Yesterday, USA Today reported that
Nobel
Prize winner and leader of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement
Nelson Mandela is currently flagged
on the United States' terrorist watch list. Mandela led the
African National Congress in
its protest against the cruel and dehumanizing policies of
state-enforced segregation in the 1970s and 80s, during which the ANC
was characterized by a number of countries, including the United
States, as a terrorist group. To this day, any member of the ANC,
including Mandela, South Africa's first post-apartheid President,
requires special permission to visit the U.S.
Senator Judd
Gregg R-NH, called the flagging a “bureaucratic snafu,” and has
vowed to fix it; a bill has been introduced by Representative Howard
Berman, D-CA, to lift the ban from all ANC members. Yet although
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has called the situation
“embarrassing,” she has failed to address the fact that the
proposed
bill to rectify this embarrassment was written five years ago and was
met with vehement opposition by the then-Republican-controlled
Congress.
Lawyers at the State Department argued that if the ANC was removed
from the watch list, other groups would call for their own removal.
This is an example of how staunch and unthinking enforcement
of the sort of fear-mongering tactics the Bush administration has
been known for leads to the overwriting of basic common sense. It
also highlights the blinding incompetence of the Bush administration
in following through on the one consistent vow President Bush has
made throughout his presidency: to find and stop terrorists. To do
this, he started two wars, spent billions upon billions of dollars,
and created the giant cesspool of bureaucratic ineptitude known at
the Department of Homeland Security. Not only have these tactics done
nothing to increase our national security and have, in fact, merely
fueled the fire for the creation of new terrorist cells, but from
this giant witch hunt we now end up with...a terrorist watch list
that includes Nelson Mandela?
This is not a proud moment for the
Bush administration, and by Ms. Rice's comments, I gather they are
aware of this fact. But to respond with shocked humility today, while
refusing to address the fact that a solution to this “snafu” was
met with blatant resistance five years ago simply highlights this
administration's refusal to own up to its mistakes.