Talking With Terrorists
By Patrick Buchanan
With the second Intifada and rise to power of Ariel Sharon, Israel abandoned Oslo and land-for-peace. We will never again negotiate with Arafat, said Sharon, because Israel does not negotiate with terrorists.
Two Israeli prime ministers, Rabin and Peres, had shared a Nobel Prize with Arafat. A third, "Bibi" Netanyahu, had handed over Hebron to Arafat. A fourth, Ehud Barak, had offered Arafat 95 percent of the West Bank and a capital in Jerusalem. Yet, Sharon not only made his policy stick, he got George W. Bush to sign on to it.
As security analyst Michael Vlahos has written, nations often declare adversaries "terrorists" to delegitimize them and absolve themselves of any obligation to talk peace with them. They fall back on the time-tested formula: "We do not negotiate with terrorists!"
And it is surely true that Arafat's Fatah, as well as his PLO, had committed acts of terror: the killing of the innocent for political ends, not only Israelis but U.S. diplomats. Yet, Sharon, in 1953, led a force called Unit 101 into the West Bank village of Kibya to avenge the Arab slaying of an Israeli woman and her children. Sixty-nine Palestinians were massacred, mostly women and children, as their homes were dynamited.
What of us Americans? Do we negotiate with terrorists?
At Tehran and Yalta, FDR ceded Eastern Europe to the Great Terrorist he called "Uncle Joe." Truman at Potsdam affirmed the grant to Stalin. Three years after Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian Revolution, Eisenhower invited the "Butcher of Budapest" to Camp David and had him escorted on a 10-day U.S. tour.
In 1972, Nixon went to Peking to shake hands with the greatest terrorist of the century, Mao Tse-tung, even as Mao's Gang of Four, including his wife, carried out the Chinese pogrom known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Moammar Gadhafi is responsible for the air massacre of Americans over Lockerbie. Yet, Bush let Gadhafi out of the sanctions box for giving up his nuclear program and making restitution to the families of the victims on Pan Am Flight 103.
Which brings me to the point: America is a world power with a broader interest in the Middle East than Israel's, and if we are to protect those interests and play the role history has assigned us, we cannot allow any nation to exercise veto power over whom we talk to.
It is preposterous that, at the behest of Israel, we do not talk to a Palestinian Authority led by Hamas after an election in which Bush himself demanded Hamas be included. And while Syria and Iran have been distant and hostile, neither appears to want war with the United States, and neither has attacked us in at least 10 years.
If we can talk to Gadhafi, who has the blood of Americans on his hands, why can't we talk to Bashar al-Assad and Ahmadinejad? Neither of them has slaughtered hundreds of Americans in a terror attack.
Before he launched his democracy project, Bush was warned that free elections would advance the fortunes of Islamic militants. At his insistence, the elections were held. The results?
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 60 percent of the seats it contested. Hezbollah swept south Lebanon. Hamas recorded a stunning victory on the West Bank and Gaza. These were the freest and fairest elections ever held in those nations. But Bush refused to engage the winners.
The painful truth is that, in the Middle East, democracy will produce, as it does in the West, two dominant parties. One will be a state party and the other is going to be a party rooted in the Islamic faith.
Time to recognize reality -- and stop isolating America.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Time for Plan B
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are baby-sitting a civil war.
When our top commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, tells a Senate Committee, as he did yesterday, that “the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it,” it means that three years of efforts to democratize Iraq are not working. That means “staying the course” is pointless, and it’s time to start thinking about Plan B — how we might disengage with the least damage possible.
It seemed to me over the last three years that, even with all the Bush team’s missteps, we had to give our Iraqi partners a chance to produce a transitional government, then write a constitution, then hold an election and then, finally, put together their first elected cabinet. But now they have done all of that — and the situation has only worsened.
The Sunni jihadists and Baathists are as dedicated as ever to making this U.S.-Iraqi democracy initiative fail. That, and the runaway sectarian violence resulting from having too few U.S. troops and allowing a militia culture to become embedded, have made Iraq a lawless mess.
Yes, I believe it was and remains hugely important to try to partner with Iraqis to create one good example in the heart of the Arab world of a decent, progressive state, where the politics of fear and tribalism do not reign — the politics that has produced all the pathologies of unemployment, religious intolerance and repression that make the Middle East so dangerous to itself and others.
