| Sitting It Out |
1 December 2003
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Georgian Army Lets People Oust Election Thief Shevardnadze
Eduard Shevardnadze stole an election in his native Georgia, but when it came time to swear in a puppet parliament, the people took to the streets and the former Soviet Foreign Minister wound up resigning the country's presidency. A load of idiocy has filled the airwaves and papers about this "velvet revolution." When the people take to the streets and rulers run, it is not the actions of the masses that are creating change, but rather, it is the unwillingness of the armed forces to expend ammunition that changes regimes.
Mikhail Saakashvili, the leader of the Georgian opposition and a leading contender for the vacated presidency, said in a videophone interview with CNN that there were armed men in the parliament building his people stormed. They did not fire, they were disarmed peacefully, and they were allowed to leave. The interior and defense ministers did not order troops to move in, and Mr. Shevardnadze didn't order the army to act. Whether these men forbore out of a sense of patriotism and human decency or whether they couldn't find an officer who would obey will be a matter of debate for years. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that a whiff of grapeshot would have carried the day.
The people-power crowd will cite the Aquino takeover of the Philippines or the Havel coup in Czechoslovakia (as it then was), but again, it was not the people's will but the military's indifference in those cases. Berlin in 1953, Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968, Beijing in 1989 are examples of the military acting to protect the regime. An unarmed mass of common folk, even when numbered in the millions, can last only a matter of hours against tanks, machine guns and trained infantry.
The military of Georgia, by doing nothing, committed an act of great patriotism. Mr. Shevardnadze was always the darling of the west; after Mikhail Gorbachev, no one symbolized glasnost more than he. Yet, he was first, last and always a Soviet. When he took over Georgia, bringing some stability, he also brought corruption that has destroyed the nation's economy. The true heroes of the revolution in Georgia are not the leaders of the opposition, nor are they the individuals who took to the streets. The real saviors of Georgia are the men who stayed in the barracks.
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