Posted by Dan Ewert : 2/05/2003 10:00:00 PM (Archive Link)
I’ve decided I really don’t like Nelson Mandela. The man may have helped end apartheid in South Africa but his foreign policy skills are terrible. Check out these two news items here and here. Before Powell spoke at the UN, he said, “We are going to listen to [the inspectors] and to them alone. We are not going to listen to the United States of America. They are not telling us how they got that information.” This, of course, is nonsense. As part of the UN Security Council, the U.S. partially oversees the inspectors and has authority over them. Also as a member of the Council, the U.S. has a vested interest in things and can declare things aren’t working. The inspectors don’t have authority over the UN, it’s the other way around. Also, why in the world would Powell tell the whole world exactly where, how, or from whom they got their intelligence? That’s a sure fire way to never being able to obtain any more information. Mandela went on to say, “What I am condemning is that two countries (the U.S. and the U.K.) should go out of the United Nations and have their own separate program, should actually undermine the United Nations.” Every country has a right to their own national self-interests and the currents ones of the U.S. happen to coincide with world interests whether the world realizes it or not. Additionally, I believe America and Britain are the only two nations who are willing to support the legitimacy of the United Nations. All others are perfectly happy to stand by while the world body slips into irrelevance.

Of course, Mandela wasn’t full of hot air just today, he was also blowing smoke a couple of days ago. He said that America is “one power with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.” Apparently, if you don’t agree with the great Mandela, you can’t think properly and that’s what this amounts to. He also said, “if there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.” He didn’t bother to back up this comment and he wouldn’t have been able to. You want some more? Here ya go, “Mandela said U.S. President George W. Bush covets the oil in Iraq ‘because Iraq produces 64 percent of the oil in the world. What Bush wants is to get hold of that oil.’ In fact Iraq contributes to only 5 percent of world oil exports.” 64 percent?! Talk about plucking numbers out of the air (or other places). But wait, here’s the best part: [Bush and Tony Blair] do not care. Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations (Kofi Annan) is now a black man?” C’mon! Mandela is just flat off his rocker! I mean these are Harry Belafonte-type comments coming from the great Nobel laureate. It’s actually rather unfortunate that a man of such import would make these sorts of unsupported, factually incorrect statements and wild, slanderous accusations. I would like to think he’s lost some respect, but knowing how things work, I doubt it.