But the administration now has to admit what anyone — including myself — who believed in the importance of getting Iraq right has to admit: Whether for Bush reasons or Arab reasons, it is not happening, and we can’t throw more good lives after good lives.
Since the Bush team never gave us a Plan A for Iraq, it at least owes us a Plan B. It’s not easy. Here are my first thoughts about a Plan B and some of the implications.
I think we need to try a last-ditch Bosnia-like peace conference that would bring together all of Iraq’s factions and neighbors. Just as Bosnia could be solved only by an international peace force and the Dayton conference — involving Russia, Europe and the U.S., the powers most affected by Bosnia’s implosion — the civil war in Iraq can be quelled only by a coalition of those most affected by Iraq’s implosion: the U.S., Russia, Europe, Japan, India, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Syria and Jordan. As in Bosnia, any solution will have to be some form of federalism, a division of oil wealth and policing by an international force, where needed.
For such a conference to come about, though, the U.S. would probably need to declare its intention to leave. Iraqis, other Arabs, Europeans and Chinese will get serious about helping to salvage Iraq only if they believe we are leaving and it will damage their interests.
What would be the consequences of leaving without such a last-ditch peace effort, or if it just fails? Iraq could erupt into a much wider civil war, drawing in its neighbors. Or, Iraqis might stare into this abyss and actually come to terms with each other on their own. Our presence may be part of the problem. It’s hard to know.
If Iraq opts for all-out civil war, its two million barrels a day will be off the market and oil could go above $100 a barrel. (That would, however, spur more investment in alternative fuels that could one day make us independent of this volatile region.)
Some fear that Iran will be the winner. But will it? Once we are out of Iraq, Iran will have to manage the boiling pot next door. That will be a huge problem for Iran. The historical enmity toward Iran by Iraqi Arabs — enmity temporarily focused on us — will re-emerge. And Iran will also have to compete with its ally Syria for influence in Iraq.
Yes, the best way to contain Iran would have been to produce a real Shiite-led democracy in Iraq, exposing the phony one in Tehran. But second best is leaving Iraq. Because the worst option — the one Iran loves — is for us to stay in Iraq, bleeding, and in easy range to be hit by Iran if we strike its nukes.
Finally, the war in Iraq has so divided us at home and abroad that leaving, while bringing other problems, might also make it easier to build coalitions to deal with post-U.S. Iraq, Iran, Hezbollah and Syria. All these problems are connected. We need to deal with Iran and Syria, but from a position of strength — and that requires a broad coalition.
The longer we maintain a unilateral failing strategy in Iraq, the harder it will be to build such a coalition, and the stronger the enemies of freedom will become.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are baby-sitting a civil war.
When our top commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, tells a Senate Committee, as he did yesterday, that “the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it,” it means that three years of efforts to democratize Iraq are not working. That means “staying the course” is pointless, and it’s time to start thinking about Plan B — how we might disengage with the least damage possible.
It seemed to me over the last three years that, even with all the Bush team’s missteps, we had to give our Iraqi partners a chance to produce a transitional government, then write a constitution, then hold an election and then, finally, put together their first elected cabinet. But now they have done all of that — and the situation has only worsened.
The Sunni jihadists and Baathists are as dedicated as ever to making this U.S.-Iraqi democracy initiative fail. That, and the runaway sectarian violence resulting from having too few U.S. troops and allowing a militia culture to become embedded, have made Iraq a lawless mess.
Yes, I believe it was and remains hugely important to try to partner with Iraqis to create one good example in the heart of the Arab world of a decent, progressive state, where the politics of fear and tribalism do not reign — the politics that has produced all the pathologies of unemployment, religious intolerance and repression that make the Middle East so dangerous to itself and others.
But the administration now has to admit what anyone — including myself — who believed in the importance of getting Iraq right has to admit: Whether for Bush reasons or Arab reasons, it is not happening, and we can’t throw more good lives after good lives.
Since the Bush team never gave us a Plan A for Iraq, it at least owes us a Plan B. It’s not easy. Here are my first thoughts about a Plan B and some of the implications.
