TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/010890/01080013.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.2 KB | 119 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 26

COVER STORIES

When Tyrants Fall


By OTTO FRIEDRICH


    The images that linger are those of naked bodies lying in
rows on the ground, many with their ankles tied together with
barbed wire. One is a boy of about three, too young to be a
freedom fighter, too young to be a rebel, too young to be lying
naked in the snow; another is a seven-month fetus on the torso
of its disemboweled mother. But it was not just a slaughter of
the innocents in Rumania last week. A few days later came
another unforgettable image: the fallen dictator Nicolae
Ceausescu, executed by a firing squad, a pool of blood by his
head.

    Until now, it seemed almost miraculous how peacefully the
process of change was transforming the world. Except in China,
where troops mowed down students demonstrating for democracy
in Tiananmen Square last spring, nation after nation saw crowds
peacefully marching in the streets, and governments peacefully,
if grudgingly, giving way. We want freedom!, the crowds chanted
in Warsaw, Budapest, East Berlin, Sofia, Prague. One by one,
the rejected leaders of the former Soviet satellites, abandoned
by Moscow, promised free elections -- and more or less faded
into oblivion. The Berlin Wall came tumbling down; the cold war
ended. And only last week history was further rewritten when
Czechoslovakia's onetime reformer Alexander Dubcek, whose effort
to achieve "socialism with a human face" was smashed by Soviet
tanks in 1968, re-emerged from oblivion to head the National
Parliament; shortly thereafter, frequently imprisoned
playwright Vaclav Havel was elected President. It was as though
the age-old rules of political conflict had been suspended, and
the wolf would dwell with the lamb, the leopard would lie down
with the kid. Until the Christmas season in Rumania -- with
thousands dead, the worst bloodshed in Europe since the
Hungarian uprising of 1956.

    By a rather unpleasant irony, the U.S. was involved in
bloodshed as well. Unpleasantly ironic because while the
Soviets stood by and did nothing in Rumania, the U.S. was
violating its pledge under the charter of the Organization of
American States not to invade a neighbor. In most ways, of
course, the downfall of Panama's General Manuel Noriega had
little in common with Ceausescu's overthrow. The Rumanian was
driven out by his own people, the Panamanian by an outside army.
The Rumanian ran and was caught; the Panamanian found
sanctuary in the Vatican nunciature in Panama City and may yet
escape punishment. What the two episodes had in common was the
simple fact that they rid the world of two dictators.

    As tyrants go, Ceausescu was surely crueler, more methodical
and more blood-soaked than Noriega, who often came off as a
tin-pot dictator. Yet the similarities were striking. Like many
of their kind, both described themselves as reformers,
Ceausescu as a leader independent of Moscow, Noriega as a
Panamanian nationalist. The U.S. was not above using both when
they served its special purposes. Richard Nixon welcomed
Ceausescu's help in negotiating the first opening to China;
under Ronald Reagan, the CIA sought Noriega's assistance in
aiding Nicaragua's contras. But in Ceausescu's 24 years of iron
rule and Noriega's six, both eventually proved once again Lord
Acton's thesis that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts
absolutely.

    Both became drunk with vanity. Ceausescu styled himself the
"Genius of the Carpathians," put his face on posters all over
Rumania and had 30 volumes of his speeches published. One of
Noriega's last political acts was to have himself named Maximum
Leader. Both pursued quirky impulses. Ceausescu made his wife
Elena his deputy, and she not only draped herself in furs and
jewelry but also used the police to spy on her grown daughter's
love life. According to U.S. Army investigators, Noriega
practiced Santeria, a mystic religion, and wore red underwear
to fend off the evil eye.

    Both have been accused of stealing hundreds of millions of
dollars and hiding their fortunes abroad while reducing their
poverty-stricken peoples to even worse states of poverty. Both
created secret police forces to do their bidding, and both
suppressed opponents without mercy. Both seemed to acquire the
final illusion of the corrupted dictator, the megalomaniacal
fantasy that he owns his country as a private possession, and
that his people admire his strength. Sic semper tyrannis.

    Despite protests against the invasion of Panama and legal
questions about U.S. justification, it is difficult to credit
the Noriega regime with real legitimacy. Aside from the
general's alleged crimes, ranging from drug dealing to murder,
he simply canceled last spring's election after it had gone
against him, ruling thereafter by force. There was
international criticism too of the secret trial and hasty
execution of Ceausescu. But in both cases, the legalities were
overwhelmed by a kind of political necessity -- and both
countries should be the better for it in the new year. If, that
is, they prove equal to the long and painful task of rebuilding
the wreckage the two dictators left behind.