About parades and insecure rulers

President Trump seems intent on staging some glorious and costly parade, to showcase our military might and — presumably — to celebrate his own power as America’s Commander in Chief. Why does this sound familiar to me?

Nicolae Ceaușescu was still ruling Romania with an iron fist in the summer of 1976, when my parents brought us back for a week-long visit with friends in the lush countryside. In one town near the border with Serbia (then called Yugoslavia), we happened upon a strange spectacle. A few days before Liberation Day, citizens were lining the main street and cheering as soldiers and workers and schoolchildren marched down the middle. It seemed the whole town had turned out for what amounted to a dress rehearsal for the big event — marchers and spectators included. Such was the hero worship of this hollow autocracy, that the farce of national strength and solidarity had to be practiced. 

The spectators even waited as the marchers ran back down a side street in order to repeat the exercise from the top. On TV, I had seen the fancy parades in Beijing, Moscow and even Bucharest, but it had never occurred to me just how absurd was the farce and how insecure the ruler — or to what degree everyone knew it. 

I have been to Paris for the July 14 parade, which is impressive and genuinely popular. It is embedded in the national consciousness, and never about the politicians who happen to oversee France's military professionals.

Romania got rid of Ceausescu's parades in 1989,
but North Korea's Kim is still going "strong"...

I doubt we civilians will be required to practice cheering in advance of Trump's big day, though the President has already branded as traitors any Members of Congress who didn’t stand and applaud for his State of the Union address. Personally, I need no practice. I’ve seen this movie before, about the cult of personality, and I don’t need to watch it again. #SpoilerAlert 

Remembering the Struma, at 30 and 70 years

Seventy years ago, on February 24, the Struma sank with some 800 starving passengers and crew, deliberately cast adrift and probably torpedoed by a Russian or German submarine. Adding to the tragedy were the circumstances: The Struma had sailed from Constanta, Romania, with Jews escaping the Holocaust; Turkey refused them entry at Istanbul unless the British guaranteed their visas to continue on to Palestine; the ship lingered for days, then weeks, and was eventually towed back out into the Black Sea. Horrible. Unnecessary.

Thirty years after the Struma sank, we spent a long summer in Bucharest, getting to know the brutality of Communism -- and the daily luxuries of the Diplomatic Club -- firsthand. We also spent some wonderful days along the Black Sea resorts, including Constanta -- not yet aware of the dark association with the Struma. The closest friends we made there were Millie and Otto, who were spared the concentration camps of World War II, though Otto had endured the Russian Front and together they faced the darkest of Ceausescu's Marxist fantasies. As a young woman, before the war, Millie had managed to spend a year in the States, so her English was excellent and her regrets consuming.

I gradually absorbed Millie's story, over successive visits to Romania, as I grew old enough to comprehend. During the war, she was working for the telephone exchange and had saved enough money so that -- when one of her sisters booked passage aboard the Struma with her husband -- Millie was able to pay the fare for a younger sister to join them, presumably heading to safety. Later, as the ship sat in quarantine off of Istanbul, the husband's international firm was able to pull some strings and get landing cards for the married couple -- but not for Millie's second sister. All three stayed together aboard the Struma, and all three perished.

Qaddafi was right about Jews

The stark images of Muammar Qaddafi being dragged through the streets of Sirte this past week reminded me of the hour I spent with him during his last visit to New York City a couple of years ago.


As a bonafide "Cold War Brat", this past week was not the first time I saw graphic images of a brutal, delusional dictator meeting the summary justice of his former subjects. Watching Nicolae Ceaucescu's execution 20 years ago on TV brought back memories of my childhood stay in Bucharest, surrounded by banners with his face, on every major street.

When our small delegation visited Qaddafi in his country's UN mission in Manhattan, we were continuing a dialogue on matters Israel and Jewish, which had even included visits to Libya -- though this was my first (and now, last) foray.

The scene was ad hoc and even surreal. The street outside was sealed off, and the entrance to the building was shrouded by scaffolding. In the lobby, behind a makeshift partition, we sat on cheap-looking, oversized sofas, while senior Libyan diplomats were perched on the arms. Halfway through our audience, the President of a major African nation arrived for his own meeting with Qaddafi, and rather than dismissing us, Qaddafi convinced his counterpart to join us, sandwiched meekly for another 25 minutes among a few American Jews.

Between Bucharest and Cairo... freedom

"Mr. Leamas! Go back, please! To your own side, Mr. Leamas!" ["The Spy Who Came In From the Cold"]

Romania, 1971

Freedom is a fundamental human yearning, and yet it is often as banal as the tyranny it displaced. Recent developments in the Middle East have stirred some old memories of travel behind the Iron Curtain.

