S. Africa Plank Terrorizes the Truth : Dukakis Joins Jackson in Muddling Pretoria’s Sins

Michael Dukakis’ endorsement of Jesse Jackson’s proposed Democratic platform plank labeling South Africa a “terrorist state”--not a racist state, not a state that supports terrorism, but a “terrorist state”--tells us a lot about the candidate. It tells us that Dukakis, who professes to put international law and multilateralism at the top of his foreign-policy agenda, may be using labels and key words in the vocabulary of international relations without knowing their full meaning. In this way he, perhaps unwittingly, furthers the Jackson brand of Third World ideology.

The phrase “terrorist state” does not derive from the lexicon of American law. Rather, it is lifted out of U.N. General Assembly resolutions, sponsored almost exclusively by states hostile to the United States, which use that designation against only two states--South Africa and Israel. They have been singled out in an effort to delegitimize them, to make their very existence an affront to humanity and thus deny them of any right to self-defense.

This is in contrast to the approach of the State Department and Congress. Since 1979, the department has provided, as required by law, annual reports to Congress identifying states that practice or sponsor terrorism.

The states now on the list--Syria, Libya, North Korea, Iran, South Yemen and Cuba--are never identified in this way by the United Nations. To the contrary, it is precisely these states, acting under the mantle of an anti-terrorism crusade, that take the lead at the United Nations in condemning South Africa and Israel as terrorist states.

South Africa is, of course, both racist and brutal. It deprives its nonwhite population of basic civil rights and fundamental freedoms of self-expression, of equal treatment and human dignity. It is an ugly regime. Apartheid is repulsive and calls for condemnation and appropriate measures to end its scourge.

But every evil regime is not a terrorist regime. The State Department has not found convincing evidence that the South African regime advocates or engages in “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets”--the standard it uses for identifying states that support international terrorism. In other words, it has not been established that South Africa, as a matter of policy, targets for killing or maiming noncombatants--either in South Africa, in neighboring states, or in cities, airports, planes or ships around the world.

By contrast, Syria is listed by the State Department as a state that supports or sponsors terrorism precisely because it supports attacks on both combatants and noncombatants indiscriminately. In 1984, responding to the spread of Muslim fundamentalism, Syrian artillery pounded the city of Hama, a fundamentalist stronghold, razing it and killing an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 civilians. The same attitude has been demonstrated in Syria’s international relations: In 1986 a court in Great Britain and another in Spain convicted agents of the Syrian government for attempting to place bombs aboard Israeli civilian aircraft bound for Tel Aviv.

These distinctions are important. Though the line between terrorism and deprivation of human liberties and freedoms may seem exceedingly fine to some, the truth is that Syria’s efforts to combat terrorism require that terrorism be condemned for what it is and not confused with other abhorrent practices.

To be sure, the State Department and the intelligence community upon which it relies for its reports may be wrong. If so, Jackson and Dukakis should bring their facts to the attention of the public so that the State Department and Congress can determine if South Africa should be placed on the terrorist list. Instead Jackson and Dukakis have leap-frogged the State Department and Congress, endorsing the Democratic Party platform’s inclusion of the slanted U.N. concept of the “terrorist state.”

Jackson’s position is clear and consistent. On June 18, 1984, addressing a United Nations committee, he said that the United States’ South Africa policy, “together with that of Israel, has helped to create a situation that is a threat to the sovereignty of every nation on the African continent.”

On this thread of logic, can an attack on Israel on similar charges be far behind--even though it is not Israel’s policy to seek out noncombatants in responding to attacks directed against it or its citizens? And how long will it be before U.S. policy is condemned as terrorism by association?

Dukakis has tried to downplay his endorsement of Jackson’s formulation that South Africa is a “terrorist state” by saying that it is just a “label.” But these types of labels have serious consequences. They affect the way people and nations think about each other and ultimately the way they deal with each other.

What may be but a label to Dukakis is part of an ideological world view to Jackson. It is that world view that Dukakis may, wittingly or not, be buying into--and that is the issue before the voters in this presidential campaign.