19993: radtimes: Democrats and dictators (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Democrats and dictators

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ollienorth/on20040305.shtml

by Oliver North
March 5, 2004

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Two years ago, former President Jimmy Carter
traveled to Havana to break bread with the Dean of Dictators, Fidel
Castro -- for 45 years the brutal ruler of Cuba's island paradise.
While there, Carter not only embraced a despot responsible for
torturing and repressing his people -- but took time to denounce his
own country, saying the United States "is hardly perfect in human
rights."

  Castro was one of the few tyrants who failed to grace William
Jefferson Blythe Clinton's social calendar, though Clinton made it a
habit to meet regularly with the Dictator-of-the-Month while in office.
Yasser Arafat visited 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. no less than 11 times. Be
it Fidel Castro, Yasser Arafat or former Soviet dictator Mikhail
Gorbachev, it seems American liberals crave the affection of brutal
authoritarians whose regimes have brought nothing but agony and cruelty
to their people.

  Last week is a case study in liberal support for dictators. First, it
was none other than Saddam Hussein. Despite numerous reports of the
Iraqi dictator's bloody atrocities, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton felt it
necessary to speak up on his behalf -- commending his treatment of
women!

  Could Mrs. Rodham be unaware of the mass graves containing the bodies
of thousands of Iraqi women and their children, documented by Fox News
and others? Is she oblivious of reports showing that during Saddam's
reign of terror, more than 200 women were beheaded and their families
were forced to display their severed skulls on stakes in front of their
homes? Hasn't the junior senator from New York heard of the thousands
of women who were raped by members of Saddam's family and the Iraqi
security services? How did she miss the photos and videotape of Iraqi
women and girls who had been singled out for beatings and torture with
hot branding?

  But maybe those things don't matter to Clinton. In a speech to the
Brookings Institute last week, she described Saddam as "an equal
opportunity oppressor," and then went on to lament the heady days under
his watch when Iraqi women "went to school, they participated in the
professions, they participated in government and business." "And," this
liberal champion of women's rights pointed out, "as long as (Iraqi
women) stayed out of (Saddam's) way, they had considerable freedom of
movement."

  Mrs. Rodham went on to condemn the U.S.-lead coalition efforts to
build democracy overnight in Iraq. But, she praised the United Nations'
12-year-long attempts to "nurture democratic movements" in the Balkans,
something she defended as a "time-taking task." She failed to mention
that the Balkan operation costs more than $1.5 billion per year.

  The so-called mainstream media ignored Clinton's unconscionable
defense of Saddam, her denunciation of U.S. efforts in Iraq and her
praise for the U.N. Perhaps that's because there was another dictator
in trouble who needed them more: Haitian tyrant, Jean Bertrand
Aristide.

  On Feb. 29, Aristide, who was restored to power by his friend Bill
Clinton, decided he ought to get out of Port-Au-Prince before the
people he had been repressing for 10 years dragged him out of his
palace. The petty tyrant, whose mental stability has long been
questioned, asked for, and received, security from U.S. Marines so that
he could get to the capital city's airport and flee to Africa. Once
safely there, Aristide called a press conference and claimed he was
"kidnapped" at gunpoint and "forced to leave" Haiti. Resorting to
hyperbole and dramatics, he went on to say that armed forces "came at
night ... there were too many, I couldn't count them."

  True to the axiom that no despot is too dirty for a liberal to defend,
Sen. John Kerry, who called the U.S. military's rescue of 804 medical
students off the island of Grenada "a bully's show of force," is now
demanding a congressional investigation of Aristide's claims that he
was taken against his will, at gunpoint, in the middle of the night and
forced to go someplace he didn't want to go.

  In fairness, presidential candidate Kerry admits: "I don't know the
truth of it. I really don't," but he thinks "it needs to explored"
because he has a "friend in Massachusetts who talked directly to people
who have made that allegation." That ought to be enough evidence to
launch a multimillion dollar congressional investigation.

  Candidate Kerry is backed up by members of the Congressional Black
Caucus, who are in high dudgeon that there is one less dictator in the
world from whom they will receive party invitations. "I am especially
concerned," said Rep. Maxine Waters, "by the possibility that the U.S.
government may have armed and trained the former military officers and
death squad leaders who carried out last Sunday's coup."

  Those sentiments were echoed by none other than John Kerry's daughter.
"I believe this administration just helped overthrow, basically
overthrow, a democratically elected president," said Vanessa Kerry. "We
basically, in our silence, allowed him to be deposed."

  Forget that it took days for Secretary of State Colin Powell to find
Aristide a home, before the Central African Union reluctantly agreed to
take him in. The dictator was in the country for less than a day before
he had his phone privileges revoked and government officials were
trying to ship him elsewhere. "He's already started to embarrass us,"
Minister Parfait Mbaye said of Aristide. "He's scarcely been here 24
hours and he's causing problems for Central African diplomacy."

  But that doesn't stop liberals from coming to Aristide's support.
Jesse Jackson went right to work to get Aristide on the phone with
American reporters who would print his tale of woe. Though welcome mats
are being pulled from under Aristide's feet all over the world, Jackson
demands that the United States grant him asylum.

  Former Rep. Ron Dellums, Haiti's representative in Washington, said
his advice to the administration was, to "be part of a political
solution," because Dellums alleges, "you guys (the United States) are
the 800-pound gorilla." Interesting that Dellums would refer to his own
country and own government as "you guys" instead of choosing to say,
"we" or "us."

  But that's the problem, isn't it? Liberals who support dictators like
Castro, Hussein and Aristide don't see themselves as one of "us" when
it comes to America. That's why they seem to like dictators more than
democracy. Perhaps that's why so many of them clamored to have little
Elian Gonzalez ripped from a relative's arms in Miami and shipped back
to a dictator.
--------------------
  Oliver North is a nationally syndicated columnist, host of the Fox
News Channel's War Stories and founder and honorary chairman of Freedom
Alliance.

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