While the rest of the world complains about American "unilateralism," dissidents in Cuba are being tried for participation in an opposition movement that seeks reform in the communist government. Prosecutors are seeking life imprisonment for some of the accused. The only means of "appeal" is to the dictator himself.
True to its anti-democratic philosophy of government, [i]nternational media and foreign diplomats were kept out of Thursday's hearings. There was a greater police presence Friday around the three Havana courthouses where trials were being held.
It's business as usual in Cuba and nary a peep from the anti-war peaceniks about the fate of reformers in Cuba, who actually want socialism to work without an oppressive dictatorship getting in the way and are being rounded up and put on "trial" with the possibility of life sentences. Where are the comrades in arms now? Where the solidarity with the likes of Ottawa Paya, a socialist, who spearheaded the "Varela Project" now aborted by the widespread crackdown on dissidents?
Those who rightfully cry foul about Ashcroft's Patriot Acts are usually the ones who are silent when much worse abuses occur 90 miles off the Florida coast. Consistency is not a hallmark of the Left these days. What about revolution for the Kurds and Shi'ites in Iraq? No go. Only "reactionary and imperialist" America will vouchsafe long overdue revolutionary change in that beleaguered nation.
It should come as no surprise that the Left is a truly reactionary force in world affairs. Godlessness forbid there be real change in the Middle East after the West's shameful support of dictatorships in that part of the world for so long. Germany, France, and Russia want to uphold the status quo while "cowboy" America, in the legitimate cause of national security, seeks to mend its ways by removing an evil tyrant and releasing the catalyst for what is hoped to be a chain reaction of democratic reform in the Muslim world. Whether or not this radical shift in policy will work remains to be seen but it's better than being complicitous in an unworkable stalemate between the West's addiction to oil and corrupt regimes that are only too happy to be co-dependent.
The Left used to complain about America's long-standing support of dictatorships, yet when a radical turn in American foreign policy demonstrates a shift away from abetting dictatorship and fostering democracy instead, the Left's rallying cry is "no blood for oil." If it were about oil, the status quo would work just fine.
Besides, doesn't the oil belong to Iraq? What, exactly, is wrong with improving the economy of Iraq and the U.S. by the righteous removal of a particularly nasty tyrant and allowing the oil to flow? It would be as if the U.S. got involved in WWII not to save itself and the world from barbarism but to become an economic leader in that war's aftermath. Is it all that disturbing that capitalism is an integral, but by no means reductive, aspect of liberal democracies and proves most effective in fighting wars and garnering benefits in post-bellum reconstructions? Western Europe benefited economically from its liberation from Nazism. If all goes well in the hard work of reconstruction, Iraq's good will be America's good.
For the Left, economic growth as a result of war, while not its motivation for it, is certainly an issue, yet even it cannot really believe in the Ba'athist's pretensions of socialist justice. So what options does it have but to support a bloody rule that leaves 5,000 Iraqi children to starve to death every month because Saddam refuses to redistribute the wealth imported through the U.N. oil for food program. Funny how the U.N. excuses him for not living up to his, and its, socialist ideals and condemns America for actually implementing that defunct institution's seventeen resolutions.
The death of the Left has been secured by its own hand. It no longer believes in its own "values," it does not have the courage of its own convictions, and it wastes its death rattles on spewing venom against America specifically and liberal democracy in general. Cuba and Iraq are fatal wounds in the Left's dying days. As Christopher Hitchens recently noted, Lenin must be spinning in his grave.
The always perspicacious military historian and classicist, Victor Davis Hanson, details how the world might change after the dust settles in Baghdad.
And then there is the madness of Europe. It is time to speak far more softly and carry a far larger stick. France may be right that we all have really come to the end of history — and so we should give them an opportunity to prove it, to match deed with word by being delighted as we withdraw troops from Germany. Germany may or may not be embracing the frightening old nationalist rhetoric — but again that will be France's problem, not ours. Let us hope that the more sober in Germany can still grasp at what Mr. Schroeder has nearly thrown away, and see that few superpowers have given it so much and asked for so little in return — and genuinely wish it to do well.
But again it is their call, not ours. We do not have to withdraw from a dead NATO, but we should simply grin and spend as much on it as Europe does — and so let it die on the vine. How could we be allies with such countries as France and Germany when sizable minorities there want a fascistic Saddam Hussein to defeat us?
Maybe we should forget about "freedom fries" and call them "Iraqi fries."