Thinking about Oscar Biscet
Tomorrow President Bush will award the Medal of Freedom to eight men and women of widely varying merits. By far the most surprising recipient is the Cuban dissident Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, whom Jeff Jacoby dubs "A hero in Cuba's gulag." The Boston Globe runs Jacoby's column with the photograph above, depicting a solitary cell of the kind in which Biscet is incarcerated.
Jay Nordlinger has been writing about Biscet for several years. He writes:
He is one of the bravest and most inspired of the Cuban political prisoners. He is a physician, an “Afro-Cuban,” a follower of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. If he were a prisoner of anyone but Castro — a Communist dictator — he’d be world-famous. If he were a South African, under apartheid, he’d be on the stamps of virtually every country in the world.Jay adds a note regarding President Bush:Let me continue in this vein: If he were a prisoner under a right-wing dictatorship, he’d be featured on 60 Minutes every week. He’d be on the cover of Time magazine every week. College campuses would hold sit-ins. Biscet’s face would adorn posters and T-shirts. Etc., etc.
In awarding this medal, President Bush — not for the first time — has shown huge brass ones. How many other presidents would have done this? I can’t think of any (save our boy, the 40th). And don’t hold your breath for a president in the future who will act this way.Jay also links to the site devoted to Dr. Biscet here.As I said in a recent column, conservatives are down on President Bush, blaming him for everything under the sun, picking at him. Sure, he’s made mistakes. But he also has greatness in him. And this was a great act. In bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Oscar Biscet — an all-but-forgotten and all-but-helpless man in a Cuban dungeon — George Bush has done an incredibly large-hearted and important thing.
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