verging_on_random

Where are the Mandelas when you need them?

September 22, 2007 on 4:17 pm | In Uncategorized |

President Dubya has expressed a yearning for some Mandelas in Iraq. Apparently Saddam killed them all, which is why the Iraqi people are taking so long to get a grip and it’s nothing whatsoever to do with being occupied by a foreign power with all their infrastructure messed up and a sixth of their population either dead or maimed or refugees in another country. All these minor inconveniences would be sorted in no time if only they had a few Mandelas.

Not much of a vote of confidence in the current Iraqi government but I guess Nouri al-Maliki and Dubya can square things in their weekly Skype hook-up.

Anyway if you don’t know what I’m talking about there’s a funny thread over at Larvatus Prodeo which has all the links and stuff and I’m buggered if I’m going to repeat it all here. But it prompted me to refresh my recollection about the relationship between Dubya and the real Nelson Mandela, as opposed to all the hypothetical ones murdered by Saddam.

Back in 2002, Mandela expressed a refreshingly frank opinion of Dubya and his policies regarding Iraq. It seems that back in those days, Dubya didn’t have such a high regard for Mandela; in fact, he refused to take his phone calls:

What Mandela believes is wrong with the world is not difficult to fathom. He is annoyed at how the US is exploiting its overwhelming military might. Earlier this month, after President Bush would not take his calls, he spoke to secretary of state Colin Powell and then the president’s father, asking the latter to discourage his son from attacking Iraq.

“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. They think they’re the only power in the world. They’re not and they’re following a dangerous policy. One country wants to bully the world.”

Having supported the bombing of Afghanistan, he cannot be dismissed as a peacenik. But his assessment of the current phase of Bush’s war on terror is as damning as anything coming out of the Arab world. “If you look at these matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace.”

Oops.

The following year, in 2003, Mandela made some equally forthright statements:

“What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.”

He was talking about you and the USA, George.

In fact, Dubya’s respect for Mandela seems to be a recent phenomenon. In 2003, he refused to meet him during a visit to South Africa - no doubt in an attempt to show that he could think as properly as the next man. Or maybe, as the story suggests, he was concerned that Mandela would snub him and therefore decided not to request a meeting on the time-honoured principle of ‘retaliate first’. It is after all a fundamental value of his foreign policy that one is either with him or against him.

So in expressing the wistful longing for some Iraqi Mandelas it’s not quite clear what Dubya was wishing for. But whatever it was, he should be careful. Revered national leaders saying things like “true democracy cannot be imposed. It must be homegrown and the product of consensus” might not be exactly what the Bushistas are looking for in Iraq right now.