Word: mandelas
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...time I was personally wont to forgive Mandela for such impropriety for a different reason. I rationalized that this was a man who had just spent the better part of three decades behind bars, often in solitary confinement. Who could blame him if his world view was slightly out-of-sync with reality? According to this view it was understandable, even "to be expected," that Mandela would not be up to speed with the political norms and diplomatic niceties of the day. Both hypotheses were soon to be tested by the unfolding policies of the Mandelan presidency...
...intervening years since Mandela's American tour and his subsequent landslide election to the office of South African state president have made the results of the test clear. Mandela's feelings of fraternity for the bad boys of global politics seem not to have ebbed. In fact, contrary to what others and I had hoped, Mandela's relationship with rogue leaders and their regimes seems to have taken on a position of increased importance in his administration...
...Mandela recently bestowed South Africa's highest honor, the Order of Good Hope, upon Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Perhaps in a testament to their ideological ties, both Qaddafi and Mandela have in the past played host to Louis Farrakhan, the unashamedly anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam. It was Qaddafi's generous offer to the black American leader that raised the ire of the Clinton administration. While Mandela offered no official financial support to Farrakhan, he did receive him warmly, disquieting Jewish communities in South Africa and the U.S. alike...
...same Qaddafi honored by Mandela has refused to hand over the two Libyan men suspected of carrying out the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which resulted in the deaths of 270 people. The same Qaddafi leads a country which is on our state department's list of terrorist-sponsoring regimes...
There has been additional evidence to indicate that Mandela's attitude toward his comrades has changed little since his rise to office. If anything, at least some of Mandela's time in office has been spent in the acquisition of new friends of the Qaddafi-esque ilk. Perhaps even more disquieting than the largely symbolic fraternity between Qaddafi and Mandela, were last year's allegations that Mandela intended to sell chemical weapons to Syrian dictator Hafiz al-Assad. This episode was followed by a state visit by Vice President Al Gore Jr. '69 to South Africa during which Gore...