 |
|
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon With its colorful cache of purples and oranges and reds, COLLARD GREEN SLAW is a marvelous mood booster --- not to mention just downright delish
April 18, 2014
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Clarifying one of the greatest philosophical conundrums in theology
John Ericson: Trying hard to be 'positive' but never succeeding? Blame Your Brain
The Kosher Gourmet by Julie Rothman Almondy, flourless torta del re (Italian king's cake), has royal roots, is simple to make, . . . but devour it because it's simply delicious
April 14, 2014
Rabbi Dr Naftali Brawer: Passover frees us from the tyranny of time
Eric Schulzke: First degree: How America really recovered from a murder epidemic
Georgia Lee: When love is not enough: Teaching your kids about the realities of adult relationships
Gordon Pape: How you can tell if your financial adviser is setting you up for potential ruin
Dana Dovey: Up to 500,000 people die each year from hepatitis C-related liver disease. New Treatment Has Over 90% Success Rate
Justin Caba: Eating Watermelon Can Help Control High Blood Pressure
April 11, 2014
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Silence is much more than golden
Susan Swann: How to value a child for who he is, not just what he does
Susan Scutti: A Simple Blood Test Might Soon Diagnose Cancer
Chris Weller: Have A Slow Metabolism? Let Science Speed It Up For You
April 9, 2014
Jonathan Tobin: Why Did Kerry Lie About Israeli Blame?
Samuel G. Freedman: A resolution 70 years later for a father's unsettling legacy of ashes from Dachau
Jessica Ivins: A resolution 70 years later for a father's unsettling legacy of ashes from Dachau
Matthew Mientka: How Beans, Peas, And Chickpeas Cleanse Bad Cholesterol and Lowers Risk of Heart Disease
April 8, 2014
Dana Dovey: Coffee Drinkers Rejoice! Your Cup Of Joe Can Prevent Death From Liver Disease
Chris Weller: Electric 'Thinking Cap' Puts Your Brain Power Into High Gear
April 4, 2014
Amy Peterson: A life of love: How to build lasting relationships with your children
John Ericson: Older Women: Save Your Heart, Prevent Stroke Don't Drink Diet
John Ericson: Why 50 million Americans will still have spring allergies after taking meds
Sarah Boesveld: Teacher keeps promise to mail thousands of former students letters written by their past selves
April 2, 2014
Dan Barry: Should South Carolina Jews be forced to maintain this chimney built by Germans serving the Nazis?
Frank Clayton: Get happy: 20 scientifically proven happiness activities
Susan Scutti: It's Genetic! Obesity and the 'Carb Breakdown' Gene
|
| |
Jewish World Review
May 4, 2006
/ 6 Iyar, 5766
An encounter with Lech Walesa
By
Jeff Jacoby
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
His hair is white now, his waistline is thicker, and the day is long gone when his legs could propel him over a shipyard wall,
as they did in Gdansk one memorable day in August 1980. But Lech Walesa's face is as familiar as ever and his personality
just as brash and charismatic. Even now, to experience Walesa in person is to sense the gifts of leadership and daring that
enabled a simple electrician to parlay a workers' protest into the communist world's first free trade union, and that union —
Solidarity — into the engine of Poland's liberation.
I met Walesa this week at a luncheon hosted by the Grand Circle Foundation, the charitable arm of Boston's Grand Circle
travel company. Speaking through an interpreter, he reflected on the nature of the force that shut down the Soviet empire, and
on the role of the United States in a unipolar world.
In the 1960s and 1970s, he said, no one believed Moscow's domination of Poland could be successfully challenged — not
with 200,000 Soviet troops permanently stationed on Polish soil, and another million troops elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
Nothing short of a nuclear war, Poles imagined, could ever be powerful enough to shatter the Iron Curtain.
It was then, Walesa said, "when we felt completely discouraged and totally helpless," that a Polish cardinal became pope,
and began reminding his countrymen that they were not powerless to confront even the mighty Soviet Empire. When John Paul
II made his first pilgrimage to Poland in 1979, millions of Poles turned out to see and hear him. "Even the communists and
secret police came and learned to cross themselves," laughed Walesa. "Of course they didn't know the proper words, so they
simply said, 'one-two-three-four-five."' It was an eye-opening moment for many Poles, who suddenly realized something about
those party members making the sign of the cross: "They're not really communists. They're merely radishes — red on the
outside only."
Inspired by the pope's words, Poles began to believe that freedom could be theirs if they only had the fortitude to stand up
for it. Little more than a decade later, the Berlin Wall was down, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, and the Soviet Union — its
tanks and troops notwithstanding — was no more. "So you see," Walesa said, "how much morality, spirit, and faith in G-d can
accomplish."
Twenty-five years after Time magazine named him "man of the year," Walesa sounds almost nostalgic for the clarity of the
Cold War, when the United States and the USSR confronted each other across a deep moral gulf. "Until not so long ago, there
was another superpower — the Empire of Evil, which could be blamed for much that was wrong in the world." And if the
Soviet Union was an evil empire, Walesa said, the United States was "an empire of good" — a beacon of hope to millions
trapped behind the Iron Curtain. But "today, there is no longer an Empire of Evil — so who gets blamed for everything that
goes wrong?"
Walesa seems unable to decide what he thinks about America's position in a world without the Soviet Union. On one hand,
he laments that the United States, though undoubtedly the world's military superpower, is no longer the moral and political
leader it once was. He faults America for appointing itself "the policeman to the world" and going to war without the imprimatur
of the United Nations. He complains that Washington ignored his idea for a post-Cold War "Marshall Plan," and for not
adopting his scheme to transform the UN into something approaching a world parliament.
On the other hand, he bluntly defends the Bush administration's aggressiveness in confronting international terrorism. "If the
superpower had not recognized the dangers after September 11" and reacted as it did, he says, Al Qaeda and its supporters
would have grown even bolder. "Today the world would be in total chaos, total revolution — a total mess."
It is something of a muddled message, and I wonder if it reflects an unresolved internal conflict that tugs Walesa in two
directions. Does he see himself first and foremost as Walesa, the champion of Solidarity — the natural-born leader who
grasped instinctively that evil must be fought, that it will not fade away of its own volition, and that those who insist on
observing every diplomatic nicety in fact are insisting on doing nothing at all? Or is he Walesa the Polish statesman — the
dignified ex-president who craves the world's good opinion, and who knows that nothing wins points in international circles like
chiding the United States?
Either way, his place in history is assured. Without Walesa, Solidarity might never have been born and Poland's communist
dictatorship might never have died. He was a simple electrician from Gdansk who had faith and courage when it mattered
most. Because he did, a decades-old dictatorship was toppled, and millions of Europeans live today in freedom.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.
Jeff Jacoby Archives
© 2006, Boston Globe
|
|
Columnists
Toons
Lifestyles
|
