Outside Eye: A non-Armenian's view of life in his adopted home
By John Hughes
Editor
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For some of us, finding reasons to like President Robert Kocharyan don’t come as often as we’d like. When it happens, it is more likely acquired tolerance rather than outright appreciation that redeems the man.
But this week provided an occasion to feel good about one thing: Kocharyan is not Mikhail W. Bushaashvili, his neighboring Georgian revolutionary-turned-suck-up contemporary.
I refer, of course, to this week’s meeting between US President George W. Bush and Mikhail Saakashvili in East Washington, D.C., aka, Tbilisi.
The American president in his “if you only knew” grin and walking like he has briars in his arm pits, and the Georgian so giddy with glee to have the Leader of the Free (at great expense) World at his side – the two might at any moment have broken into a jig, twirling each other like schoolgirls at Last Bell.
George in Georgia and Mikhail in Bliss. Whoopee, ain’t democracy grand (especially when the grenades are duds)! I tried to imagine the same scene in Yerevan. I’m glad that I couldn’t.
Face control
It was enough to inspire de facto appreciation for the stoicism of Kocharyan and his pal to the north, Vladimir Putin. When did it become necessary for Western presidents to become cheerleaders instead of simply leaders? (Ah, for the days when bald, fat Khrushchev banged a shoe on a United Nation’s table.)
Listen to what W told the Georgians:
“You are making many important contributions to freedom’s cause, but your most important contribution is your example. In recent months, the world has marveled at the hopeful changes taking place from Baghdad to Beirut to Bishkek. But before there was a Purple Revolution in Iraq, or an Orange Revolution in Ukraine, or a Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, there was the Rose Revolution in Georgia. Your courage is inspiring democratic reformers and sending a message that echoes across the world: Freedom will be the future of every nation and every people on Earth.”
Indeed, let freedom ring!!!! But, about that “Purple Revolution” . . . uh, need we mention that on the day cheers went up in Tbilisi, 60 innocent Iraqi civilians died in the war Mr. Bush started? Given the choice (which they weren’t), do you think those people would rather be alive though oppressed, or dead but “free”?
And, for what it’s worth, some of us whose passports bear the US seal worry that America’s President’s definition of “freedom” and “democracy” strike closely to a kinder, gentler form of totalitarianism that hardly separates democratization from domination.
Somewhere very close to frothing, the Roseman himself joined the propaganda of short-sighted pride:
“Throughout our history any leader of a large state would come to Georgia as an aggressor or enslaver,” Saakashvili said. “Today, for the first time in the history of our country, the leader of the world’s most powerful state stands next to us and he stands as our companion.”
Freedom may make a country free but “companionship” often comes with a price. And I’m guessing that the price of Bush’s Georgia visit goes way beyond whatever it cost the country where electricity isn’t even a regular service, to turn Freedom Square into a red, white and blue hullabaloo.
“Your courage is inspiring democratic reformers and sending a message that echoes across the world: Freedom will be the future of every nation and every people on Earth.”
And in Iraq, the message is the echo of gunfire and suicide bombs and it says: If necessary, we will kill you to make you free.
In the US President’s roll call of heroes, so alliteration-ally convenient to link Baghdad with Beirut and Bishkek, was there any thought that as near to Tbilisi as D.C. is to Delaware (to keep the aliteration) Armenian citizens were still recovering from senseless bludgeoning, when last year they tried to hop the democracy train encouraged by the smell of Georgia’s roses but crushed by Armenia’s smelly reality?
America loves a winner, especially if he speaks Ivy-League English. And: While maybe love can’t be bought, then friendship is as close as a State Department aid allotment and troop training by the yanks. Coming close (as in Armenia’s failed opposition) doesn’t count in war and democracy pimping.
Should we feel slighted that GWB stopped to smell the roses in the neighborhood, but didn’t hop down to say “howdy” in Yerevan? After all, Mr. Putin occasionally pops in. And this is a year of commemoration. . .
Oh, right, that.
“Your courage is inspiring democratic reformers and sending a message that echoes across the world . . . “
Right. It’s about courage. Like having enough courage to take a 30-minute plane ride to lay a wreath at a memorial for a million people who never got a chance to be courageous. But then, what would those lovers of democracy, the Turks and the Azeris, think of that?
Probably not the same as the Georgian cheerleader.
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