Soviet General Secretary of the Communist Party Mikhail Gorbachev is the left's darling. For years, those loath to credit Ronald Reagan with ending the Cold War have labeled Gorbachev the ultimate reformer. In 1988, Time magazine made him its Man of the Year. In 1990, Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize. Radical leftist and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, architect of the disastrous Oslo Peace Accords, states, "The revolution Gorbachev initiated and headed is, in my opinion, one of the three greatest revolutions of the XX century." Former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali pants, "The name Mikhail Gorbachev speaks volumes about hope, change and freedom."

There's only one problem: This week, Gorbachev, the supposed luminary so committed to openness and reform that he was willing to destroy the Soviet Union to achieve them, stated that he should have acted like current Russian President and former KGB agent Vladimir Putin. "I have reviewed my values and made conclusions," Gorbachev reportedly stated.

"[Political enemy Boris] Yeltsin should have been sent away to a diplomatic
post," said the great leader. "Separatists should have been hit -- I mean
confronted with criminal responsibility rather than attacked with machine
guns."

Gorbachev will no doubt continue to travel around the United States picking
up plaudits and honorary doctorates; after all, even Che Guevara is a huge
hit on college campuses. From now on, however, it will be more difficult for
his lap dogs to claim that Gorby ended the Cold War out of the goodness of
his heart. Gorbachev was a Soviet thug, like other Soviet thugs before
him -- he just had the good fortune to run the USSR while it collapsed from
within. Gorbachev is living proof that, as Reagan put it, "Politics is not a
bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards; if you disgrace
yourself you can always write a book."

Of course, we cannot expect the left to stop listening to
Gorbachev's sanctimonious naysaying with regard to American foreign policy
just because it turns out that -- surprise, surprise -- he is a
bleeding-heart Red. Even though Gorbachev's latest statements prove that it
was the valor of John Paul II, the intestinal fortitude of Margaret Thatcher
and the iron will of President Reagan that forced Gorbachev's early
retirement, liberals will continue to cite Gorbachev as a moral authority.

And Gorbachev remains a dangerous voice. He may enjoy hanging
out with Ted Turner the same way Stalin enjoyed hobnobbing with Walter
Duranty, but Gorbachev is still a mouthpiece for an ideology making a
stealthy comeback in Russia. "I think the United States is sick," Gorbachev
recently stated. "It suffers from the sickness, the disease of being the
victor, and it needs to cure itself from this disease." The cure would
presumably involve allowing Iran to gain nuclear weapons, pulling out of
Iraq and worrying a lot less about the rise of a thinly concealed fascistic
tendency in Russia.

Gorbachev's recent bout of honesty should remind us that we
cannot rely on the kindness of our enemies to protect us from danger. The
world has grown more dangerous since the fall of the Soviet Union, not less.
The Soviets attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II for his support of
Poland's Solidarity movement during the Cold War. Today, Muslims destroy
churches, kill nuns and call for the beheading of Pope Benedict XVI after he
quotes a 14th-century Byzantine emperor. The Soviets built an enormous
nuclear arsenal, but could be deterred. Iran cannot be trusted to act
rationally with weapons of such power.

There are those who urge us to wait for the Muslim Gorbachev. We
hear constantly that if we simply wait long enough -- and work hard not to
offend Muslims -- the moderate Muslim majority will take back Islam from its
radicals. Leaving aside the question of whether such a moderate majority
actually exists, we must recognize that no such Muslim Gorbachev is in
sight; we must recognize that even Gorbachev was not a Gorbachev. Our
enemies lose because we force them to fail, not because they choose to lose.

Ben Shapiro, 21, is a graduate of UCLA and a student at Harvard
Law School. He is also the author of the recently published "Porn
Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future" as well as the
national best seller "Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's
Youth." To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate
website at www.creators.com.

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