So Nelson Mandela doesn't want America to win the war on terrorism. No surprise there. He didn't want America to win the Cold War either. Last September, he described America's Cold War decision to "arm and finance the mujahedin" against the Soviets one of America's "serious mistakes in the conduct of its foreign affairs."

The media have conveniently forgotten that Mandela was a hard-core Communist. He drank deeply at the well of anti-American Communist theory, and it has never left his system. Those astonished at his apologetics for Saddam Hussein -- "Israel has weapons of mass destruction" but Hussein doesn't, according to Mandela -- should remember that he has played defense for madmen and thugs before. His ramshackle South African government maintained ties with Fidel Castro and Muammar Qaddafi. And long before that, he was responsible for a pamphlet called "How To Be A Good Communist" in which he praised the "genius" of Marx, Lenin and Stalin.

America was one of the capitalist countries Mandela wanted the Soviets to trample. "The cause of Communism is the greatest and most arduous cause in the history of mankind," the pamphlet stated. "Our aim is to change the present world into a Communist world where there will be no exploiters and exploited, no oppressor and oppressed, no rich and poor." He thought a "Communist world is capable of attainment" -- since Communism had succeeded so brilliantly in the USSR, China and the Eastern Bloc. But it would require beating the hell out of capitalists: "the Communist movement still faces powerful enemies which must be crushed and wiped out from the face of the earth before a Communist world can be realized. Without a hard and bitter and long struggle against capitalism and exploitation, there can be no Communist world."

Is it a cheap shot to dig this up? No, because Mandela is still under the influence of one-world anti-American ideology. Now instead of wanting a Communist world government that dominates the U.S., he wants a U.N. world government to dominate it. In his mind, America is still an exploiter and oppressor in need of ideological correction. He said on Thursday that "if there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America." Mandela still sees Americans as capitalist pigs, evil enough to commit a "holocaust" for mere money -- "Iraq produces 64 percent of the oil in the world. What Bush wants is to get hold of that oil." (Iraq produces 5 percent of world oil exports, reports CNN.) Mandela even maintains, in his own disgraceful way, the old Soviet canard that America is a racist nation. America, Mandela says, is "undermining" the advance of world government because United Nations chief Kofi Annan is black. "They do not care. Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations is now a black man?" says Mandela.

The moral-equivalence babble that flowed from Mandela's mouth during the Cold War is being regurgitated on behalf of Hussein. Mandela has said that America must respect the "sovereignty" of Iraq. Did Mandela ever call on America to respect the sovereignty of racist apartheid South Africa? And if Saddam Hussein is sovereign, why isn't the United States? Mandela has no respect for the sovereignty of America, as he demands that America entrust its security to socialists at the U.N.

Bush is a leader "who cannot think properly," says Mandela, spoken like a chilling ideologue. So, according to Mandela, the U.N. must think for him. Even as Bush gives billions to AIDS victims in Africa, Mandela speaks of him as a demented and cruel child. Thankfully, Bush isn't taking him seriously. It is too bad that the world still does.