Former South African President Nelson Mandela continues to discredit himself. Quoting the January 30, 2002 edition of the Washington Post,
Former South African President Nelson Mandela lashed out at U.S. President George Bush’s stance on Iraq on Thursday, saying the Texan had no foresight and could not think properly….Mandela’s comment about “unspeakable atrocities” is coming from someone whose followers used to burn their opponents to death in flaming automobile tires. Perhaps he thinks these acts pale in comparison to the “innocent people” who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But no civilian who remained in Japan or supported the wartime Japanese government can be considered innocent. Moreover, to the extent that any actual innocents did die in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, their deaths were the moral responsibility of the Japanese government who put them in harm’s way. Civilians have no right to expect to live unharmed in an aggressor nation.
“It is a tragedy what is happening, what Bush is doing in Iraq,” Mandela told an audience in Johannesburg. “What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust….”
“Both Bush as well as Tony Blair are undermining an idea (the United Nations) which was sponsored by their predecessors,” Mandela said. “Is this because the secretary general of the United Nations (Ghanaian Kofi Annan) is now a black man? They never did that when secretary generals were white.”
Mandela said he would support without reservation any action agreed upon by the United Nations against Iraq….
“Because they decided to kill innocent people in Japan, who are still suffering from that, who are they now to pretend that they are the policeman of the world?…” he asked.
“lf there is a country which has committed unspeakable atrocities, it is the United States of America…They don’t care for human beings.”
To give the devil his due, however, Mandela’s comment about “wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust” was not about war in Iraq, for he claims to support any U.N.-sanctioned action against Iraq. Presumably, what he thinks would plunge the world into a holocaust is the undermining of the U.N.
Of course, abandoning the U.N. would be probably the best thing the U.S. could do for world peace. But Mandela’s remark is worth noting because it is a clue to the left’s agenda. Their denunciations of unilateralism are increasingly hysterical because, like the courtiers in the tale, they know the emperor has no clothes, and they think they can keep everyone else from finding out by means of moralistic intimidation.
But the crucial point is that they are threatened. They have no rational basis for their beliefs, they know it, and they’re afraid everyone else will find out.