Contrast the squalor and fear still endured by the 1.2 billion folks of the People's Republic with the wealth and freedom of the 23 million people on Taiwan, for a taste of what China's more self-aware party members might just be trying occasionally to square with conscience. I know, this is on one level a disingenuous set of suggestions. No one expects to switch on the news and see the leaders of Asia's decaying communist regimes confessing guilt and anguish to American reporters. But there can be no justification for dismissing this crew from scrutiny just because they aren't in mood to confess on camera. It is a large disservice to both Americans and Asians to apply civilized standards only to our own compatriots.
Communism is a system that has poisoned every society where it has ever been tried.
Just take a look at the misery and anger still welling up in the former Soviet Union. The record of death, betrayal, corruption and anguish produced by Marxist revolutions of the 20th century goes far beyond anything Americans are usually offered a chance to watch on the evening news shows. Calling Bob Kerrey to account may play big in America. But it is a peculiar and dishonest endeavor when it's done without similar effort to present Vietnam's rulers themselves with the vastly larger reckoning for the sufferings of their own people. Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.