Nelson Mandela has Become a Fucking Idiot

How far can he fall?

Coming from other quarters, such criticisms would have been dismissed by both the White House and Downing Street as the words of appeasement, anti-Americanism or leftwing extremism. But Mandela is not just anyone. Towering like a moral colossus over the late 20th century, his voice carries an ethical weight like no other. He rode to power on a global wave of goodwill, left office when his five years were up and settled down to a life of elder statesmanship. So the belligerent tone he has adopted of late suggests one of two things; either that some thing is very wrong with the world, or that something is very wrong with Mandela.

The latter.

"What right has Bush to say that Iraq's offer is not genuine?" he asked on Monday. "We must condemn that very strongly. No country, however strong, is entitled to comment adversely in the way the US has done."

Holy crap, has he lost his rational faculty? Is he even aware of the decade of lies and deception Saddam and his government have engaged in since the end of the Gulf War? Is he now saying, in all his moral Collossisity, that the US has no right to speak the truth about how dangerous Iraq is? Is he suggesting, with a straight face, that it is wrong for one country to bluntly criticise another and present the undesirable threat of physical retaliation if that country does not cease it's long history UN Resolution-breaking activity? I guess he expects countries to follow the edicts of the UN voluntarily after being calmly lectured. You idiot, you cannot negotiate with an unwilling and dishonest party. Your only other option besides negotiate is force. It is time the threat of real force appears loudly and clearly. Bush and his supporters are doing this because it's morally right to challenge the lies and threats Saddam presents, not to mention the distressing level of oppression he lays upon his population...but Mandela wouldn't know anything about being repressed, would he?

Accusations of discrimination do not fall often or easily from Mandela's lips, but when they do, the world is forced to sit up and listen. So far, he has fallen short of accusing the west of racism in its dealings with the developing world, but he has implied sympathy with those who do. "When there were white secretary generals, you didn't find this question of the US and Britain going out of the UN. But now that you've had black secretary generals, such as Boutros Boutros Ghali and Kofi Annan, they do not respect the UN. This is not my view, but that is what is being said by many people."

Bullshit.

What a flimsy paper-thin dodge. "It is not my view" but I'll lay it out for you anyway, because it sounds reasonable enough to air in public.

I take it Mandela has decided to ignore the increasing level of intellectual dissent coming from the Right in regards to the UN, it's role, and it's activities. He'd rather ignore the opposition to it and choose arbitrarily that the UK and the US governments are motivated by racism when they criticise the UN. He'd rather not look at the chronology of events that lead up to this criticism. And he completely disregards our explicit stance that you don't need a consensus to be correct, which is possibly our core arguement. He'd rather we deliberate, talk, discuss, hold meetings, level statements of annoyance, and generally dance in front of the troublemakers of the world rather than stand in front of them, kick'em square in the nuts, and then walk past them and fix the actual problem.

No, he'd rather ignore the UK's and US's legitimate complaints and claim them racist.

Fuck Nelson Mandela.

Posted by Drizzten at September 19, 2002 11:45 AM