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The Soviets expressed their displeasure by invading Czechoslovakia with a force of several hundred thousand (perhaps even a half-million) Warsaw Pact troops. Seventy-two Czechs and Slovaks were killed in the first two weeks following the invasion.
The entire incident reform and subsequent invasion became known as the Prague Spring. The Soviets arrested Dubček and flew him to Moscow, demanding immediate concessions. Though he was eventually allowed to return to his position in Czechoslovakia, over the next year the Soviets tightened the vise on Dubček, which left him with three courses of action:
- Cave in to the demands of the Soviets and repudiate his reforms, remain in power as the persecutor of his own beliefs, destroying both himself and any remaining faith Czechoslovaks had in morality and faith in others
- Do and say nothing to defend his reforms, which would earn him a quick and summary ejection from the government by the Soviets and the disdain of his countrymen for his weak spine
- Publicly re-iterate his commitment to the reforms of the Prague Spring and be cut down at the knees by the USSR, becoming a hero and shining example to every citizen of Czechoslovakia
It was at this crucial moment of Soviet extortion that Havel wrote Dubček, recalling the actions of a former Czech president during the appeasement of the
Nazis by the international community and the subsequent annexation of the Sudetenland:
“Remember the dilemma Edvard Beneš faced at the time of Munich. In those days it was not demagogy there was a real danger that the nation would be exterminated. And at that time, it was you, the communists, who resisted the persuasive arguments for capitulation, and who rightly understood that a de facto defeat need not be a moral defeat; that a moral victory may later become a de facto victory, but a moral defeat, never.”
Havel’s words ring just as true when one considers the present Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill. As long as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid makes excuses about not having the votes to over-ride a presidential veto on any measure seeking to end the Iraq war he is conceding a moral defeat to the neoconservative minority.
We have already passed the point where Reid, by his non-action, has begun to earn the scorn of not only his opponents, but from his own base. National op-eds appearing in both print and electronic media are illustrative of the rapid erosion of Reid’s moral high ground as he continues to dither and protest too much. Democratic presidential candidate (and the Senate’s one-man Vietnam filibuster master) Mike Gravel has gone so far as to write an open letter to Reid instructing him to hold a vote on the war every day until the neoconservative opposition in Congress has been crushed.
It may soon be too late for that strategy, however. The Democrats have squandered nearly a full calendar year since they were swept into office on the promise of ending the war. The continual stalling and testing of the wind by those in the “leadership” has only served to reinforce a quarter century old characterization of the Democratic Party as the party of spinelessness, the party of all bark and no bite, the party comprised of foreign policy lightweights severely lacking the intestinal fortitude necessary to stand up to more than a light breeze of opposition.
Just as Havel indicated nearly 40 years ago, the moral defeat of the Democratic Party on this issue cannot, and will not, lead to a victory of any kind. Men and women are dying in Iraq, and the American people have demanded it stop. By failing to grasp the mandate which brought them to power in the first place the moral bankruptcy of the Democratic leadership in Congress has become self-evident. In a short time there will be no hope for victory on this issue for them.
In case you’re wondering what happened to Havel, after decades of persecution at the hands of the Soviets he became the last president of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and the first president of the Czech Republic (1993-2003). Dubček reemerged after decades of enforced silence as speaker of the post-Soviet Czechoslovak federal assembly, but his prestige was compromised because he had not spoken out against the Soviets in 1969.
Winona native Wyl Schuth was recently honorably discharged from the United States Marine Corps. A veteran of the war in Iraq, he has returned to civilian life and is now double-majoring in English and Slavic Languages at the University of Wisconsin Madison. He accepts correspondence at swedish.rhapsody@gmail.com.
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