Codfish biographer Mark Kurlansky has an op-ed in Monday's Los Angeles Times, but his argument is a bit fishy.
Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia bears a warning: Superpowers that turn bully risk self-destructionFair enough, but why the conclusion that
If the Bush administration ever wanted to reflect on history, it might think about this.He doesn't tell us how Bush's foreign policy resembles Brezhnev's foreign policy, but everyone except the Scheerians in the audience should quickly grasp the difference:
Suddenly, Czechoslovakians were free to travel, their press was free to report on what it wanted in the way it wanted and their labor unions and agricultural associations were free to criticize government policy. What they had in mind was the creation of a Communist democracy, Marx's ideal made real. It came to be called the Prague Spring.Yes, Brezhnev had his Prague Spring and Bush had his Baghdad Spring. But the difference is that in Prague, all those freedoms led to the invasion, while in Baghdad it was the other way around.
When the Soviet Union finally came apart more than 20 years later, Western observers were shocked. They had already forgotten 1968. But at the time of the invasion even Time magazine predicted its fall: It was the end of heroic Russia. A country widely admired because it had dared to stand alone and build a socialist society, because it protected other socialist countries, because its citizens had been sacrificed by the millions to rid Europe of fascism had become, simply, a bully that crushed small countries.The Soviet Union may have been "widely admired", but that doesn't mean it wasn't a bully decades before 1968. Kurlansky closes:
A superpower that no longer stands for anything, that no one believes in anymore, that is seen only as a bully, will fall despite its military might. If the Bush administration ever wanted to reflect on history, it might think about this.A "superpower that no longer stands for anything" should find itself in trouble, but the United States stands for a great many things. Like freedom of the press, in Baghdad, as well as in Los Angeles, where Mark Kurlansky can write whatever he wants in his op-ed, even if it is silly or wrong. Soviet Russia was never that heroic. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 19, 2003 07:00 AM
And the Hungarians rebelled in 56 and were reconquered by the Russians. Neither the Hungarians nor the Czech had much to do with their own liberation in 89 or with the fall of the Soviet regime (but not the end of Russia) in 91. If we extrapolate from what this guy says, since both Hungary and Czechoslovakia were occupied in 45, the US will be losing its "empire", that is, Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively in 2045 and 2047. On the other hand, that won't be the end of America (as 91 wasn't the end of Russia either) but only of the current regime, in other words, of what the left calls the "Bush Junta". Making a long story short, the Republicans will, according to him, be in power for the next 40/50 years and, as Stalin stayed in power for 8 years after the conquest of Czechoslovakia, that means that Bush himself will be reelected for a second term.Coming to think of it, Kurlansky's predictions might be more precise than he'd liked them to be.
Posted by: nelson ascher on August 19, 2003 05:11 AM"Time magazine predicted its fall: It was the end of heroic Russia. A country widely admired because it had dared to stand alone and build a socialist society..."
Widely admired by shills like Time Magazine, maybe, but then Time just so absentmindedly overlooked the Gulag and the purges and those six million Ukrainians murdered by starvation. Now that the US is daring to stand alone to try to build a pluralist society in Iraq WITHOUT mass murders, it is not at all widely admired by the successors of Time's paparazzi.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on August 19, 2003 07:19 AM"western observers where shocked?--only the Democrats. I recall Reagan being pleased and not at all surprised.
Posted by: Rachel on August 19, 2003 08:01 AMHAD BECOME a bully that crushed small countries? The citizens of Finland might feel that the Soviet Union was a bully long before 1968.
And while many Russians were individually heroic in resisting Naziism, no one should forget the role of the Soviet leadership in making the Nazi conquests possible..(a)by the non-aggression pact and the conspiracy to dismember poland, and (b)the crippling of their own army through a series of purges.
Posted by: David Foster on August 19, 2003 08:02 AMLet's also not forget Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia---all independent countries before they were conquered by the Soviets.
And one wonders how many Poles viewed the USSR with "admiration," what w/ minor little things like Katyn Forest or the Soviet stop before Warsaw.
And when was Gulag Archipelago published? Or "The God that Failed"? How many admired the USSR after Khrushchev's speech at the 20th Party Congress?
Methinks there's a teensy bit of revisionism there. That, or there must be a lot of folks who still pine for Mao, since he didn't conquer anybody and also dared to build socialism alone....
Posted by: Dean on August 19, 2003 02:15 PM"it protected other socialist countries"
Revisionism with a vengeance.
Posted by: Yehudit on August 19, 2003 08:21 PMAh yes. "The United States stands for a great many things. Like freedom of the press..."
Yeah right. Then why did Bush say "there ought to be limits on freedom" when he found out about the gwbush.com site? Why is Ashcroft out promoting the so-called "Patriot Act" which is a tremendous assault on the Constitution? Why did Ari Fleischer say that "people should watch what they say?"
George Bush's "United States" may stand for a great many things. But they are things like arrogance, a police state, neo-fascism, kleptomaniac plutocracy, racism (check out Ashcroft's interview with 'Southern Partisan' magazine) hypocrisy, and, let us not forget, grand lies to lead the sheep of America to be slaughtered in a needless war.
Posted by: George on August 23, 2003 10:53 AM