Thursday, February 20, 2014

Never say never again

It's going to be an interesting year for the typical event where VIPs assemble to commemorate some past tragedy and proclaim that we are all so much wiser now and wouldn't let it happen again. 130,000+ dead in Syria. The decades-long human rights disaster in  North Korea. Crises in the Sahel that are too low profile to merit the front pages. Anyway, here's European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso from a few years ago commemorating the Prague Spring:

I understand that your memories from 1938 and 1968 years, when you were first betrayed and then abandoned, might lead you to distrust the effects of major continental events. But I hope you share my view that the European geopolitical landscape has changed considerably. Today, European history is not made by occupying superpowers and totalitarian political regimes. It is made by democratic countries that are free and equal. We should never lose sight that the project of European integration was a reaction against a continent suffering from wars and military occupations. Keeping peace and stability is also a central goal of a democratic Europe.

You could find the same language for Hungary 1956.

And then you'd read the news from Ukraine