The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Unspeakable Atrocities’

Posted on | December 5, 2013 | 135 Comments

“It’s a tragedy what is happening, what Bush is doing. All Bush wants is Iraqi oil. There is no doubt that the U.S. is behaving badly. Why are they not seeking to confiscate weapons of mass destruction from their ally Israel? This is just an excuse to get Iraq’s oil. . . .
“If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.”

Nelson Mandela, Jan. 30, 2003

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, eh?

History is distorted beyond recognition because liberals insist that their heroes must be everyone’s heroes, and many conservatives are so intimidated by the enormous prestige of liberalism that it takes a stern contempt for mere popularity to speak unpleasant truths.

The news of Nelson Mandela’s death at age 95 was announced while I was babysitting my newborn grandson Jimmy, and between attending him and my desire to be properly decorous, it was surprisingly easy to say nothing until I happened to see Mark Krikorian RT a message from the Communist Party of Scotland:

Ah, ancient history. There’s no one under 40 who really remembers the Cold War and the era of those Third World “wars of national liberation” in places like Algeria, Cuba and Vietnam. Locked into a worldwide battle for survival against communist aggression — the “long twilight struggle,” as John F. Kennedy called it — the United States supported or opposed foreign governments with a single-minded view toward defeating the Soviet menace. Under the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, the CIA masterminded coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), while under Kennedy, we attempted to overthrow Castro in 1961 and supported the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem in 1963. Various other such adventures, less noted in history, were undertaken in many countries — hell, Greece nearly went Red after World War II — and if U.S. foreign policy was not defined by “unspeakable atrocities,” it was certainly not always a peaceful or pleasant business.

Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a Vietcong terrorist, February 1968.

The best articulation of sound Cold War policy was Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” from which I quote:

The American commitment [under the Carter administration] to “change” in the abstract ends up by aligning us tacitly with Soviet clients and irresponsible extremists like the Ayatollah Khomeini or, in the end, Yasir Arafat.
So far, assisting “change” has not led the Carter administration to undertake the destabilization of a Communist country. The principles of self-determination and nonintervention are thus both selectively applied. We seem to accept the status quo in Communist nations (in the name of ‘diversity” and national autonomy), but not in nations ruled by “right-wing” dictators or white oligarchies. . . .
Something very odd is going on here. How does an administration that desires to let people work out their own destinies get involved in determined efforts at reform in South Africa, Zaire, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and elsewhere? How can an administration committed to nonintervention in Cambodia and Vietnam announce that it “will not be deterred” from righting wrongs in South Africa? . . .
[T]he Carter administration . . . came to power resolved not to assess international developments in the light of “cold-war” perspectives but to accept at face value the claim of revolutionary groups to represent “popular” aspirations and “progressive” forces — regardless of the ties of these revolutionaries to the Soviet Union. To this end, overtures were made looking to the “normalization” of relations with Vietnam, Cuba, and the Chinese People’s Republic, and steps were taken to cool relations with South Korea, South Africa, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and others. These moves followed naturally from the conviction that the U.S. had, as our enemies said, been on the wrong side of history in supporting the status quo and opposing revolution.

What Kirkpatrick was saying was that the Carter administration’s policies were a departure from three decades of U.S. policy, and had set aside both opposition to communism and the pursuit of other U.S. interests. It did so because of its commitment to abstract ideals and its miscalculation of Soviet intentions. Carter was thereby weakening our friends and strengthening our enemies:

The foreign policy of the Carter administration fails not for lack of good intentions but for lack of realism about the nature of traditional versus revolutionary autocracies and the relation of each to the American national interest.