I think we need to try a last-ditch Bosnia-like peace conference that would bring together all of Iraq’s factions and neighbors. Just as Bosnia could be solved only by an international peace force and the Dayton conference — involving Russia, Europe and the U.S., the powers most affected by Bosnia’s implosion — the civil war in Iraq can be quelled only by a coalition of those most affected by Iraq’s implosion: the U.S., Russia, Europe, Japan, India, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Syria and Jordan. As in Bosnia, any solution will have to be some form of federalism, a division of oil wealth and policing by an international force, where needed.
For such a conference to come about, though, the U.S. would probably need to declare its intention to leave. Iraqis, other Arabs, Europeans and Chinese will get serious about helping to salvage Iraq only if they believe we are leaving and it will damage their interests.
What would be the consequences of leaving without such a last-ditch peace effort, or if it just fails? Iraq could erupt into a much wider civil war, drawing in its neighbors. Or, Iraqis might stare into this abyss and actually come to terms with each other on their own. Our presence may be part of the problem. It’s hard to know.
If Iraq opts for all-out civil war, its two million barrels a day will be off the market and oil could go above $100 a barrel. (That would, however, spur more investment in alternative fuels that could one day make us independent of this volatile region.)
Some fear that Iran will be the winner. But will it? Once we are out of Iraq, Iran will have to manage the boiling pot next door. That will be a huge problem for Iran. The historical enmity toward Iran by Iraqi Arabs — enmity temporarily focused on us — will re-emerge. And Iran will also have to compete with its ally Syria for influence in Iraq.
Yes, the best way to contain Iran would have been to produce a real Shiite-led democracy in Iraq, exposing the phony one in Tehran. But second best is leaving Iraq. Because the worst option — the one Iran loves — is for us to stay in Iraq, bleeding, and in easy range to be hit by Iran if we strike its nukes.
Finally, the war in Iraq has so divided us at home and abroad that leaving, while bringing other problems, might also make it easier to build coalitions to deal with post-U.S. Iraq, Iran, Hezbollah and Syria. All these problems are connected. We need to deal with Iran and Syria, but from a position of strength — and that requires a broad coalition.
The longer we maintain a unilateral failing strategy in Iraq, the harder it will be to build such a coalition, and the stronger the enemies of freedom will become.
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Ending the neoconservative nightmare
By Daniel Levy
04/08/2006
Witnessing the near-perfect symmetry of Israeli and American policy has been one of the more noteworthy aspects of the latest Lebanon war. A true friend in the White House. No deescalate and stabilize, honest-broker, diplomatic jaw-jaw from this president. Great. Except that Israel was actually in need of an early exit strategy, had its diplomatic options narrowed by American weakness and marginalization in the region, and found itself ratcheting up aerial and ground operations in ways that largely worked to Hezbollah's advantage, the Qana tragedy included. The American ladder had gone AWOL.
More worrying, while everyone here can identify an Israeli interest in securing the northern border and the justification in responding to Hezbollah, the goal of saving Lebanon's fragile Cedar Revolution sounds less distinctly Israeli. Perhaps an agenda invented elsewhere. As hostilities intensified, the phrase "proxy war" gained resonance.
Israelis have grown used to a different kind of American embrace - less instrumental, more emotional, but also responsible. A dependable friend, ready to lend a guiding hand back to the path of stabilization when necessary.
After this crisis will Israel belatedly wake up to the implications of the tectonic shift that has taken place in U.S.-Middle East policy?
In 1996 a group of then opposition U.S. policy agitators, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, presented a paper entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" to incoming Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The "clean break" was from the prevailing peace process, advocating that Israel pursue a combination of roll-back, destabilization and containment in the region, including striking at Syria and removing Saddam Hussein from power in favor of "Hashemite control in Iraq." The Israeli horse they backed then was not up to the task.
Ten years later, as Netanyahu languishes in the opposition, as head of a small Likud faction, Perle, Feith and their neoconservative friends have justifiably earned a reputation as awesome wielders of foreign-policy influence under George W. Bush.
