Posted on 12/25/2004 12:03:54 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
WARSAW, Poland -- Do unarmed protestors who risk their lives to replace murderous and corrupt regimes with law-based, liberal democracies deserve our support or not?
For simple folk like you and me, this is not one of life's more demanding ethical conundrums. But then again, you and I are no match for some of the great brains at Britain's Guardian newspaper, who -- along with like minded members of the international left -- are currently mounting something approaching a hate campaign against the brave men and women fighting for democracy in Ukraine, and indeed against their predecessors across eastern Europe who brought down communism in 1989.
A word of explanation right at the outset. In referring to the "international left" I do not imply that these people share anything in common with mainstream American Democrats, British New Labor supporters or European Social Democrats who have been as enthusiastic about the prospects for reform in Ukraine as anyone. Unfortunately, such honorable and generous sentiments are not shared by many adhering to an older brand of leftist thinking that has resurfaced over events in Ukraine in remarkably aggressive fashion.
Take Mark Almond, a lecturer in modern history at Oriel College, Oxford. He began a recent column in the Guardian by noting (contemptuously) that: "People Power is on track to score another triumph for western values in Ukraine." As his tirade unfolds, dissidents of the communist era are portrayed as CIA stooges and embezzlers or at best hapless servants of the evil Americans helping them to extend their empire. Post-communist societies are little more than dens of gangsters, prostitutes and "soaring death rates." (The latter insinuations, incidentally, are total garbage except, ironically, in places like Ukraine.)
In other words, the Ukrainians would be better off with a regime that cuts opposition journalists heads off and poisons unwelcome candidates come presidential election time than democratic rule and wealth-producing, law based capitalism.
A few issues previously in the Guardian, John Laughland practically accused the magnificent youth oppositionist "Pora" movement of employing Nazi style propaganda tactics. In an astonishing outburst, he also referred to two (yes, two) neo-Nazis among the tens of thousands demonstrating in central Kiev in an apparent attempt to smear the entire movement -- all the more extraordinary given that his piece purports to be about the distortions of the Western media.
In somewhat less obnoxious tones, columnist Jonathan Steele, writing in both The Nation in America and the Guardian in Britain, issued forth with a similarly misplaced assault hinting at the "post-modern coup d'etat" about to take place in Ukraine.
In a poignant reminder of the kind of company such writers are now keeping, such thoughts were echoed at a press conference in Moscow on Dec. 16 by Russia's neo-fascist leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. "I think what is happening in Ukraine ... is a creeping coup, (attempted) by the West, Brussels and Washington," he said.
It would be easy to dismiss these people as rather sick-minded remnants of an utterly failed worldview, mavericks who should simply be ignored.
Unfortunately, that would be wrong, at least if we exclude the likes of Zhirinovsky. They are all mainstream commentators, holding respected, well paid positions, writing in a mainstream newspaper with huge influence in Britain's main media outlet -- the BBC -- and its leading political party -- Labor. The Nation is no irrelevant outlet in the United States either.
Taking the most generous view, it could be argued that the people of Ukraine and the rest of the post-communist world are not the real objects of this facile and contemptible campaign. Instead, they are mere collateral damage in the wider war against the real enemy -- the United States of America.
In the perverted prism through which such people view world affairs, if America supports something, it is to be despised. Thus it always has been, and thus it always will be. The Ukrainians (along with the Iraqis and the rest of the Arab world, for that matter) can go to (or at least remain in) hell because freedom would add to the balance sheet of U.S. foreign policy successes. And no worse fate could befall the world than that, could it?
I said that was the generous view. But to be honest, I'm tired of giving such spiteful writers the benefit of the doubt. In the end, who cares what infantile political psychology motivates these people? When push came to shove, there were vast numbers among them who preferred Stalin to Roosevelt. They preferred the Taliban and Saddam to Bush. And now they prefer the gangsters in control of Ukraine to the prospect of rule by a democratic opposition. That is a problem for them and what passes for their consciences.
Of course, no one should be naive about the difficulties Ukraine will face if Viktor Yushchenko does take the presidency this weekend. Yushchenko does not have a record as a spotless reformer. Not all of his supporters are motivated by enthusiasm for democracy. But the great mass among them are, and the Ukrainian pro-democracy movement represents the best hope that beleaguered country has had in years.
They want what most people in Europe and North America take for granted: free societies where men wielding guns no longer run the economy, and a system of governance that treats them with respect and not contempt. It is an aspiration that deserves our support.
Let's raise a glass this Christmas to the downtrodden people of Ukraine, another to the Americans and other Westerners who rightly support them in their struggle, and then agree that the rotting corpse of old-left totalitarianism simply stinks.
These old cronies are showing their true commie colors.
Its the same as 1932 when the leftist intelligentsia covered up the biggest geoncide of the century and received a Pulitzer, too.
The Leftist Press and the Kremlin - perfect together.
And look what it brings - antoher fraudulent election.
It seems this "World Peace Herald" is not quite a true believer's mouthpiece.
The author had no difficulty in telling it like it was: Hard lefties don't giva a damn about the oppressed and downtrodden save for when they can be used a political tools. If America's fer it, they're automatically agin it. More simply, nothing good should happen as long as Bush is in office. This is the philosophy of the Dems as well. The worse the country is doing the better for them. The electorate has been picking up on this since '02 and are voting accordingly.
yes, the true stripes are showing again.
Hey eluminate and fair opinion and ob6
Whats up in Byelorusse?
Is Yushchenko in a secret plot with the White Russians and Poles to arrest 80 election observors to make RasPutin loof bad again?
And of course, they hate the United States and particularly George W. Bush with every fiber of their being. Because the Hussein regime in Iraq was a socialist regime, any crime committed in its name was excusable -- just as any crime committed by the Kim Jong-Il regime in North Korea and the Castro regime in Cuba is excusable. After all, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
For removing the Hussein regime from power, the name of George W. Bush will forever be poison in their mouths. And it's true that in the English-speaking world, the Guardian is their mouthpiece. They even have a talkboard that makes the DUmmie FUnnies look logical and restrained by comparison:
Articles by John Laughland:
Western aggression
The revolution televised
How the US and Britain are intervening in Ukraine's elections
Articles by Mark Almond:
People power? Or George power?
It's now or never for Washington
The price of People Power - "The current ideology of New World Order ideologues, many of whom are renegade communists, is Market-Leninism - that combination of a dogmatic economic model with Machiavellian methods to grasp the levers of power."
Articles from the Guardian (UK):
Ukraine's postmodern coup d'etat
Where the cold war never died
US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev
The Nation
World Socialist Web Site
CounterPunch.Org
Worker's World
People's Weekly World
ProgressiveTrail.Org
Socialist Worker
Sozialismus.info
Lyndon LaRouche
What a lovely bibliography! I still don't see how Buchanan got mixed in with them.
bmp
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