President Bush officially dedicated Washington's newest monument, the Victims of Communism Memorial, in a ceremony near Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
The Memorial centers around a bronze replica of the papier maché Goddess of Democracy statue erected by the Chinese students on Tiananmen Square in 1989, shortly before the Chinese army attacked, killing thousands.
The ceremony was organized to fall on the twentieth anniversary of Ronald Reagan's famous speech at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate when he proclaimed, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Just over two years later,in November 1989, the people of Berlin indeed tore down the wall and the Soviet Union soon began its collapse.
An engraved plaque on the front of the statue bears the message, "To the more than 100 million victims of Communism and to those who love liberty." A similar plaque on the back reads, ""To the freedom and independence of all captive nations and peoples."
U.S. Representatives Tom Lantos (D-Ca) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Ca) were among those who joined the President under a blistering early-summer sun along with former Attorney General Edwin Meese, Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as many other dignitaries, ethnic leaders, and supporters of the memorial.
"The sheer numbers of those killed in Communism's name are staggering, so large that a precise count is impossible," Bush said. "According to the best scholarly estimate, Communism took the lives of tens of millions of people in China and the Soviet Union, and millions more in North Korea, Cambodia, Africa, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and other parts of the globe."
The Institute on Religion and Public Policy reports that Communism has killed more people than all of mankind's wars from all of history put together.
Bush continued, "Like the Communists, the terrorists and radicals who attacked our nation are followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, crushes all dissent, has expansionist ambitions and pursues totalitarian aims. Like the Communists, our new enemies believe the innocent can be murdered to serve a radical vision. Like the Communists, our new enemies are dismissive of free peoples, claiming that those of us who live in liberty are weak and lack the resolve to defend our free way of life."
The President shook hands with organizer of the event Lee Edwards, along with Dr. Sen Nieh a Taiwanese coordinator for the Quitting the Chinese Communist Party Service Center in Washington DC, before leaving to attend a closed meeting with key republican legislators.
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