The key neocon protagonists, their think tanks and publications may be unfamiliar to many Israelis, but they are redefining the region we live in. This tight-knit group of "defense intellectuals" - centered around Bill Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Elliott Abrams, Perle, Feith and others - were considered somewhat off-beat until they teamed up with hawkish well-connected Republicans like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Newt Gingrich, and with the emerging powerhouse of the Christian right. Their agenda was an aggressive unilateralist U.S. global supremacy, a radical vision of transformative regime-change democratization, with a fixation on the Middle East, an obsession with Iraq and an affinity to "old Likud" politics in Israel. Their extended moment in the sun arrived after 9/11.
Finding themselves somewhat bogged down in the Iraqi quagmire, the neoconservatives are reveling in the latest crisis, displaying their customary hubris in re-seizing the initiative. The U.S. press and blogosphere is awash with neocon-inspired calls for indefinite shooting, no talking and extension of hostilities to Syria and Iran, with Gingrich calling this a third world war to "defend civilization."
Disentangling Israeli interests from the rubble of neocon "creative destruction" in the Middle East has become an urgent challenge for Israeli policy-makers. An America that seeks to reshape the region through an unsophisticated mixture of bombs and ballots, devoid of local contextual understanding, alliance-building or redressing of grievances, ultimately undermines both itself and Israel. The sight this week of Secretary of State Rice homeward bound, unable to touch down in any Arab capital, should have a sobering effect in Washington and Jerusalem.
Afghanistan is yet to be secured, Iraq is an exporter of instability and perhaps terror, too, Iranian hard-liners have been strengthened and encouraged, while the public throughout the region is ever-more radicalized, and in the yet-to-be "transformed" regimes of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, is certainly more hostile to Israel and America than its leaders. Neither listening nor talking to important, if problematic, actors in the region has only impoverished policy-making capacity.
Israel does have enemies, interests and security imperatives, but there is no logic in the country volunteering itself for the frontline of an ideologically misguided and avoidable war of civilizations.
So what should be done, on both sides of the ocean?
It is admittedly difficult for Israel to have a regional strategy that is out-of-step with the U.S. administration-of-the-day. However, the neocon approach is not unchallenged, and Israel should not be providing its ticket back to the ascendancy. A U.S. return to proactive diplomacy, realism and multilateralism, with sustained and hard engagement that delivers concrete progress, would best serve its own, Israeli and regional interests. Israel should encourage this. Israel may even have to lead, for instance, in rethinking policy on Hamas or Syria, and should certainly work intensely with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in encouraging his efforts to reach a Palestinian national understanding as a basis for stable governance, security quiet and future peace negotiations. A policy that comes with a Jerusalem kosher stamp of approval might be viewed as less of an abomination in Washington.
Beyond that, Israel and its friends in the United States should seriously reconsider their alliances not only with the neocons, but also with the Christian Right. The largest "pro-Israel" lobby day during this crisis was mobilized by Pastor John Hagee and his Christians United For Israel, a believer in Armageddon with all its implications for a rather particular end to the Jewish story. This is just asking to become the mother of all dumb, self-defeating and morally abhorrent alliances.
Internationalist Republicans, Democrats and mainstream Israelis must construct an alternative narrative to the neocon nightmare, identifying shared interests in a policy that reestablishes American leadership, respect and credibility in the region by facilitating security and stability, pursuing conflict resolution and promoting the conditions for more open societies (as opposed to narrow election-worship). The last two years of the Bush presidency can be an opportunity for progress or an exercise in desperate damage limitation. It sounds counter-intuitive, but Israel should reflect on and even help reorient American expectations.
Daniel Levy was a member of the official Israeli negotiating team at the Oslo and Taba talks and the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative.
Ending the neoconservative nightmare
By Daniel Levy
04/08/2006
Witnessing the near-perfect symmetry of Israeli and American policy has been one of the more noteworthy aspects of the latest Lebanon war. A true friend in the White House. No deescalate and stabilize, honest-broker, diplomatic jaw-jaw from this president. Great. Except that Israel was actually in need of an early exit strategy, had its diplomatic options narrowed by American weakness and marginalization in the region, and found itself ratcheting up aerial and ground operations in ways that largely worked to Hezbollah's advantage, the Qana tragedy included. The American ladder had gone AWOL.
More worrying, while everyone here can identify an Israeli interest in securing the northern border and the justification in responding to Hezbollah, the goal of saving Lebanon's fragile Cedar Revolution sounds less distinctly Israeli. Perhaps an agenda invented elsewhere. As hostilities intensified, the phrase "proxy war" gained resonance.
