Nelson Mandela - no longer a terrorist in the US.

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@Yago, apartheid is a black and white issue.

Ok, I'm being frivolous about a serious subject, so I'll say something sensible to atone for my sins.

Last year Gerry Adams (Leader of a Nationalist party in Ireland) was photographed in the Oval Office with Bush. This year Bush wouldn't even be seen shaking his hand on St. Patrick's Day (Irish National Holiday).

The boul' Gerry snubbed story

Now, the mercenary actions of three members of the IRA (terrorist organisation) are so far far below Mr Adams sphere of influence that the alledged link between himself and the FARC terrorists is tenuous at best.

Even so, Mr Adams has two choices. He can totally disassociate himself from these active 'IRA/FARC' mercenaries and in doing so hand over the reins of his party to people who could potentially restart the Troubles.

Or he can accept the label of terrorist and in so doing keep his position of authority that allows him to maintain Ireland's peace process.

He chose the latter.

The labelling of different leaders as being terrorists or allies only makes a difference to the people doing the labelling.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me (or change my Domestic Governmental Strategy, with the emphasis on mental).

 

Well, amazing to see what a dispute emerged since I last read this thread.

Well, my point is that the US gvt officials put Mandela on parole. Mind he's an elder statesman - without any political influence short of beeing an icon. He was born in 1918. If he still lives in 10 years he'll be 95.
Better safe than sorry, if he decides to order a bombing campaign on his 94th birthday the US gvt can say satisfied: "We never trusted him! We even made it official for the record." (proudly point on list) Well, that's a well covered a** I'd say. And ts the most remarkable aspect of this almost surreal affair.

Keeping this in mind it is pretty irrelevant wether Clinton didn't take him off the list or not. I even know a probable reason or excuse for Clinton not doing it - because it must be a pretty riduculous list listing Mandela as a terrorist and who likes to waste his time with that? And I can imagine this list beeing locked away, forgotten, except by a careful official maintaining it in hope that some day republicans wil re-emerge in the white house - eventually government organisations have an inherent inertia preventing quick change. But that's wild speculation.

Most terrorists are political animals and the ANC was no exception. They fought unfair, as the apartheid regime was unfair. Sure, apartheit kept the streets safe but the price was a repressive regime of race separation.

I found a nice link about terrorism here, highly recommended especially in respect to the ... new shift this thread took.

In reply to Depaara:
The poor education of the black majority in combination with the aids problem back since the apartheid days contribute to todays rape problem - but that is off topic.

 

I couldn't resist the double-meaning of black and white.

One of the problems with South-Africa, I think, it is so far, yet so painfully close. It nearly can be described, from an European perspective, as one of the back yards. If South-Africa would be a completly insignificant backwater, it never would have caught so much attention. But even worse, there is so much linking to it, some churches and European companies have activly participated. Actually, the stain on the presbyterian churches is an actual topic over here right now.

And the lure for immigrants, to have easily a life-style they couldn't afford at home, mainly because the blacks payed for it.

 

My apologies Yago.

I for one am glad that Bush will not be invading South Africanistan, well, not unless Mandinka breaks his parole by getting caught shoplifting in K Mart again.

Old folks .

 

Can you sig that?

I agree with others, it's really a non-issue of damned if you do, damned if you don't. Leave him on and some obscure site talks about you being nuts for having him on and people predisposed to dislike the US and/or its administration start threads. Take it off and obscure sites talk about you being nuts for just now taking him off and people predisposed to dislike the US and/or its administration start threads on the subject.

This is the only place I've ever heard it mentioned.

 

The funny thing about the whole issue here is that although he is in the terrorist list (now he is on probation) he can as a diplomat enter the USA territory but as a simple citizen he can't. Now i am asking he is more dangerous as a simple citizen than as a diplomat? Is he a terrorist element as a citizen and not as a diplomat?
And as far as i remember the whole violence in South Africa was not authorized by Nelson Mandela but from his wife, who took his place in the ANC and again if i remember correctly was trialed a couple of years ago for the attrocities she commited while she had this seat. And she was trialed while her husband (or ex i can't be sure about this) was the president of South Africa.
And to my understanding this probation thing happened now in order to sweeten the pill for the prices of the drugs used against AIDS, which are so expensive that most South Africans can't even dream of buying them. Mandela pointed this out in a very direct and straightforwarding manner and the USA administration must have felt a little ackward. But business is business and since they can't drop the prices they dropped the terrorist alarm for Mandela. Convienent heh

 

The great Snook,
You criticised Ragusa for posting "US-apartheit coalition". First some background info on the Angola War - from HRW and here and here.

