Tom Lantos Retires
The passionate defense of human rights and of Israel, as well as the love for and appreciation of the United States have grown out of his experiences. Tom Lantos is Hungarian by birth, Holocaust survivor by luck, nerve and providence, and American by choice. His career, he said, is an “only in America” story.
The passionate defense of human rights and of Israel, as well as the love for and appreciation of the United States have grown out of his experiences. Tom Lantos is Hungarian by birth, Holocaust survivor by luck, nerve and providence, and American by choice. His career, he said, is an “only in America” story.
His announced retirement to fight esophageal cancer will leave a hole in the House of Representatives. During his tenure, Americans always knew someone serious had the Human Rights portfolio and would push the administration – any administration – to do better and go farther for people in harms way. He cared about the people of Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur and Iraq – and always Israel. One of his finest moments, in our view, was battling the anti-Israel and anti-American forces gathering for the first Durban “Human Rights” conference (2001) and helping to ensure that Secretary Powell recalled the American delegation with strong words of protest. An American decision NOT to fund or participate in the upcoming Durban II farce would be a nice going-away present for Mr. Lantos, not to mention good policy.
Another void will open with Mr. Lantos’s departure; he was the only Holocaust survivor ever to sit in the House and he served in the era of World War II veterans of the U.S. military. Liberators and liberated, they had direct experience with the worst of man’s nature and they share an understanding of the fundamental enemies of mankind.
Not everything he or they did has been perfect, not by a very long shot. But they faced Hitler, the Nazi war machine, death camps and death marches. They returned profoundly appreciative of the greatness of our country and the gifts it had to offer veterans and survivors. Now their era in government and their physical presence as a factor in our lives is ending. There will never be another Holocaust survivor elected to office, nor another World War II vet.
Mr. Lantos was an early supporter of the overthrow of Saddam. He had watched the attack on Israel in 1991, but he also knew what the brutalization of a country under perverted leadership meant for the Iraqi people. Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds and the massacres of Shiites in the south had antecedents Mr. Lantos knew only too well, and he believed American soldiers would liberate the Iraqi people as they did the remnants in Europe. He was right then. His conversion to an opponent of the war, we assume, has to do with mistakes he believes the United States made in the execution of the war and its aftermath, not a lessening of his respect and admiration for our troops.
As Mr. Lantos’s generation retires, hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan vets have begun to return to this country and will assuming positions of leadership – elected and otherwise – in the manner of returning World War II vets. Their experiences with human nature, human evil and human rights will guide them, too.
Mr. Lantos is leaving very large shoes to fill as a defender of the rights of mankind. The rising generation, military and non-military, would do well to look to his story and his legacy of service to his adopted country, our country.