Israelis have grown used to a different kind of American embrace - less instrumental, more emotional, but also responsible. A dependable friend, ready to lend a guiding hand back to the path of stabilization when necessary.
After this crisis will Israel belatedly wake up to the implications of the tectonic shift that has taken place in U.S.-Middle East policy?
In 1996 a group of then opposition U.S. policy agitators, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, presented a paper entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" to incoming Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The "clean break" was from the prevailing peace process, advocating that Israel pursue a combination of roll-back, destabilization and containment in the region, including striking at Syria and removing Saddam Hussein from power in favor of "Hashemite control in Iraq." The Israeli horse they backed then was not up to the task.
Ten years later, as Netanyahu languishes in the opposition, as head of a small Likud faction, Perle, Feith and their neoconservative friends have justifiably earned a reputation as awesome wielders of foreign-policy influence under George W. Bush.
The key neocon protagonists, their think tanks and publications may be unfamiliar to many Israelis, but they are redefining the region we live in. This tight-knit group of "defense intellectuals" - centered around Bill Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Elliott Abrams, Perle, Feith and others - were considered somewhat off-beat until they teamed up with hawkish well-connected Republicans like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Newt Gingrich, and with the emerging powerhouse of the Christian right. Their agenda was an aggressive unilateralist U.S. global supremacy, a radical vision of transformative regime-change democratization, with a fixation on the Middle East, an obsession with Iraq and an affinity to "old Likud" politics in Israel. Their extended moment in the sun arrived after 9/11.
Finding themselves somewhat bogged down in the Iraqi quagmire, the neoconservatives are reveling in the latest crisis, displaying their customary hubris in re-seizing the initiative. The U.S. press and blogosphere is awash with neocon-inspired calls for indefinite shooting, no talking and extension of hostilities to Syria and Iran, with Gingrich calling this a third world war to "defend civilization."
Disentangling Israeli interests from the rubble of neocon "creative destruction" in the Middle East has become an urgent challenge for Israeli policy-makers. An America that seeks to reshape the region through an unsophisticated mixture of bombs and ballots, devoid of local contextual understanding, alliance-building or redressing of grievances, ultimately undermines both itself and Israel. The sight this week of Secretary of State Rice homeward bound, unable to touch down in any Arab capital, should have a sobering effect in Washington and Jerusalem.
Afghanistan is yet to be secured, Iraq is an exporter of instability and perhaps terror, too, Iranian hard-liners have been strengthened and encouraged, while the public throughout the region is ever-more radicalized, and in the yet-to-be "transformed" regimes of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, is certainly more hostile to Israel and America than its leaders. Neither listening nor talking to important, if problematic, actors in the region has only impoverished policy-making capacity.
Israel does have enemies, interests and security imperatives, but there is no logic in the country volunteering itself for the frontline of an ideologically misguided and avoidable war of civilizations.
So what should be done, on both sides of the ocean?
It is admittedly difficult for Israel to have a regional strategy that is out-of-step with the U.S. administration-of-the-day. However, the neocon approach is not unchallenged, and Israel should not be providing its ticket back to the ascendancy. A U.S. return to proactive diplomacy, realism and multilateralism, with sustained and hard engagement that delivers concrete progress, would best serve its own, Israeli and regional interests. Israel should encourage this. Israel may even have to lead, for instance, in rethinking policy on Hamas or Syria, and should certainly work intensely with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in encouraging his efforts to reach a Palestinian national understanding as a basis for stable governance, security quiet and future peace negotiations. A policy that comes with a Jerusalem kosher stamp of approval might be viewed as less of an abomination in Washington.
Beyond that, Israel and its friends in the United States should seriously reconsider their alliances not only with the neocons, but also with the Christian Right. The largest "pro-Israel" lobby day during this crisis was mobilized by Pastor John Hagee and his Christians United For Israel, a believer in Armageddon with all its implications for a rather particular end to the Jewish story. This is just asking to become the mother of all dumb, self-defeating and morally abhorrent alliances.
