outmoded political philosophy.

But these are the same people who rally to defend the manner in which Jews, themselves victims of a brutal past, rally around each other and promote a brand of political semitism called Zionism and which is indeed racism.

There is nothing wrong with expecting some kind of sympathy from people with whom we share a common brutalised past.

But not so with McGee.

McGee is a mere functionary, a tool to be used and discarded by the American foreign policy monster in the relentless pursuit of global political, economic and cultural dominance.

And he unabashedly admitted as much himself just before he came to Zimbabwe.

McGee made it clear that Zimbabweans should never confuse his skin colour with the shade of his vainglorious assignment here.

What we have had in Zimbabwe is a black man who -- unlike the truly heroic Muhammad Ali -- thought it best to fight white America's war against Asians in Vietnam and all this without any sense of irony.

This is a black man who after bombing innocent villagers -- probably with napalm or some other such demonic chemical -- can turn around today and talk self-righteously about political violence in Zimbabwe without any sense of shame.

A man who after defending a malevolent sanctions regime that has helped to collapse the country's infrastructure can look a camera in the eye and utter high-sounding nothings about his concern for victims of cholera is what we have been dealing with here.

McGee's record here makes for a very bad advertisement for US foreign policy and perhaps only Bush and his inner circle of enormously ignorant neo-conservative hawks have done more to harm America's battered image on the African continent.

His stay here showed the world the true colours and the extent of the wrath of a system that only believes in permanent interests.

It has given us more than a glimpse of the extents to which a country as big as the United States can stoop in its dealings with a nation as small and plucky as Zimbabwe.

It is a cliché, but like all such hackneyed phrases it is very true: Zimbabwe will not miss James D McGee.

But even if he is to retire in June, as we are made to understand, there is still that worrying business of him stating back in January 2008 that upon leaving the foreign service, he would like to settle down permanently in Zimbabwe.

Being the hospitable -- and sometimes very naïve -- country that we are, we will certainly not mind hosting him as a private resident.

Keeping him here in an unofficial capacity will also save any other unfortunate country from having to contend with the obscene kind of diplomacy that he has transformed into an art form during his short, brutish and nasty posting here.