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

 

 


Category: History

Comments

135 Responses to “‘Unspeakable Atrocities’”

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

    RT @Josh_Painter: The tsunami of obituary praise for Mandela… threatens to wash away the historical reality of who [he] actually was. htt…

  2. Wordygirl
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:47 pm

    Stacy, these are the posts that keep bringing me back to The Other McCain. Excellent summary, and I applaud your backbone and forthrightness. Thank you.

  3. JeffS
    December 6th, 2013 @ 1:18 pm

    Someone doesn’t like my opinion. Tsk, tsk!

    Doesn’t matter. I still wish he had died earlier.

  4. PatDissent
    December 6th, 2013 @ 1:31 pm

    So it’s amoral to stand up for freedom and personal responsibility, not to mention condemning those who would enslave their fellow man? Then I have two thoughts about that, since the odds are I have been on the planet way, way, way the hell longer than you :

    Thought 1 : Screw you, and the horse you buggered on the way in.

    Thought 2 : Guilty as charged.

    It was men like me serving in wars that stopped Communism in its tracks and left you free to be such a dumbass on the internet. Never, ever forget that, sonny.

  5. Dana
    December 6th, 2013 @ 2:06 pm

    President George W Bush liberated 50 million people; just how do you think our friends on the left will react when he goes to his eternal reward?

  6. PaulHair1
    December 6th, 2013 @ 3:56 pm

    @rsmccain: Glad that someone remembers history. A must-read…especially for those on right praising Mandela: http://t.co/VPWv5LSARa

  7. Quartermaster
    December 6th, 2013 @ 5:52 pm

    SA did function indefinitely under apartheid. Mandela likely owes his life to it as the Zulu were far more powerful and the Xhosa were a favorite target.

  8. Quartermaster
    December 6th, 2013 @ 5:54 pm

    I think the third sentence is arguable. There were a lot of small arms floating around, and while the whites were well armed, just as the average American used to be, I have my doubts that a war such as could have happened would not have seen whites driven into the sea.

    However, given your presumptions, I would agree with your evaluation, but that really is damning with faint praise because capital flight, both human and financial is at frightening levels.

  9. Shawny
    December 6th, 2013 @ 6:05 pm

    They don’t make them like you any more Sir. Now we have “nation builders”, apologists, collaborators and sympathizers in what’s left of our military; Subversives and infiltrators in our government who never learned honor, valor, character or integrity. Who never had to put their lives on the line for their values or the lives of others like you did. Don’t expect them to understand. Thank You for your service.

  10. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 6th, 2013 @ 6:09 pm

    They both would have lost. But the white minority was fully prepared to fight and they would have survived. They had caches of weapons (not just light arms).

    It is very good it did not happen, it would have made Syria or Yugoslavia look like terse argument in comparison.

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

    Sounds like he would have made a fine pundit on MSNBC…or possibly been a Senator or Congressman from New York or Massachusetts.

  12. ‘They Started to Fight Over Her and I Knew She Was Going to Be Raped’ : The Other McCain
    December 6th, 2013 @ 6:27 pm

    […] flinches at a gesture — this is especially true on the subject of RAAAAACISM! — and, as I said late night, “many conservatives are so intimidated by the enormous prestige of liberalism that it […]

  13. Bob Belvedere
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:25 pm

    ‘Irrationally liberal’?

    The man was a fucking unrepentant Communist.

  14. Bob Belvedere
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:31 pm

    I don’t think ‘ideological’ means what you think it means, Clyde.

  15. Keifer Wynn
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:34 pm

    Irrational: not based on reason, good judgment, or clear thinking
    Liberal: believing that government should be active in supporting social and political change .
    If that isn’t the very definition of Communist I don’t know what is.
    🙂

  16. Keifer Wynn
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:46 pm

    Also, it doesn’t do us conservatives any harm to admit that Mandela did both good and bad things in support of a noble cause. It just causes us to look really petty when we can’t sometimes acknowledge the good that comes from people we don’t agree with. Mandela apparently did loads of things I don’t agree with, with actions ranging from the odious (terrorism) to the knee-jerk liberal (the attack on the Iraq War) but that doesn’t wipe out the good that he inspired and actually performed. The man is not a Saint but he isn’t Stalin, he did some good in this world and we conservatives should be able to acknowledge it.

  17. Bob Belvedere
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:51 pm

    Evi wrote: Being a revolutionary in the face of oppression (and there was definitely that) is not evil, per se

    If you use the word ‘revolutionary’ in the modern meaning of the word, then I must disagree. The goal of every Revolutionary is to tear down all existing institutions, set the clock back to Year One, and build Paradise On Earth. He seeks to wipe away all traditions, morals, and customs, and re-engineer Mankind. The Revolutionary seeks to be as God.

    Thus, all Revolutionaries are Evil.