Internationalist Republicans, Democrats and mainstream Israelis must construct an alternative narrative to the neocon nightmare, identifying shared interests in a policy that reestablishes American leadership, respect and credibility in the region by facilitating security and stability, pursuing conflict resolution and promoting the conditions for more open societies (as opposed to narrow election-worship). The last two years of the Bush presidency can be an opportunity for progress or an exercise in desperate damage limitation. It sounds counter-intuitive, but Israel should reflect on and even help reorient American expectations.
Daniel Levy was a member of the official Israeli negotiating team at the Oslo and Taba talks and the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative.
From the Los Angeles Times:
No Tears for Fidel, Please
The murderous dictator put revolution ahead of country, so shed them for the people and way of life he repressed.
By George Weigel
August 4, 2006
News that Fidel Castro may be dead or dying has elicited a variety of sentiments, including an odd grief tinged with an even odder respect. My first reaction, on hearing of Castro's transfer of power to his equally lethal brother, Raul, was to remember the strange circumstances in which I learned that Castro had publicly denounced me to an international congress of journalists meeting in Havana in late 1999.
I was having Christmas dinner with family and friends in Rome when one of my hosts asked whether I had seen the fax that the Cuban mission to the Vatican was sending around town. I confessed that I hadn't, and the document was fetched. It turned out that, in the course of a typical four-hour harangue, Castro had devoted a few paragraphs to denouncing the "Yanqui" who had slandered him in my recently published biography of Pope John Paul II. I was touched by Castro's attentiveness — he actually called me something that can't be printed here — but I also was struck by his defensiveness and an insecurity unmitigated by age or manifest power.
What I had written in "Witness to Hope" was the plain truth: The papal pilgrimage to Cuba in January 1998 was the first time in almost 40 years that Fidel Castro had not been the undisputed center of attention at a public event in Cuba. I also had recounted other aspects of the papal visit that Castro would have preferred to ignore, such as the fact that John Paul II had not mentioned the Castro regime once in five days; that the pope had tried, in various ways, to give back to the people of Cuba the rich spiritual culture that was their birthright; that he had challenged Cubans to be the protagonists of their history, rather than thinking of themselves, as Castro had so long proposed, as victims of "Yanqui aggression." El Jefe was not pleased.
I had barely made it to Cuba in January 1998 — my first visa application was rejected, and it took an intervention by Cardinal John O'Connor of New York to get me in; the cardinal explained to the Cuban government that blocking the visa of the pope's biographer would not look good. But once I had arrived, Cuba was unforgettably vivid, the images of its destruction inescapable.
I remember walking the streets of Havana, noting the crumbling buildings and the government office windows held together with masking tape, and thinking that what should have been one of the world's most beautiful cities had been reduced to a Caribbean Sarajevo — not by mortars and rockets, but by mindless ideology. I remember the Museum of the Revolution, in which the bloodstained sheet that had bound the body of Che Guevara was displayed in an obscene knockoff of the Shroud of Turin. I remember the goofy cartoon billboards all over the country — Cuba kicking Uncle Sam in the pants, with stylized captions roaring defiance against the imperialists. And I remember thinking that this is what a country would look like if it were run for decades by a group of vicious teenagers.
I remember the barren shelves in the pharmacies, with not even an aspirin to be had, despite the propaganda about Cuban healthcare. I remember the teenage waiters and waitresses at my hotel, who told me that 75% of their wages went to the government. I remember talking to the prostitute — a well-spoken medical doctor who, when I asked why she was selling herself, told me that it was the only way to support her children. And I remember the elderly proprietor of a restaurant overlooking the cove from which Hemingway's old man had set out to the sea, telling me with tears running down his face that he had waited 40 years to hear someone — and now the pope! — defend Christian family life in Cuba.
Whenever Castro dies, the temptation to afford a measure of respect, however grudging, to the man who continued to defy the world's lone superpower will be strong, at least in some quarters. It should, however, be firmly resisted.
Castro is not a mass murderer in the same league with Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao Tse-tung, but he is a murderous dictator nonetheless. The stories of the vile and grotesque conditions in which he keeps political prisoners should not be forgotten. Nor should the injustices of previous Cuban regimes be cited as excuses for this wicked man who reduced a proud and vibrant nation to penury and international military prostitution in Africa.
