moral support

Posted: Sun, 03 Jun 2007

Bush, bloodied and battered here at home, will nevertheless make a stand for the freedom agenda when he goes to Prague next week to speak before the Conference on Democracy and Security. Featured attendees are former Russian gulag prisoner Natan Sharansky and onetime political prisoner (and then prime minister) of Czechoslovakia Vaclav Havel:

[Bush] He may never have a more perfect opportunity to restate the case for moral clarity in the conduct of international relations — and to explain why linking those relations to the advance of democracy and civil rights is a prerequisite to lasting peace and security. …

In the 1970s and 1980s, “realists” believed in appeasing Moscow and ignoring dissidents, whom they saw as too weak to make a difference. They didn’t understand that the best way to undermine a totalitarian regime is to weaken the control it exerts over its subjects — and the best way to do that is to amplify the voices from within calling for freedom and democracy.

President Reagan, who did understand, labeled the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and put Moscow’s treatment of dissidents and refuseniks high on the international agenda. The Kremlin eventually caved under the pressure that resulted.

What worked in the Cold War will work in the conflict with radical Islam, Sharansky insists, if only the free world will support the beleaguered human rights and democracy advocates in Iran and the Arab world. “If President Bush will say clearly to democratic dissidents in the Middle East, ‘You are our partners, and we are going to work through you’ — that would strengthen their position tremendously.”

Our strongest weapon against the global jihad, says Sharansky, is that people prefer to live in freedom, not fear. “Help those people who are fighting for it from within,” he pleads. “That is the most important thing.”

Yes it is. Although democracy is far superior (because it is the fairest, to the most people) to any other system of government known to man, people across the globe should come to that realization on their own…if they can We cannot and should not impose our way of life—which works so well for us—on others.

But we can and should support those people living in police states, under constant scrutiny by totalitarian regimes, who are working to overthrow their cruel masters so that they too may live in freedom. Like us, they deserve the human right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

And spare a thought for peace activist Ali Shakeri, scholars Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, and journalist Parnaz Azima. And for Ingrid Betancourt and Clara Rojas.

Let your conscience be your guide. Think anti-totalitarianism, not anti-Bushism.