It was in this difficult context, then, that the U.S. was obligated to support the friendly (and staunchly anti-communist) government in South Africa, not because of apartheid, but despite apartheid. Furthermore, so long as the worldwide struggle against communism continued, the United States could not afford to “accept at face value the claim of revolutionary groups to represent ‘popular’ aspirations and ‘progressive’ forces.” Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress was one such group. I’m grateful to Bob Belvedere at the Camp of the Saints for calling attention to the file on Mandela at David Horowitz’s Discover the Networks site, which details the ANC’s resort to violent terrorism and includes this:

In 1990, as the government of Frederik DeKlerk moved to end apartheid, the ANC was legalized and Mandela was released from prison. In part, DeKlerk was motivated by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had made no secret of its desire to control South Africa’s vast mineral wealth and keep it out of Western hands.  With the USSR gone, the Communist threat vanished. For his part, Mandela, in a 1991 speech to a joint meeting of the ANC and IFP, urged black Africans to abandon terrorist tactics and to use peaceful methods to end apartheid.

This is a key point: Revolutionary groups with no worse reputation than the ANC, and leaders with no worse reputation than Mandela, had in other nations posed as “agrarian reformers” and critics of abusive governments, until such time as they succeeded in toppling those governments, at which point they cast aside the “reformer” mask, unfurled the banner of Marxism, and aligned their “popular” regimes with the Soviet bloc. Such was the story in Cuba and Nicaragua, and the U.S. could not ignore Soviet aspirations in Africa.

Only after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and with the Soviet Union collapsing into “the ash heap of history,” could a peaceful transition to a post-apartheid South Africa safely occur. The tsunami of obituary praise for Mandela — “an international emblem of dignity and forbearance,” the New York Times proclaims — threatens to wash away the historical reality of who Mandela actually was.

Now, Joel Pollak is a friend, but he was born in 1977 — the year I graduated high school — so that by the time he was old enough to vote, the Cold War was already a fading memory. And I appreciate Pollak’s concern that conservatives observe decorum on this occasion, but if conservatives do not insist on remembering history as it really was, we acquiesce in liberal revision of that history.

Nelson Mandela was at all times a man of the Left — anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Israel — as attested by the fact that as late as 2003, he could say, “All Bush wants is Iraqi oil,” make a sneering reference to Israel, accuse the U.S. of “unspeakable atrocities,” and even play the race card over the Iraq War:

Bush is now undermining the United Nations. . . . Both Bush, as well as Tony Blair, are undermining an idea which was sponsored by their predecessors. They do not care. Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations is now a black man? . . . They never did that when secretary-generals were white.

Mandela’s tenure as president of South Africa was, thank God, not the nightmare that Mugabe inflicted on neighboring Zimbabwe, but we ought not be fooled by liberal myth-makers who wish to reinvent Mandela as a secular saint whom all are obligated to revere.

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
John Adams

 

 


Comments

135 Responses to “‘Unspeakable Atrocities’”

  1. Shawny
    December 6th, 2013 @ 6:32 am

    To celebrate him, or those through history like him, is to dishonor the lives of those who fell victim to their tyranny as well as the many of our own soldiers who died fighting against all they stood for. The reason we are in such dire peril today is that the threat represented by those of Mandela’s ideology, Obama’s ideology, which was so abhorrent and easily identifiable to Americans just a generation or two ago has been repackaged in lies and sold to our children like a brand new shiny ideal by the left. As Kennedy said, we are known by the men we honor.

  2. Shawny
    December 6th, 2013 @ 6:55 am

    Very well written Stacy. Some much needed clarity in a place where propaganda has twisted the likes of Che Guevera into a pop cultural hero instead of the murderous tyrant he was and seeks to demonize our own men of valor.

  3. robcrawford2
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:03 am

    Mandela used his wife as the cut-out for their violence.

  4. jesseltaylor
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:08 am

    Conservatives aren’t claiming Mandela was a conservative, but that nobody *really* supported apartheid. http://t.co/hxcDTQQnkH

  5. angieptaylor
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:21 am

    RT @jesseltaylor: Conservatives aren’t claiming Mandela was a conservative, but that nobody *really* supported apartheid. http://t.co/hxcDT…

  6. DaTechGuyblog
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:38 am

    An interesting point from @rsmccain concerning the timing of the end of apartheid in SA #mandella #tcot #p2 http://t.co/9TE93oPEHS

  7. JadedByPolitics
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:39 am

    RT @DaTechGuyblog: An interesting point from @rsmccain concerning the timing of the end of apartheid in SA #mandella #tcot #p2 http://t.co/…

