It is a shame to see a formerly great world leader turn to anti-Americanism out of convenience. But that is exactly what the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, did recently at Johannesburg. Stating that America “is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust” is nonsense — especially considering the relatively casualty-free precision warfare that America has invented and employed. More revealing were Mr. Mandela’s comments as regards the United Nations. Mr. Mandela accused America of trying to undermine the United Nations, and implied that it was trying to do so because the organization’s secretary general, Kofi Annan, is black.

We would submit that the color or nationality of the president of the United Nations is far less objectionable to America than a Security Council on which both France and China have a veto. Further, we would remind Mr. Mandela that Libya now chairs the United Nations’ human rights committee. And Mr. Mandela seems to forget that America joined the campaign against apartheid by imposing economic sanctions against the South African government in the 1980s.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of Mr. Mandela’s remarks, however, is that he claimed that he would support without reservation any action agreed upon by the United Nations. Cynically, one might take this to mean that Mr. Mandela, knowing full well that the United Nations is unlikely to agree upon any action, feels that he can safely sound tough on tyrants. More distressingly, Mr. Mandela’s comment could mean that he values the process of the United Nations more than the strategic or moral value of any action taken. This implies, as James Taranto pointed out yesterday, that Mr. Mandela would support plunging the world into a holocaust — so long as it’s a U.N.-sanctioned holocaust. We believe in the rule of law as well — in the case of a free and democratic nation such as America. But the United Nations is a club that includes thugs and appeasers. Its proclamations are only as credible as the nations that back them.