    If Mandela truly wanted to bring about change with as little bloodshed as possible, he would have renounced the ANC and joined either the Liberal or Progressive Parties. Instead, he chose to remain in the Communist ANC [which, by the way, there’s evidence that the Soviets controlled] and condone and plan violent acts.

    That Mandela never renounced the ANC or Communism means that he chose to remain on the side of Evil.

    Since his election as President of South Africa, the ANC and affiliated Leftist groups have been waging a hushed-up campaign of violence and death against both blacks and whites there who will not enslave themselves to the Communist Ideology.

    As one commentator here remarked, South Africa is indeed a sewer and Nelson Mandela had chronic diarrhea.

  18. Bob Belvedere
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:57 pm

    -It does us harm anytime we praise and/or admire anyone, like Mandela, who was unrepentant in his belief in Totalitarianism, which is Evil and Anti-Life, Anti-Human, Inhuman.

    -Mandela was no Stalin or Hitler, rather, he was just another tinpot, would-be Despot.

  19. Bob Belvedere
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:59 pm

    Accepting the your definition of liberal is correct, then I despise all liberals.

  20. ‘Saint Nelson Of The Blessed Necklace’ | The Camp Of The Saints
    December 6th, 2013 @ 8:42 pm

    […] fitting title was bestowed by Stacy McCain earlier today and how true it […]

  21. Low Expectations | Something Fishy
    December 6th, 2013 @ 9:55 pm

    […] of the Anglosphere, he falls far short. But their world – our world – is not and was not the world that he had to face. The world that he had to face was Communist-infested Africa, a continent of […]

  22. Keifer Wynn
    December 6th, 2013 @ 10:08 pm

    Your last statement is the one I disagree with. I don’t think he was a would be despot, he could have been one but he rejected the opportunity. The Mandela vs. Mugabe slogan/concept is very apt here. I’m not trying to come off as an apologist here so that’s my last post on this subject.

  23. ZION'S TRUMPET » I Concur with Many Others That Call Mandela What He was: A Communist Revolutionist
    December 6th, 2013 @ 10:36 pm

    […] Communism, despite what the Left tells us, is evil, if you do not believe me, just look at the death toll under Communism in the last century. More than 100 million lives lost for the “greater good”. How many tens, or hundreds of millions more suffered torture, destitution, and loss of liberty under Marx’s Utopian Fanaticism? So, forgive me if I do not mark the passing of any Communist with sorrow. I see Communists for what they are, and that is people who would take every liberty I have and eradicate it. I will never grieve over the death of any Communist, no matter how the Left attempts to deify them. Robert Stacy McCain has some historical perspective on Mandela you need to read, here is but a snippet, and one photo that, to me, says enough about Mandela for me not to mourn hi… […]

  24. Nelson Mandela Coverage - Conservative Hideout 2.0
    December 7th, 2013 @ 12:01 am

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  25. ZION'S TRUMPET » South Africa Today. The Real Story You Are Not Going to Hear from The MSM. Communism is Not Pretty.
    December 7th, 2013 @ 1:21 pm

    […] times and flinches at a gesture — this is especially true on the subject ofRAAAAACISM! — and, as I said late night, “many conservatives are so intimidated by the enormous prestige of liberalism that it takes a […]

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    December 7th, 2013 @ 4:29 pm

    […] ‘Unspeakable Atrocities’ […]

  27. Grabbing the Other End of the Rope : The Other McCain
    December 7th, 2013 @ 5:05 pm

    […] ‘Unspeakable Atrocities’ – Mandela’s anti-American rhetoric and the Cold War context of U.S. policy toward South Africa. […]

  28. The Conqueror Worm: #Mandela In America | The Camp Of The Saints
    December 7th, 2013 @ 5:33 pm

    […] —Shawny […]

  29. ZillaStevenson
    December 7th, 2013 @ 7:46 pm

    RT @BobBelvedere: RT @rsmccain: ‘Unspeakable Atrocities’ http://t.co/54V1WTKfDE

  30. ZillaStevenson
    December 7th, 2013 @ 7:46 pm

    RT @smitty_one_each: TOM ‘Unspeakable Atrocities’ http://t.co/TVuAtEhxF7 #TCOT

  31. Da Tech Guy On DaRadio Blog » Blog Archive » Time for us to Play the Mandela Card Against the Left
    December 8th, 2013 @ 4:00 am

    […] it’s impor­tant to tell the truth about Man­dela as he was and South Africa as it is that doesn’t solve the media prob­lem nor counter the club […]

  32. Krokamo
    December 8th, 2013 @ 8:20 am

    The left doesn’t care because Bush was a white, non-communist Christian.

  33. The Minority Report Blog | Conservative News & Opinion
    December 8th, 2013 @ 9:47 am

    […] it’s important to tell the truth about Mandela as he was and South Africa as it is that doesn’t solve the media problem nor counter the club […]

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  35. Nelson Mandela in Word and Deed | WeaponsMan
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