  8. DaTechGuy on DaRadio
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:40 am

    There is a reason why in my post on the subject is titled

    Nelson Mandela the man Mugabe, Castro & Putin could have been

  9. ItsThatBriGuy
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:40 am

    RT @DaTechGuyblog: An interesting point from @rsmccain concerning the timing of the end of apartheid in SA #mandella #tcot #p2 http://t.co/…

  10. RS
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:43 am

    It is instructive to consider two persons of that time: Mandela and Augusto Pinochet. One is celebrated today; the other is/was a pariah. Yet, the latter did more to bring stability and prosperity to his country than the former. Consider the tranquility of Chile compared to its eastern neighbor. The disparity illustrates tensions our host highlights in this post.

  11. Tiph_Seven
    December 6th, 2013 @ 8:31 am

    RT @jesseltaylor: Conservatives aren’t claiming Mandela was a conservative, but that nobody *really* supported apartheid. http://t.co/hxcDT…

  12. SDN
    December 6th, 2013 @ 8:55 am

    “If there’s one hypocrisy I can’t abide, it’s this absurd custom of refusing to talk honestly about the dead just because they are dead. To hear some people at a funeral, you would think dying was limited to the chosen few!”

    Ian Howarth in Delderfield’s “To Serve Them All My Days”

  13. Joe Dokes
    December 6th, 2013 @ 8:56 am

    Yep.

  14. Quartermaster
    December 6th, 2013 @ 9:00 am

    Pollak can say what he wishes, Nelson “I am not a terrorist” Mandela was a communist as well as a murderer and terrorist. He was justly convicted and righteously imprisoned where he should have died, not feted by a world that wants to white wash anyone from the left.

  15. Quartermaster
    December 6th, 2013 @ 9:01 am

    The difference is merely degree, not kind.

  16. Quartermaster
    December 6th, 2013 @ 9:04 am

    Your opinion is not based on fact. Anyone that can is leaving SA. Mandela’s legacy is what South Africa has become, and it is not at all pretty.

  17. Quartermaster
    December 6th, 2013 @ 9:08 am

    As I pointed out above, the difference is one of degree and not of kind. SA is now a cesspool and anyone that can get out is getting while the getting is good.

  18. Dana
    December 6th, 2013 @ 9:28 am

    OMG! You refused to be effusive in your outpouring of love and respect for the late St Nelson. Clearly, you must be a raaaaacist! I denounce you, I thoroughly denounce you.

  19. Dana
    December 6th, 2013 @ 9:30 am

    Surely, surely! you realize that ending apartheid can never be outweighed, by anything!

  20. JeffS
    December 6th, 2013 @ 9:32 am

    Heh! You hid the /sarc tag nicely!

  21. Nelson Mandela Was No Saint | angryid
    December 6th, 2013 @ 9:32 am

    […] Stacy McCain notes that the left still believes in fairy tales: […]

  22. pearwaldorf
    December 6th, 2013 @ 9:42 am

    RT @jesseltaylor: Conservatives aren’t claiming Mandela was a conservative, but that nobody *really* supported apartheid. http://t.co/hxcDT…

  23. ThomasD
    December 6th, 2013 @ 10:21 am

    Heard the news watching ESPN yesterday. That network has gone hard, hard left. The were reporting on the non-indictment of Jameis Winston – where they were ‘only reporting because they had to, and they were glad to get back to covering sports.

    Which made me wonder just how the media would have treated the story had it been Johnny Manziel accused and the College Station PD who slow walked the investigation for an entire year, only to punt it away.

    And even before I could complete that line of thought along comes the death of Nelson Mandela and they go wall-to-wall with the coverage. Their ‘angle’ was that he was once a boxer and ‘how national sports can bring a country together.’

    But not quite like Communism can.

    The distinction is quite simple. Picture Mandela saluting in front of an over sized swastika banner, then imagine the reactions to such an image.

    The treatment of Mandela, and their tolerance for one variety of murderous socialist totalitarianism, clearly demonstrates that the left and the mainstream media truly are one and the same.

