re: #135 Targetpractice

Hearing more than one wingnut now taking the line that no doubt will be on Limbaugh’s lips tomorrow: “Apartheid was gonna fall, Mandela had nothing to do with it!” And that may very well be true, but it’s a half-truth at best. The reality likely would have been that, in absence of Mandela, apartheid would have ended with a violent and bloody revolution. There would have been no negotiated end, no unified elections that put a cool-headed and even-handed man in office. Just a lot of shooting, piles of bodies, and a new leader who likely would have follow Mugabe’s footsteps in “punishing” the Afrikaners in the most inhumane fashion possible.

QTF. Whatever else is true, Nelson Mandela had the same instincts Abraham Lincoln had about ending a conflict. He understood that ending apartheid would be best done if it were done in a none punitive fashion and there are a lot of people, white and black, who are alive today because he made that choice.