Was Nelson Mandela a Terrorist?

That the answer to evil and violence is not more evil and violence.

You are speaking from hindsight. If you apply the same logic with a different situation, say with the nazis... you can fill in the blanks.What's important is we deter evil doers in the future. Mandela may have saved a lot of lives, but he practically invited evil people to keep doing what they do without fear of consequences.I'm sorry, I simply don't subscribe to Star Trek TNG way of dealing with evil doers.

Hippy attitude. Try saying that to the nazis.

You are a criminal.Your response to the slaughtering of thousands is to slaughter a thousand more.You are a criminal.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

That's a really stupid response and attempted comparison.What other nation was South Africa invading?

It just shows how important it is to build mature, really democratic societies with properly enforced secular and independant law and spread this everywhere with international treaties binding states and countries together. That way, the need to kill for freedom becomes redundant.The English called the American freedom fighters, terrorists - or the equivalent. There have been squabbles across Europe for centuries, but the idea of war in Europe now is unthinkable. It's our institutions that make war impossible, not thoughts of love and peace; it's hard nosed horse trading to set up long lasting relationship backed by law that does it.

How do true freedom fighters react to their children being fired upon by police during peaceful protests about what language the children will be taught in. What is the appropriate response for civilians when a nation's army is turned on them.To call the violence the ANC practiced terrorism is to dignify terrorism to the point where the term is meaningless as a label. I think you've made some great points, but I'd go further. Many Americans are lying hypocrites. Violence, even directed at civilians, has been and still is routinely accepted by most Americans as justified.I don't honestly know what, if any violence is fairly attributed to or was endorsed by Nelson Mandela. But it would have to be pretty horrible if it dwarfed the bad karma generated from nuking entire cities or even some of our drone strikes. I highly doubt that Mandela has that kind of blood on his hands.

The Nazi's were not engaged in willingly negotiating themselves out of power instituting a peaceful transfer to a democratic government.The Afrikaner's were. Why should Mendella wish more bloody debilitating war for his nation when a transfer of power was right there on the table without all the suffering?Is revenge so important that he should have refused his victory when it was already in hand?Frankly, yenmor, those who cry out for more killing and more blood when peace could so easily be achieved are the evil ones.

You may well be right. Sociopathic also comes to mind.But I think I'll give Yenmor the benefit of the doubt and consider him to be a young man who has never been witness, nor given much thought, to the horrors of war. I think he may have that romantic view of war as something noble when pursued for an idealistic cause instead of as a dispicable horror to be avoided whenever possible.Having been there I could not wish the experience of war on anyone for any reason. So I will wish for Yenmor to build empathy of the experience through study, discussion and thought. Lord knows there are plenty of fellow young people for him to talk with who have those horrors forever burned into their souls.

What yenmor says he would have done is indeed vile. But I think we should apply the term 'criminal' to people who do vile stuff, and not use it for people who talk smack about what they would do if they found themselves in situations that are unlikely to be realized.And let's be glad Mandela himself avoided taking that dark path. Had he not, most likely many of his countrymen and their children would be dead now.

Yenmor's position only makes sense from a criminal's perspective.Only a criminal, claiming to be on the side of the oppressed group, would prefer thousands of them to die when they could have their freedom without any of their deaths.Yenmor's just a criminal.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

What keeps the Germans from once again rounding up and exterminating as many Jewish people as they can find is not the memory of any prior punishment, but the memory of the atrocity of the Holocaust. A good place to start is to not become evildoers ourselves.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

You got me figured out. I think like a criminal.

I am sure our American ancestors could have answered similar questions about the British. Now, don't go painting with too wide a brush. There are enough of us out there with critical thinking skills to keep them in check, at least for now. Being a military member it is hard to comment on these as few see what the alternative could have been. What is the lesser of evils? Should we have let the war in the Pacific run its due course and let millions of more people die? Probably risking the eradication of the entire Japanese population in carpet bombing and a full scale invasion of Japan? I don't know the answer to this. No one does. One can only speculate. However, Japan's ultra-zealous military leaders would not even back down after the first atomic bomb was dropped. So that should tell you the level of commitment they had to not surrendering and the lethality of their own population that would have been committed to fighting against an allied invasion. You think D-Day was bad. That would have been child's play compared to an American invasion of the home turf of Japan with every Japanese civilian brainwashed to kill Americans.I agree that Mandela does not have that level of blood on his hands. I think the only thing negative you can say about him, besides that he was sympathetic with communist causes was that he was at the time married to a women who most likely had much more blood on her hands than he with the ANC sanctioned terrorist acts in the 1980's, while Mandela was in prison. Mandela could have turned into an Idi Amin but he did not. He led South Africa out of the repressive apartheid and into peaceful white and black co-led government with minimal bloodshed. He should be applauded and commended for his heroic effort in minimizing bloodshed in his country.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

Thanks for the links!