The 1971 Byrd Amendment allowed U.S. to buy chromium from Ian Smith's white minority government in Rhodesia despite UN boycott - and Ian Smith was a racist so bad even the south-africans only deared to support him covertly. Recently the US released formerly classified documents on Angola, namely clearing the questions of who started it - the commies or the west.
The NY Times brought an article on the released documents here. Another nice one can be found here and here. All just with the help of google.

I can't see anything wrong or false in the above statement as it is just a fact. The US supported appartheid because they were anti-communist - that was enough to make them friends. It is fair to speak of a coalition.

 

@Chandos

So if we disagree with Ragusa we aren't allowed to express ourselves? This is your idea of free speech?

As far as the anti-American thing, I am not convinced one way or the other what Ragusa is, except anti-Bush. This I have no problem with. I have a number of problems with Bush myself.
My problem with Ragusa is what Tal refers to as a lack of finesse. If it is debate that you are interested in, then let's debate, but leave the backhanded comments and insults out of it.

On topic: The probation thing does seem curious, but if he is still in consultation with the groups that Chevy listed above, then he should be on probation. Paranoid? Maybe. But I would rather be paranoid then dead.

 

Chevy wrote:

On tribalism 1981

No, those "tribal-feuds" are certainly not newly discovered. They have been there as Cecile conquered the land and they surely did not vansih in the meantime. Mugabe crashed the N'debele with North-Korean allies. Rhodes crushed nearly a century earlier with British infantry. What's the subtile difference betwewn Rhodes and Mugabe ?

[ August 25, 2003, 22:14: Message edited by: Yago ]

 

@prozac

You raise a good point. However, I think that people need to remember that nation-states are like businesses. They do what is in their own best interests. The United States may have been a supporter of Apartheid in the beginning, but IMHO the United States also deserves a lot of the credit for doing away with it.

What is good policy one day, may not be so good on another. It is unfortunate, but unless we develop a hive mentality this will always be the case, from the individual level all the way up to the nation level.

 

Hm, then I have to let go of my decorum.

I think that's pretty much bull****.

A. The problems South-Africa has now is to big part a legacy of a century mismanagement. Bantu-Education was mainly aimed at obstructing education of blacks at any cost. Now, the ideology of Apartheid didn't go well together with blacks reading books. And the Soweto rising was caused iirc. by the de-facto prohibiton of teaching English to blacks. Now, all those generations who went through bantu-education have in fact no education at all. That's a social-disaster and obviously one of the main reasons for the problems South-Africa is drowning in. The other factor being the crumbling of the state after Apartheid fell. The police force propably was a little bit tainted by the past.

B. To the "friends". The ANC had propably relationships with them, maybe to get material support in their own struggle ? That does not make South-Africa automaticly a communist-regime. The other nation with ties to Zimbabwe is the UK. Propably a communist regime too.

C. On the "reemerging" of tribal-feuds I've already posted on.

D. Stalinism in South-Africa right now ? The Apartheid-Regime was pretty close to Stalinism, in my view.

 

There is another remarkable aspect about Mandela "on Parole" and the ANC as a terrorist organisation. One could think that the US couldn't care less if some supressed minority overseas uses guerrilla methods to topple repressive regimes.

When the US congress made a resolution calling South-Africa to free Mandela Dick Cheney opposed it. African america reporters smelled racism and interviewed him in that. Cheney defended his decision like that:

That highlights the way the US decisionmakers in the 80 and now again think. When you're the enemy of an ally your an enemy. So simple. And the US weren't that picky in choosing their allies, they still aren't.
It is no coinicdence that the US happens to have opposed a UN resolution stating the right of supressed minorities to stand up against their opressor. Why? Because of two of their allies : South-Africa and Israel.

