Bush the dissident

Two Great Dissidents

Natan Sharansky’s vision, and President Bush’s.
By Joel C. Rosenberg

When Natan Sharansky stepped into Condoleezza Rice's West Wing office at 11:15 last Thursday morning, he had no idea the national security advisor would soon be named the next secretary of state. He was just glad to see her holding a copy of his newly published book, The Case for Democracy.

"I'm already half-way through your book," Rice said. "Do you know why I'm reading it?"

Sharansky, a self-effacing man who spent nine years in KGB prisons (often in solitary confinement) before becoming the first political prisoner released by Mikhail Gorbachev, hoped it had to do with his brilliant analysis and polished prose.

Rice smiled. "I'm reading it because the president is reading it, and it's my job to know what the president is thinking."

A close friend of the president had sent over a copy several weeks earlier with a note urging him to take a close look. The president nearly polished it off during a weekend at Camp David, then suggested to Rice that she read it as well.

For nearly 40 minutes, Rice engaged Sharansky — now an Israeli cabinet member — and co-author Ron Dermer, a former columnist with the Jerusalem Post, in a discussion over how best to help democracy take root in such hard soils as Iraq, Iran, and the West Bank and Gaza.

At precisely 2 P.M., Sharansky and Dermer were ushered into the Oval Office for a private meeting with the president. They were scheduled for 45 minutes. They stayed for more than an hour. What the president told Sharansky was off the record. What Sharansky told the president was not.

"I told the president, 'There is a great difference between politicians and dissidents. Politicians are focused on polls and the press. They are constantly making compromises. But dissidents focus on ideas. They have a message burning inside of them. They would stand up for their convictions no matter what the consequences.'

"I told the president, 'In spite of all the polls warning you that talking about spreading democracy in the Middle East might be a losing issue — despite all the critics and the resistance you faced — you kept talking about the importance of free societies and free elections. You kept explaining that democracy is for everybody. You kept saying that only democracy will truly pave the way to peace and security. You, Mr. President, are a dissident among the leaders of the free world.'"

From one of the most famous dissidents of era of the Evil Empire, such is not feint praise.

Early in The Case for Democracy, Sharansky, 56, recalls another Soviet-era dissident named Andrei Amalrik, who in 1969 wrote, Will The Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? Predicting the Communist empire's inevitable collapse, Amalrik, who was imprisoned by the KGB for his observations (and whom Sharansky later had the privilege of teaching English), explained that "any state forced to devote so much of its energies to physically and psychologically controlling millions of its own subjects could not survive indefinitely."

Sharansky writes: "The unforgettable image he left the reader with was that of a soldier who must always point a gun at his enemy. His arms begin to tire until their weight becomes unbearable. Exhausted, he lowers his weapon and the prisoner escapes."

At the time, many so-called "democrats" in the West dismissed Amalrik as downright delusional. But his prediction proved to be off by only a few years.

"How was one Soviet dissident able to see what legions of analysts and policymakers in the West were blind to?" asks Sharansky. "Did Amalrik have access to more information than they did? Was he smarter than all the Sovietologists put together? Of course not.... But unlike them, he understood the awesome power of freedom."

For Sharansky, this is the critical line of demarcation in the war on terror, dividing the naysayers from those who both believe in and are willing to fight for the notion that freedom is a universal human right.

He is convinced that democratic institutions can take hold throughout the Middle East. He concedes it will not be easy, but argues the key is bold moral leadership from the West of the kind that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher demonstrated in the 1980s.

"Everybody knows that weapons of mass destruction are very dangerous in the hands of terrorists," says Sharansky, his passion as strong as his accent. "But very few people understand how powerful weapons of mass construction can be in the hands the free world. There are so many skeptics, so many people who doubt whether Iraqis and Palestinians really want to live in freedom, or whether democracy in the Middle East is really such a good idea. But I lived under a totalitarian regime. I know the horrors of these regimes from the inside. I know they can be transformed. They won't be perfect, and they won't agree with us on every issue. But it is better to have a democracy that hates you than a dictatorship that loves you."

Sharansky cites the example of post-World War II Germany. Many doubted a true democracy could ever take root amidst the ashes of the Third Reich. But it has. True, most Germans opposed the recent war in Iraq and increasingly side against the U.S. in international policy debates. But so what? Sharansky asks. At least they are not carpet-bombing the whole of Europe.

Toward the end of the book, Sharansky quotes current Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as having once told him, "I understand that in the Soviet Union your ideas were important, but unfortunately they have no place in the Middle East."

Sharansky respectfully disagrees. With the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, and the passing of Yasser Arafat, Sharansky calls himself "an optimist." Never before in human history has the moment been more ripe for Iraqis and Palestinians to hear and embrace the case for democracy. The transitions for both will be difficult. But Sharansky is not daunted.

"When given a real opportunity to choose between living in a free society or a fear society, the vast majority of people will choose a free society. And a free society — a society where people feel safe to argue and dissent — will always be a stable society."

This is what Sharansky is working for, and he has just earned the ear of the president of the United States and the new secretary of state.

Joel C. Rosenberg is the author of The Last Jihad (about the fall of Saddam Hussein) and The Last Days (about the death of Yasser Arafat). Rosenberg briefly served as a senior advisor to Natan Sharansky in the year 2000.