Two Dissidents

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

How strange, some might suggest, that a born-again Christian from Texas, the most powerful man in the world, and a Russian Jew, whose political principles were tested in the gulag archipelago and who is now living in Israel, would see eye-to-eye on the great moral question of our age. Yet one of the astonishing behind-the-scenes stories in Washington is the bonding that has occurred between President Bush and the deputy prime minister of Israel, Natan Sharansky.


Earlier this month, and less than 48 hours after he stopped in to visit The New York Sun, Mr. Sharansky met with the president at the White House. At Mr. Bush’s invitation, the two men spent more than an hour discussing Mr. Sharansky’s new book, “The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror.” Mr. Bush has not only read the book, but also recommended it to other officials in his administration, such as the secretary of state designate, Condoleezza Rice. Mr. Sharansky reciprocated the president’s admiration. “Very few people in the world believe like you do in the ideal of democracy for all people,” he reportedly told Mr. Bush.


According to Mr. Sharansky’s co-author, Ron Dermer, the mutual regard between the two leaders shouldn’t be surprising. “I think it really comes down to a basic morality,” he told us. “As we say in the book, the differences within the free world are less important than the difference between the world of freedom and the world of fear.” Mr. Bush also understands that fundamental difference.


“Just like you had President Reagan giving a speech about the evil empire that was heard deep inside the gulags, President Bush in championing democracy is speaking to the Arab Sakharovs of tomorrow,” said Mr. Dermer, referring to Mr. Sharansky’s mentor in the Soviet dissident movement, Andrei Sakharov.


Messrs. Sharansky and Bush both reject the idea that political stability can be bought at the expense of democracy. Mr. Sharansky was an early opponent of the Oslo Accords that brought Yasser Arafat to power. In 1993, when other Israeli leaders argued that an autocratic Arafat could clamp down on terrorist groups, Mr. Sharansky wrote that Arafat’s dictatorship would only foment more hatred of Israel among the Palestinian Arabs, while only a Palestinian democracy could establish an enduring peace. “Natan focused on the degree of political freedom in Palestinian society,” says Mr. Dermer, and found the peace process moving in the wrong direction.


In the same way, Mr. Bush has distinguished himself from his predecessor by refusing to meet with Arafat. The president turns out also to see political freedom as a necessary part of the Middle East peace process. “I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror,” he said in June 2002. “I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts.”


Mr. Sharansky writes in his book that there were few dissidents in the Soviet Union in the 1930s because they were all killed. When the penalty changed from death to imprisonment, more dissenters emerged. Mr. Sharansky found the courage to stand up against the Soviet Union because he knew the free world would stand with him. That was the significance of Reagan’s “evil empire” speech. “We dissidents were ecstatic,” Mr. Sharansky has written. “Finally, the leader of the Free World had spoken the truth, a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.”


Continental diplomats roll their eyes at Mr. Bush and insist that promoting democracy is not possible or undermines stability. Let the word of the bond between Messrs. Bush and Sharansky go out to the dissidents of the Arab world and elsewhere, who are thirsting for word that the free world understands them and stands with them. Mr. Sharansky sees Mr. Bush providing the same moral leadership that sustained him in the gulag. “You are going against the flow,” he told the president, “and are the world’s dissident.”

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


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