When you're a good man but happen to oppose the rule of one of the US proxies that's a reason enough for them preferring you in jail - and Mandela can be lucky he didn't end up like Allende. And Cheney didn't even find it disturbing to support a racist regime because the cold war in his opinion seemingly dictated that.
And of course, the fight for budgeds. With an enemy out there you can easier justify a higher defence spending. The enemy of that day was communism - looking at Prozac's Angola links above you can see how much a threat to US interest in africa the commies were - they came after the US started an underground war. The same stuff happened in some other places as well - just check the web for more.
So, with the "My friends enemy is my enemy" in mind it is easy to understand why Mandela became a terrorist for sitting in jail isolated and demanding something that became commonplace in the US in the 60s: Equality for black and white. That much for the US gvts promoting and spreading democracy in their foreign policy.

This administration still has a weird understanding of the term democracy. Wolfowitz, when he tried to forge his war plans on Iraq, was furious that Turkey didn't allow the US to use it as a base in the war on Iraq, the turkish elected representatives overwhelmingly voted against it. He expected the turkish military to override them. Respect for democracy? Maybe for institutions - but actually obediance is good enough.

Making the turn complete look on Iraq - the south, some 40% or so of the entire population, is shiite and there fundamentalist are raising. Would there be elections the people would almost certainly vote fundamentalist. As they would probably do in Egypt and Jordan or Saudi-Arabia. That would reflect the will of the local population. Of course, with elements in these countries starting acts of underground war they become terrorists, or freedom fighters because they want to determine their future themselves and not by US backed dictators? But the ideologues never tire to explain us that these millions are mislead. But still - their choice. Would the US accept such a vote? I daresay: Not with this administration.

The official definition of terror in the US army manuals is:

Sounds familiar? It is a serious analytical arror to say terror is a weapon of the weak.
Have a look on what the US hired the nicaragua's contras for, in a country that dared to topple the US supplied dictator and to replace him with an elected left regime. And the neocons cheerfully suggest waging an underground war in Iran - not only another country that also toppled its US supplied dictator but also the only country in the hemisphere that managed to make something like free elections - even when they struggle to get rid of their mullahs.

The neocons are enemies of democracy, and their thinking is unchanged by the tides of time - still 100% cold war menthality. This time it's the war on terror and, of course, the fight for budgets. And that justifies just about everything.

 

Another interesting aspect of the soviet threat of the cold war, pretty much similar to Angola, is Afganistan. I remember that, when I was in the army, short after the end of the cold war I got my hands on some older geostrategy journals from the late cold-war period and that was interesting read.

And one thing I found remarkable were the guessing why the russians invaded afganistan - among the speculations were them getting a foothold in the indian ocean, quite a threat to the international oil flow. Wether this was right or not is pretty pointless today as it didn't manifest and probably didn't leave the kremlin, but it made a formidable threat to the west.

Not surprising things looked a little different. In an interview the then-national security advisor to the US president Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the myth of soviet agression against the afghans fell apart:

In hindsight it poitns out that the US have been much more agressive in the late cold war than the russians, actually pressing on confrontation to involve the russians in costly proxy wars. Provoking the soviet invasion had two advantages: An additional threat for the budged, and involving the russians in a costly war.

And as Ragusa pointed out, the actors of the cold war came back into office with Bush Jr. Looking at PNAC and their daily babble there is no reason to assume they underwent notable change when out of office.
What that means in freference to Mandela and the NAC beeing terrorists? Well, as the afghan invasion shows, there is much propaghanda. So who's the baddie? That's pretty much dependent from your goals and coalitions - and therfor your definition.

 

In the essence the political elite atm ruling in the Bush administration is deranged: They see landmasses and whole people as assets at their disposal.

Like supporting South-Africa against the ANC was helpful in the fight against communism (with the reasonable price - as usual paid by others - of apartheid) or the classic proxy wars in Angola and Afganistan - which emerged to a good deal provoked by the US and almost entirely on costs of someone else.
Angola was used to weaken Cuba and to lure them into a fight where they would bleed out - that didn't work. But it worked with Afganistan where the russians did bleed out - and with their sinking oil revenues it led to the collapse of the soviet union. And the price was payed by one million afgans dead and a totally f*cked up country.

