Abstract

The View From Prague

The author draws parallels between Czech history and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Only on my last day in this hilly, river-spliced city, with such beguiling old world charm and art nouveau elegance that unless you're Kafka a strenuous effort is required to maintain fury or gloom, did I understand why Czechs who disagree with American foreign policy are in sympathy with some of its goals and can muster sadness but not Western European indignation over the war in Iraq. Czechs shake their heads, not their fists, at us. "You don't understand the progression," a 65-year-old teacher named Benes said to me. "Iraq had a monster in Saddam, and you removed him. Liberators. The trouble is, what then?" The Czechs killed and burned and lanced and cut and tortured and boiled until it was just all out of them and they stopped. They live free of the constant hope we suffer from. Their capital city has become a disinterested aristocracy of tastes and values, with some longing for the leveling effects of Soviet socialism but none for its suppression of expression.