How disgusting is this?
Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls the situation "embarrassing," and some members of Congress vow to fix it.
Does anyone really believe this is an accident? It's not just Mandela who's on the list, but all members of the African National Congress (ANC). You know, those wicked terrorists who wanted to end Apartheid.
What have we become? As FairyTale commented, "what we have always been."
Condi Rice calls the situation "embarassing." Republican Senator Judd Gregg calls it a "bureaucratic snafu." Yeah, right. We all know how the Republican Party's patron saint stood so firmly against South Africa's shameful government.
From the June 11, 2004, edition of Democracy Now!, shortly after Ronald Reagan's death:
...Mandela will not be among the foreign dignitaries attending services for Ronald Reagan. After all, Mandela was languishing in a South African prison throughout the duration of Reagan’s presidency. But this history has been effectively re-written in the US. The dominant view is that the US was on the right side in South Africa, that it opposed apartheid. But nothing could be further from the truth, particularly when Reagan was president. Reagan labeled Mandela’s African National Congress a notorious terrorist organization, while continuing Washington’s support for the apartheid regime. In 1981, Reagan explained to CBS that he was loyal to the South African regime because it was "a country that has stood by us in every war we’ve ever fought, a country that, strategically, is essential to the free world in its production of minerals."
Some things never change, I guess.
So what does our esteemed Homeland Security secretary think of this grievous, insulting error?
...Michael Chertoff says "common sense" suggests Mandela should be removed. He says the issue "raises a troubling and difficult debate about what groups are considered terrorists and which are not."
There's still a debate here? About the ANC? About a brutally oppressed majority of indigenous people that fought and defeated a colonialist plutocracy for their freedom? A government that imprisoned Mandela for 27 years?
Freedom. Isn't that "the Almighty's gift to every person?"
And I'm sure an intrepid reporter or anchor like Brian "Peggy Noonan Deserves a Pulitzer" Williams will ask Chertoff whether he believes the ANC, the ruling party of South Africa, is a terrorist organization.
Does the Republican Party really wonder why African-Americans, by in large, will never vote for them?