The total indifference of the effects their policy on other peoples and other countries short of a US short-term advantage.
Look at Iraq: Conquering it was easy but no one among the neocons made plans for the rtime beyond because they believed what they wanted to believe. That's pretty short-term IMO.

And people like Cheney, Brezinski or Wolfowitz will always find a nice excuse for their outrageous policies - like the war on terror: Sure there have been human rights violations ... yes we didn't know anything exactly -- errr -- but better safe than sorry ... yes, we killed thousands of innocents and there were acts of extreme violence but you have to see that in the spirit of post-9/11 and the war on terror, and, of course, the budged ... blablableh

And in the end, the winner writes history. It took some 20 years to counter the official US history on the Afganistan and Angola wars. And in the meanwhile such obscure relics as this weird list with Mandela as a terrorist give evidence of that time.

It is ironic yet characteristic to US policy that a killer like Bin Laden has been protected as a friend and valuable asset for about two decades while Mandela, sitting isolated in jail, is listed as a terrorist because he opposed the oppressive rule of a US ally.

 

Maybe they are, but then their representatives must not go around and say that their nation represents the ethic and good force of the world. Or even worse put labels not only on themselves but to everyone else too.
As for the South Africa and generally in Africa the black people are facing a very very low quality of life. They don't have even the basic education most of them, not to mention health care. Their beliefs and the way they deal with the troubles of life is almost the same they had 400 years ago.

This is from a very interesting article in Le Monde Diplomatique

 

Well now you raise a question about what is good. Good and evil are in the eye of the beholder. Using the classic Hitler example "If you could travel back through time and kill him as a baby." Many people would consider that a good thing, but I bet his mother would have considered it evil.

At the time communism was considered a worse evil than poor and ignorant black south africans.

Always remember that hind-sight is 20/20. I heard a great example on the radio. "French foreign policy was to aid the United States and therefore they are responsible for the current invasion of Iraq." Of course this was their policy in 1776.

 

Well, the mess the US started in afganistan in the late 1970s and early 1980s is now showing consequences. 20 years are a pretty reasonable timescale. It is not a very comforting thought to imagine what the US administration might cause in Iraq when they don't get things straight quick.

It's not that the US are the only country that's causing such a mess - considering their achievements in the post-WW-II era france, russia, china and the brits (among others like belgium or portugal) weren't saints either. But the US are the world champion - their mess is unprecedent in scale.

As for communism was seen as the prime evil then. That's certainly true to a good part. But on the other hand there are the neocons and the budged: They were the doomsayers of that time, grossly overestimating soviet power assessments, blackpainting their intentions - while demanding increased defence spending. And then take the US provoked cuban and soviet "commie invasions" in Angola and Afghanistan.
To use an analogy: You know the tales of the firemen igniting fires to be needed? May be it's worth a thought.

And communisma as a prime evil or not:
What about moral standards of politicians who think that it's an acceptable price for the ... US ... in the war against the soviets if 100.000 to 1 million afghanis die? And that perhaps a country might end up deserted, littered with landmines and generally messed up?

Well, that afghan victory came indeed cheap to the US: The supplied the arms adding to the carnage and when it was over they left afghanistan alone with its problems. Until 9/11.

 

Aren't we forgetting a simple fact? The way a political system looks like to outsiders or insiders has little to do with the political system and much to do with the people who are governing. In ancient times there were many tyrants that were loved by their people because they were good governors. See the contradiction? They were tyrants because they seized authority through power of arms, but they ruled the country wisely and with justice and were respected for that.
So we must understand that the problem lies with the people not with the system.

I think it would be one false act. Maybe Hitler was a catastrophy and his ideas tormented and still trouble Europe and maybe some other continents, but if he wasn't him there would be someone else and that is for sure. Maybe German, maybe English, maybe French, maybe Greek who knows. I wouldn't dare to alter history anyway. And as for the question about good and evil (or bad) let me remind you that our actions determine which path we are following not our words.
And although most of the common people have this in mind and try to back up their words with actions, i don't see this in any politician almost everywhere in this world