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Jewish World Review Oct 25, 2011 / 27 Tishrei, 5772 Sic Semper Tyrannis By Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "When the wicked spring up as the grass, and all the workers of iniquity do flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed forever." -- Psalms, 92:7 So may it be with all tyrants and enemies of However wayward the means or distasteful some of our allies in coalitions or convenience, let there never be any doubt that America will always be a friend to freedom. Around the world, America and freedom have been associated, even synonymous in our finest hours. Now another dictator is gone, and others must shiver. As if a shadow had crossed their path. Moammar Gadhafi's fate cannot much assure his fellow tyrants. In On a lonely road somewhere outside Tripoli, rushing to save his skin, another tyrant who thought he could always hold his people in thrall has met his end. The details may still be sketchy, but there is no doubt he has been dispatched, and the people of In All of us seeking freedom around the world are on the same, never-ending journey. It will be marked by defeat as well as victory. Let us not pretend otherwise. Freedom, as they say, is not free. Its price is clear at every military cemetery, in every VA hospital. That's where the real heroes are. History is never as tidy as it appears in the textbooks, those rear-view mirrors in which objects are closer than they may appear, and still hurtling toward us like an 18-wheeler. Now another bloody chapter of history has come to a close, and such endings are never pretty. Moammar Gadhafi was a killer who imagined himself a prophet, the author of a green book whose every page was red with the blood of the innocent. His end can now be added to the grisly album of dictators' final hours. Denied the swift and decent burial that Islamic law requires, his body was dumped on a bloodstained mattress and put on display in a meat locker. Long lines formed immediately. As at some macabre carnival. ("Come one, come all!") The test of a true republic is whether its creation enhances human dignity rather than degrades it. No one can take pride in this ghastly show in The chronicles that record the end of tyrants are long and sobering, full of such grim vignettes. There is still a freedom tide in the world, but it ebbs and flows. And it is anything but even. No one can expect to see it progress by the day or even the year. It gains and then retreats again. But there is an arc to history, and it bends toward freedom. And justice. Or let us hope so. And more than hope. Let us now praise those men -- and women -- who fight for freedom around the world. Despite the "realists" who are always urging retreat, they keep fighting. They keep advancing. This time to the shores of Tripoli.
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