Communists Still Run Eastern Europe

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/5/6/132542.shtml
Reprinted with permission.

Communists Still Run Eastern Europe
John LeBoutillier

Saturday, May 7, 2005

Often things look differently years after the fact. The perspective of time
gives us a better, clearer view.

As President Bush flies around Europe this week - including a controversial
visit to Moscow - we need to take a look back at the supposed revolution(s)
that swept Eastern Europe 15 years ago.

At that time, we all hailed the peaceful events that seemingly brought down
the communist regimes behind the Iron Curtain as 'miracles.' The ending of
these murderous regimes - without riots, mass killings and violence - was too
good to be true!

Well, guess what?

It indeed was too good to be true!

Because all those Communist leaders and subordinates not only went
unpunished for their crimes, most of them remained - and still remain - in power!
In Russia, the 'former' KGB operative, Vladimir Putin, has seen to it that
his KGB cronies exert enormous 'backroom' power while he steadily undoes
democratic reforms and re-consolidates power in his presidential office.
All the previously state-owned enterprises that were sold off were grabbed
by Communist or KGB insiders, who then made billions of dollars off these
transactions. (You know the old saying: Who are the world's biggest capitalists?
The Communists!)

And the apparatchiks - the bureaucrats, the people who run everything in a
government-dominated society - from the Soviet days are the very same people
in the very same jobs!

Clearly, when 1989 saw the 'crumbling' of the Soviet Empire, the Communists
in all the Eastern European nations all adopted the same standard playbook:
"Just say you are a former Communist and stay in power."

And in all these nations - Russia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic,
Slovakia and Romania - the same pattern followed: With the 'ending' of Communism,
the West - armed with tons of cash - came calling.

Billions of dollars of American aid poured into these countries - and thus
into the pockets of the very same Communists who built their careers on hating
America.

NATO began admitting these nations. Why not? They seemed as if they had
renounced their Soviet patrons and were now free to follow their hearts and join
the good guys.

Yes, the people of these nations wanted - and still want desperately - to be
on our side. But their leaders and their military officials are all
Communist leftovers who are now inside our henhouse living off our eggs.
And these 'renounced' Communists are everywhere. Just this week, it was
revealed that Polish President Kwasnieski - himself a lifetime Communist - is now
being considered by the Bush White House to be the next secretary-general of
the United Nations!

Kwasnieski is so reviled in Poland that Lech Walesa hasn't talked to him in
years and only reluctantly shook hands with him at Pope John Paul II's
funeral in Rome last month. But Kwasnieski has ingratiated himself with GW Bush by
dispatching Polish troops to Iraq - over the protests of the majority of the
Polish people. Now it is payback time.

A 'former' Communist running the U.N.? Why not? He'll feel right at home
there.

Next: The Truth About the Czech Republic