America is not alone

Let me tell you about an extraordinary man, a playwright, who, imprisoned by the communist leaders of his country for five years, rose to become its president.

His name is Vaclav Havel, and he is the recipient of countless awards around the world for his advocacy of human rights.

This month, Havel will retire as president of the Czech Republic, a position he has held since his land peacefully overthrew communism in a "Velvet Revolution" 13 years ago.

Since ascending to the presidency, and long before it, Havel has been a political activist and philosopher, challenging conventional intellectual wisdom and speaking from a perspective of compassion.

Although diminished by health problems, Havel's voice remains a clarion one. That voice has been raised again, this time in support of the urgent need to address Saddam Hussein's brutal regime.

To understand Havel's perspective today, it is helpful to know something about him.

Havel grew up in a country suffocating under the totalitarian grip of communism. An accomplished writer, he found himself in prison after speaking up for human rights. Released, he spoke out again, leading to more imprisonment and the banning of all his works.

In 1989, less than a year out of prison, he was overwhelmingly elected president of a free Czechoslovakia.

In a speech to the United States in 1990, he talked about what history had taught him:

"The communist type of totalitarian system left our nation -- as it did all the nations of the Soviet Union and the other countries the Soviet Union subjugated in its time -- a legacy of countless dead, an infinite spectrum of human suffering, profound economic decline, and above all enormous human humiliation. It has brought us horrors that fortunately you have not known.

"At the same time, however -- unintentionally, of course -- it has given us something positive: a special capacity to look, from time to time, somewhat further than someone who has not undergone this bitter experience. A person who cannot move and live a somewhat normal life because he is pinned under a boulder has more time to think about his hopes than someone who is not trapped in this way."

From his perspective, pinned down, in prison, subjugated by communism, Havel developed a world view that was simple and clear. Harkening to a Supreme Being, he said "the salvation of the human world" would be found only in the human heart, in moral reflection and human responsibility. He talked about these themes too in his speech before Congress in 1990.

"We still don't know how to put morality ahead of politics, science and economics. We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of all our actions -- if they are to be moral -- is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success. Responsibility to the order of Being, where all our actions are indelibly recorded and where, and only where, they will be properly judged."

Havel understands the horror of totalitarian government.

He also understands the profound force for good that America has been in the world.

For those who question America's sense of responsibility, he says: "The proof are the hundreds of thousands of her young citizens who gave their lives for the liberation of Europe, and the graves of American airmen and soldiers on Czechoslovak soil."

On the Opinion page today, you will find a letter Vaclav Havel signed expressing Europe's bonds with the United States, and underlining the world's responsibility to face the threat of Iraq. America is far from alone in this moral battle.

Jon K. Rust is co-president of Rust Communications. His e-mail address is jrust@semissourian.com.