  24. BlueMoon7777
    December 6th, 2013 @ 10:21 am

    RT @AmPowerBlog: ‘Unspeakable Atrocities’ http://t.co/w87CAL4wJf via @RSMcCain

  25. ThomasD
    December 6th, 2013 @ 10:25 am

    There are many others who fought to end aparthied from within South Africa. Mandela could have been a true Washington, but sadly he proved not to be such a leader. That Winnie was no Martha certainly did him no favors in that regard.

    That will not prevent the left from trying to re-write history to make him seem like one.

  26. ThomasD
    December 6th, 2013 @ 10:31 am

    Winnie was a force all her own. While his stature grew in prison she leveraged that into real power and kept that real power for herself long after he was free.

    Like it or not, he was stuck with her, and it showed.

  27. ThomasD
    December 6th, 2013 @ 10:33 am

    Give the media time, they have the final chapters written, just waiting to be rolled out at suitable opportunity.

  28. CrazyWhiteMan
    December 6th, 2013 @ 10:34 am

    Yes, it would have been better for all if Mandela just shut up and submitted to institutional racist oppression. Unbelievable how purely ideological and twisted the modern right has become. It’s also completely amoral.

  29. CrazyWhiteMen
    December 6th, 2013 @ 10:38 am

    Yeah, because after decades of racial strife and one community falling way behind the other due to apartheid one should expect everything to be honky dory. You’re actually rationalizing institutional racism for the sake of order. Amazing that you think of yourself as a “Christian” too. Obvious that signifier has lost it’s original meaning and now stands for amoral, swine.

  30. ThomasD
    December 6th, 2013 @ 10:49 am

    Yes, because his only choice was to side with a murderous totalitarian political party.

    If he had been a fascist rather than a communist you’d despise him.

  31. RS
    December 6th, 2013 @ 10:53 am

    No one here is defending Apartheid, inasmuch as it was morally indefensible. The problem with Mandela, which self-satisfied Western Caucasions fail to admit, is that the hagiography which exists is the result of a deliberate refusal to acknowledge all the facts regarding his background. That refusal is predicated upon the desire to anoint a hero–any hero–in order to demonstrate one’s anti-Apartheid bona fides. Thus, do we ignore the atrocities which caused Mandela to be imprisoned and the fact that he had a “get out of jail free” card for the last decade or so of his imprisonment if he would only renounce violence, which he refused to do.

    Until the day of his death.

  32. ThomasD
    December 6th, 2013 @ 10:53 am

    “You’re actually rationalizing institutional racism for the sake of order.”

    He has done nothing of the sort and your attack on what you perceive to be his religion mark you as the intolerant and oppressive one.

  33. ThomasD
    December 6th, 2013 @ 10:57 am

    If it were a question of anointing heroes perhaps we could dig back through the hagiography to find some of the aparthied opponents the SACP committed those atrocities upon. There were non-communists opposed to institutional racism, sadly they were killed of or marginalized by those in pursuit of raw power.

    So, what we are pointing out is that that is precisely how Mandela came to be Mandela, and the media does not care one whit to address that fact.

    Not good for the narrative.

  34. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 6th, 2013 @ 11:01 am

    South Africa could not function indefinitely under Apartheid. The change was going to happen, but it could have been like what happened in Rhodesia (very very bad). While it would not be my first choice of a country I would want to live in, the issue remained how to do the transition. Mandela is a figure more like Gorbachev.

    Mandela was hardly a saint (NPR was completely over the top in that regard today), the hypocrisy about his AIDS efforts (which initially were non-existent) are flat out lies and completely hypocritical given how Reagan was pilloried despite doing far more to combat the disease, but Mandela during that critical transition period acted like a statesman and then voluntarily relinquished power (not a typical third world Marxist or strongman) and for that I am thankful.

  35. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 6th, 2013 @ 11:02 am

    He did have the good sense to dump Winnie.

  36. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 6th, 2013 @ 11:08 am

    Apologist? I think not. Western powers did not control Mandela like a poodle. Mandela was no Washington, but he was his own man and managed to step beyond his ideological and AMC comrades into something positive for that transition in South Africa.

