The fall of the internationally despised Nicolae Ceausescu, bloody dictator of Romania, is as welcome as it is sudden and surprising.
What an outstanding tribute this achievement is to the courage and determination of the brave people of Romania.And what an encouraging incentive it is to other peoples around the world who are still under the thumbs of their own shortsighted despots. May they learn the lesson from Romania that the longevity of a particular dictatorship is no guarantee of its continued hold on power.
Dictators often seem strongest just before they topple. So it was with Ceausescu, who at 71 capped 24 years of misrule this week by ordering the slaughter of thousands of Romanians.
So great was the slaughter, in fact, that no one yet knows precisely how many thousands died for daring to protest Ceausescu's callous incompetence. Right now Romanians are still digging up mass graves discovered in the forest district of Timisoara, trying to find the remains of their friends and relatives killed in the cruel crackdown.
Before his ouster, Ceausescu was under intense pressure from around the world for using troops and tanks to put down pro-democracy protests in at least four Romanian cities.
Significantly, among the loudest cries of condemnation were those from Romania's communist bloc neighbors, where the national communist parties have been under attack and forced to yield to popular dissent. East Germany led the chorus, while Poland and Bulgaria also denounced Ceausescu's methods. Hungary suspended a friendship-and-cooperation agreement with Romania, while East Germany and Czechoslovakia joined Britain, France, Italy, Austria and Belgium in recalling their ambassadors from Bucharest.
The world hated Ceausescu not only for the killings, but also for his mindless incompetence.
Here was a man with a fourth-grade education whose stifling cult of personality required public obeisance to the fiction that his was one of the greatest minds of all time, the "Danube of Thought."
What a cruel hoax. In a nation suffering from malnutrition, Ceausescu insisted on trying to earn hard currency by exporting - of all things - food. But besides keeping his subjects short of food, fuel and other necessities during a bitter winter, he also saddled them with his own ethnic bigotry. His favorite victims over the years were the 1.7 million Hungarians whose misfortune was to live in Romania, mostly in ex-Hungarian Transylvania.
Now, Eastern Europe's longest-ruling despot is finally gone. Gone because of the exemplary courage of the people of Romania. Gone because young Romanian conscripts soon sickened of slaughtering those whose only offense was wanting bread and freedom.
May the thundering fall of Nicolae Ceausescu send a pointed message that resounds far beyond the boundaries of Romania and of Eastern Europe as well.