On a visit to Romania in the early 1980s, I met our old friends Millie and Otto in their modest apartment, just as I remembered it, with starched lace doilies draped over most of the surfaces. Millie showed off the double stainless steel sink which a surreptitious plumber had installed in their kitchen. (My family had smuggled it in atop our camper some years earlier, inverted to look like an air-conditioning unit. It was transferred to the trunk of Millie & Otto's Dacia sedan in a lightning operation, behind a stand of thick evergreens on the side of a highway, while my big brother and I kept a lookout for... Big Brother.) 

Later, Millie served us classic stuffed peppers, with a special dessert of sliced pineapple. At my hotel the next morning, I feasted on pineapple juice and pineapple chunks. I figured out that a freighter must have arrived from Cuba, bearing pineapples, since Romania was still fairly isolated except for the purer Marxist-Leninist revolutions (Cuba and China yes, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia no).

Millie took me to the Bucharest ticket center to book the rest of my trip, a ticket out which Millie and Otto could never hope for themselves. The processing seemed more involved than acquiring a driver's license (which I had accomplished a few months earlier before departing the United States). I noticed that most of the same people who completed their purchases would return a short while later with a box of chocolates or some other favor for their respective ticket clerks. Hardly a bribe by Western standards, but a decent box of chocolates was a rare luxury in those days.

Mideast revolutions, one at a time

Visiting Romania in the 1970s and '80s, it was impossible to understand how one sector of the population could completely stifle all dissent and resistance. But it was equally inconceivable that someday the people would rise up, and the dictator would be subject to their swift justice. Then suddenly, one day it happened.

Recent events across the Middle East defy easy explanation. As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, no single empire or coordinated ideology is holding back Arab and Middle East nations -- not Ottomans, French, British, Communists, mullahs. Each country has its own unique set of circumstances and personalities, its own culture and identity. There is no unified tsunami of freedom sweeping the region, but there was obvious inspiration from Tunisia, reinforced by widespread solidarity with Egyptians. The stronger, indirect impact of events is already being felt in the Mideast peace process, between the rival Palestinian factions, and among leaders in the region.

Last year's post-election demonstrations in Iran clearly had some influence on Tunisians, and perhaps some of the Wikileaks cables did as well. There was no way to predict when (or even if) the Ben-Ali regime would fall, precisely because it appears to have been spontaneous -- the right martyr, at the right time, with the right combination of popular forces. Many Egyptians were already anticipating a showdown next September, when Mubarak was expected to let his son succeed him through the usual fixed election, and then Tunisia happened.

Beyond Egypt, the Hashemites in Jordan have survived far worse than last week's demonstrations, and King Abdullah retains the loyalty of the military and key tribes -- and without 50 million hungry mouths to feed. In Yemen, President Saleh hastened to announce his retirement in another two years -- anyway, Yemen has already been suffering from an insurgency and civil war, so revolution will have to take a number. The Gulf states are too wealthy, with too few people, to invite much "revolution", and palace coups happen on their own timetable. 

Egypt's Greatest Generation

A big lesson from my childhood experiences behind the Iron Curtain has been a deep gratitude for the freedom and relative prosperity we enjoy in the United States. I actually get "warm and fuzzy" when I see the American flag flying over one of our embassies overseas, or when I hit passport control upon my return. 

I have watched people risk prison just to stand outside a U.S. Embassy, let alone to enter and use the library. And if they really could swim here, many would. Regardless of any developments or negative propaganda, the United States of America remains a beacon of hope to billions worldwide.

This week, watching the courage and anguish of ordinary Egyptians -- amid systemic poverty -- I am reminded again of what sacrifices came before me, here in America and among my forbears in the Jewish dispersion. And again, this reinforces the tremendous gratitude to live in 21st century post-industrial liberty, security, and comfort.

Waiting on the station platform for my express train to arrive, I look across to Battle Hill -- today just another middle-class neighborhood, but 225 years ago the scene of a pivotal battle between American and British forces. Even World War II is a pensioner's memory. We have it pretty good over here.

Battle Hill, 1776-2011

Clearly, the United States has a duty to its own principles and an obligation to its recent past to play a constructive role in Egypt's evolution as a pillar of Middle East civilization. And obviously we face momentous decisions and policy challenges here at home, and an eternal struggle to defend our own rights. But we should never lose sight of the unprecedented and unparalleled benefits of living here and now.


As President Obama affirmed last week in his State of the Union address, "I know there isn’t a person here who would trade places with any other nation on Earth." A benefit, and a responsibility.