    But don’t take my word for it, many white South African leaders said so too. But again, I fully support not glossing over it and being truthful about the history behind what happened in SA and with Mandela (including the AMC’s adoption of Communist crap, terrorism, expansion of AIDS in SA, and the violent crime that followed the end of Apartheid.

  37. Josh_Painter
    December 6th, 2013 @ 11:10 am

    RT @DaTechGuyblog: An interesting point from @rsmccain concerning the timing of the end of apartheid in SA #mandella #tcot #p2 http://t.co/…

  38. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 6th, 2013 @ 11:11 am

    SA has some very severe issues to deal with, but it could have been far far worse.

    You are right many did leave SA, but not all.

  39. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 6th, 2013 @ 11:22 am

    RS, that is well said.

    While it is absolutely true the ANC committed terrorist acts, remember the SA state at the time was not exactly non violent (and had its own issues). It was a hard fought transition to ending Apartheid, but they managed to avoid a full blown civil war which was very much a risk.

    I do not renounce violence (it is sometimes necessary). But I can recognize when someone steps back from it at a critical time and Mandela did so (however imperfectly).

  40. Josh_Painter
    December 6th, 2013 @ 11:37 am

    The tsunami of obituary praise for Mandela… threatens to wash away the historical reality of who [he] actually was. http://t.co/DTH5QogQpJ

  41. Josh_Painter
    December 6th, 2013 @ 11:38 am

    Nelson Mandela was at all times a man of the Left — anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Israel… http://t.co/DTH5QogQpJ

  42. ThomasD
    December 6th, 2013 @ 11:43 am

    SA would have never gone the same as Zimbabwe. The white population was too numerous, organized, and too well armed to submit had the ANC gone the full racialist confiscation route.

    It would have turned into an all out race war, and the ANC would have lost.

    That they managed to avoid the very worst possible outcome is perhaps the best thing that can be said about Mandela and the ANC.

  43. LeatherPenguin
    December 6th, 2013 @ 11:43 am

    The #ineffablybrutal @rsmccain… http://t.co/qV6Si2ufS4

  44. Professor_Why
    December 6th, 2013 @ 11:44 am

    ‘Unspeakable Atrocities’ http://t.co/XOcwOtN2aL

  45. TruckerBobS
    December 6th, 2013 @ 11:50 am

    RT @Professor_Why: ‘Unspeakable Atrocities’ http://t.co/XOcwOtN2aL

  46. 1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’ : The Other McCain
    December 6th, 2013 @ 11:59 am

    […] When Margaret Thatcher died in April, the British Left reacted with the kind of ugly viciousness you would expect of the British Left. This is worth remembering today when liberals are demanding that everyone must now forget the reality of who Nelson Mandela was. […]

  47. robertstacymccain
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:17 pm

    Saint Nelson of the Blessed Necklace.

  48. Quartermaster
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:26 pm

    Yeah, I’m raaaaacist! You’re simply willing to white wash Mandela and avoid the hard truth. Apartheid seems harsh, and it had many very bad aspects to it. OTOH, SA is a tribal schemozzle with each tribe fighting the other when Apartheid came about as a solution. I don’t like it, but I am aware of why it came to be. The Xhosa od the time breathed a sigh of relief as they both hated and feared the Zulu. There is a very good chance that without apartheid Mandela would never seen the inside of the prison on Robbins Island because he would have been dead.
    If seeing and understanding the facts make me a racist swine, then I will revel in the label, because I won’t white wash commie killers and raise them to the status of a demigod because the raving left loves them.
    Call me anything you like except later for chow.

  49. Quartermaster
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:28 pm

    Not saying “all” have left. Just the whites that can. For the whites in SA it is the equivalent of Germany in 1938 for the Jew. You may try to white wash the facts, but they will be staring you in the face in the end.

  50. cdefg
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:32 pm

    RT @Josh_Painter: Nelson Mandela was at all times a man of the Left — anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Israel… http://t.co/DTH5QogQpJ