In a statement read after his surgery, Castro assured his countrymen that the defense of the island was secure against the U.S. To the end, it seems, Castro will love the revolution more than he loves Cuba. That is why he destroyed so much of his country, and that is why no tears should be shed for him.
GEORGE WEIGEL, a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, is the author of "God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church" and "Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II."
No Tears for Fidel, Please
The murderous dictator put revolution ahead of country, so shed them for the people and way of life he repressed.
By George Weigel
August 4, 2006
News that Fidel Castro may be dead or dying has elicited a variety of sentiments, including an odd grief tinged with an even odder respect. My first reaction, on hearing of Castro's transfer of power to his equally lethal brother, Raul, was to remember the strange circumstances in which I learned that Castro had publicly denounced me to an international congress of journalists meeting in Havana in late 1999.
I was having Christmas dinner with family and friends in Rome when one of my hosts asked whether I had seen the fax that the Cuban mission to the Vatican was sending around town. I confessed that I hadn't, and the document was fetched. It turned out that, in the course of a typical four-hour harangue, Castro had devoted a few paragraphs to denouncing the "Yanqui" who had slandered him in my recently published biography of Pope John Paul II. I was touched by Castro's attentiveness — he actually called me something that can't be printed here — but I also was struck by his defensiveness and an insecurity unmitigated by age or manifest power.
What I had written in "Witness to Hope" was the plain truth: The papal pilgrimage to Cuba in January 1998 was the first time in almost 40 years that Fidel Castro had not been the undisputed center of attention at a public event in Cuba. I also had recounted other aspects of the papal visit that Castro would have preferred to ignore, such as the fact that John Paul II had not mentioned the Castro regime once in five days; that the pope had tried, in various ways, to give back to the people of Cuba the rich spiritual culture that was their birthright; that he had challenged Cubans to be the protagonists of their history, rather than thinking of themselves, as Castro had so long proposed, as victims of "Yanqui aggression." El Jefe was not pleased.
I had barely made it to Cuba in January 1998 — my first visa application was rejected, and it took an intervention by Cardinal John O'Connor of New York to get me in; the cardinal explained to the Cuban government that blocking the visa of the pope's biographer would not look good. But once I had arrived, Cuba was unforgettably vivid, the images of its destruction inescapable.
I remember walking the streets of Havana, noting the crumbling buildings and the government office windows held together with masking tape, and thinking that what should have been one of the world's most beautiful cities had been reduced to a Caribbean Sarajevo — not by mortars and rockets, but by mindless ideology. I remember the Museum of the Revolution, in which the bloodstained sheet that had bound the body of Che Guevara was displayed in an obscene knockoff of the Shroud of Turin. I remember the goofy cartoon billboards all over the country — Cuba kicking Uncle Sam in the pants, with stylized captions roaring defiance against the imperialists. And I remember thinking that this is what a country would look like if it were run for decades by a group of vicious teenagers.
I remember the barren shelves in the pharmacies, with not even an aspirin to be had, despite the propaganda about Cuban healthcare. I remember the teenage waiters and waitresses at my hotel, who told me that 75% of their wages went to the government. I remember talking to the prostitute — a well-spoken medical doctor who, when I asked why she was selling herself, told me that it was the only way to support her children. And I remember the elderly proprietor of a restaurant overlooking the cove from which Hemingway's old man had set out to the sea, telling me with tears running down his face that he had waited 40 years to hear someone — and now the pope! — defend Christian family life in Cuba.
Whenever Castro dies, the temptation to afford a measure of respect, however grudging, to the man who continued to defy the world's lone superpower will be strong, at least in some quarters. It should, however, be firmly resisted.
Castro is not a mass murderer in the same league with Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao Tse-tung, but he is a murderous dictator nonetheless. The stories of the vile and grotesque conditions in which he keeps political prisoners should not be forgotten. Nor should the injustices of previous Cuban regimes be cited as excuses for this wicked man who reduced a proud and vibrant nation to penury and international military prostitution in Africa.
In a statement read after his surgery, Castro assured his countrymen that the defense of the island was secure against the U.S. To the end, it seems, Castro will love the revolution more than he loves Cuba. That is why he destroyed so much of his country, and that is why no tears should be shed for him.
GEORGE WEIGEL, a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, is the author of "God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church" and "Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II."
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