When Tyrants Fall

By Otto Friedrich

The images that linger are those of naked bodies lying in rows on the ground, many with their ankles tied together with barbed wire. One is a boy of about three, too young to be a freedom fighter, too young to be a rebel, too young to be lying naked in the snow; another is a seven-month fetus on the torso of its disemboweled mother. But it was not just a slaughter of the innocents in Rumania last week. A few days later came another unforgettable image: the fallen dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, executed by a firing squad, a pool of blood by his head.

Until now, it seemed almost miraculous how peacefully the process of change was transforming the world. Except in China, where troops mowed down students demonstrating for democracy in Tiananmen Square last spring, nation after nation saw crowds peacefully marching in the streets, and governments peacefully, if grudgingly, giving way. We want freedom!, the crowds chanted in Warsaw, Budapest, East Berlin, Sofia, Prague. One by one, the rejected leaders of the former Soviet satellites, abandoned by Moscow, promised free elections -- and more or less faded into oblivion. The Berlin Wall came tumbling down; the cold war ended. And only last week history was further rewritten when Czechoslovakia's onetime reformer Alexander Dubcek, whose effort to achieve "socialism with a human face" was smashed by Soviet tanks in 1968, re- emerged from oblivion to head the National Parliament; shortly thereafter, frequently imprisoned playwright Vaclav Havel was elected President. It was as though the age-old rules of political conflict had been suspended, and the wolf would dwell with the lamb, the leopard would lie down with the kid. Until the Christmas season in Rumania -- with thousands dead, the worst bloodshed in Europe since the Hungarian uprising of 1956.

By a rather unpleasant irony, the U.S. was involved in bloodshed as well. Unpleasantly ironic because while the Soviets stood by and did nothing in Rumania, the U.S. was violating its pledge under the charter of the Organization of American States not to invade a neighbor. In most ways, of course, the downfall of Panama's General Manuel Noriega had little in common with Ceausescu's overthrow. The Rumanian was driven out by his own people, the Panamanian by an outside army. The Rumanian ran and was caught; the Panamanian found sanctuary in the Vatican nunciature in Panama City and may yet escape punishment. What the two episodes had in common was the simple fact that they rid the world of two dictators.

As tyrants go, Ceausescu was surely crueler, more methodical and more blood-soaked than Noriega, who often came off as a tin-pot dictator. Yet the similarities were striking. Like many of their kind, both described themselves as reformers, Ceausescu as a leader independent of Moscow, Noriega as a Panamanian nationalist. The U.S. was not above using both when they served its special purposes. Richard Nixon welcomed Ceausescu's help in negotiating the first opening to China; under Ronald Reagan, the CIA sought Noriega's assistance in aiding Nicaragua's contras. But in Ceausescu's 24 years of iron rule and Noriega's six, both eventually proved once again Lord Acton's thesis that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Both became drunk with vanity. Ceausescu styled himself the "Genius of the Carpathians," put his face on posters all over Rumania and had 30 volumes of his speeches published. One of Noriega's last political acts was to have himself named Maximum Leader. Both pursued quirky impulses. Ceausescu made his wife Elena his deputy, and she not only draped herself in furs and jewelry but also used the police to spy on her grown daughter's love life. According to U.S. Army investigators, Noriega practiced Santeria, a mystic religion, and wore red underwear to fend off the evil eye.

Both have been accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars and hiding their fortunes abroad while reducing their poverty-stricken peoples to even worse states of poverty. Both created secret police forces to do their bidding, and both suppressed opponents without mercy. Both seemed to acquire the final illusion of the corrupted dictator, the megalomaniacal fantasy that he owns his country as a private possession, and that his people admire his strength. Sic semper tyrannis.

Despite protests against the invasion of Panama and legal questions about U.S. justification, it is difficult to credit the Noriega regime with real legitimacy. Aside from the general's alleged crimes, ranging from drug dealing to murder, he simply canceled last spring's election after it had gone against him, ruling thereafter by force. There was international criticism too of the secret trial and hasty execution of Ceausescu. But in both cases, the legalities were overwhelmed by a kind of political necessity -- and both countries should be the better for it in the new year. If, that is, they prove equal to the long and painful task of rebuilding the wreckage the two dictators left behind.