thank you... that was the money shot in the article
Posted on 05/20/2005 7:49:59 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
President Bush continues the practice of the big lie as prescribed by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda ace. If you tell a big enough lie often enough, people will believe you. Bush does not apologize even when he's caught in a falsehood. All right, there were no "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. But it was not his fault that he believed all the intelligence agencies of the world, was it?
The parents of the young men and women killed and wounded in Iraq as well as the relatives of all the Iraqis blown up since the American arrival might have a different view of things. They might be inclined to think that the buck stops at the desk of the U.S. president.
During his recent trip to Europe, when he wasn't telling Vladimir Putin how to preside over Russia, he retold one of the biggest lies of the 20th century. He apologized for the Yalta agreement that handed, as he said, eastern Europe over to Soviet domination. Because one can hardly expect the president to read history books, one supposes that he does not realize that the serious studies of the Yalta conference reject that analysis. It's a Republican big lie that has become true because of 60 years of fervent repetition. It is still a lie, however -- just like the claim in a New York Times article that the big powers had "carved up" Europe at Yalta.
The Yalta meeting occurred in February 1945. Consider a map of Europe at that time, such as the one opposite Page 246 of Max Hasting's book Armageddon. By February 1945, Marshals Zukov and Konev were about to cross the Oder River, which was well inside Germany (and is now the border between Germany and Poland). It had occupied or surrounded every Eastern European capital except Prague. Stalin obtained nothing at the Yalta agreements that he had not already captured.
Despite President's Bush's willingness to accept American responsibility for Soviet occupation of Europe, this remains the Republican big lie of the 1940s: A senile President Roosevelt had given Poland and the Baltic countries over to Stalin.
Roosevelt was not at his best at Yalta. He still thought he could "get along with Stalin." However, there was nothing much he could do to extirpate the Red Army from those or any other countries they occupied except drive them out by brute force.
The Republican response then -- and in Bush's apology even now -- was that the United States should have driven the Soviet Army out of Eastern Europe. It is not clear now that it would have been possible; probably it would not have been. Moreover, there was still a war to be finished with the Japanese. Nor would the American people have been willing to accept the casualties of an attempt to push the Red Army back to its 1939 frontier. Napoleon and Hitler had learned the lesson of fighting a land war with Russia. Was the United States supposed to do a better job while at the same time defeating Japan, especially since -- as few are willing to remember now -- the public was already sick of war. Would a Republican president raise the battle cry "on to Moscow''?
Not very likely. Certainly, the Republican candidates in the 1944 election (''Get the boys home with Dewey and Bricker'') were not calling for an invasion of Russian occupied eastern Europe.
Thus, Bush's "apology" was valid only if he believes that the United States should have driven the Red Army out of Germany (a geographically necessary first step) and then out of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia (and Ukraine, for good measure). How many millions more would have died on both sides in this continuation of the war?
Why did no one ask President Bush if he would have gone to war with the Soviet Union in 1945? He could have used the Iraq excuse: to rid the world of a monstrous dictator. Like the Iraq conflict, such a war between the United States and Russia might have continued for a long time. Indeed, it might still be going on. Our cities would be in ruins. Most of us would be dead and many of us would never have been born.
thank you... that was the money shot in the article
Greeley is pathetic. He must think his collar is hiding his condescension and hate. Yeah, right Greeley, tell us about lying!
Classic debating technique. Mischaracterize the other side's argument, then knock it down.
Neither Bush nor anti-communists have ever suggested that the U.S. should have continued WW2 against the Soviets. Rather, the Yalta agreement gave tacit approval to Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. What Roosevelt could have done is to demand that after the war, the Soviets remove themselves from otherwise sovereign allied or non-aligned nations like Poland, Baltic Republics, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.
Anyway, what a GOOFBALL the Sun-Times has on its editorial staff.
This man is a communist and a disgrace to all Catholics.
Well, actually, we are.
The liberal, socialist apologists have nothing but the same old lies, over and over again. It has the one advantage of making them totally predictable.
Your observation is unfortunately, correct.
Good point. What Greeley also ignores is that Yalta was merely the culmination of years of efforts by Roosevelt to prevent Western troops from ending up in Eastern Europe. Churchill tried over and over to get Roosevelt to permit campaigns that would put us in Eastern Europe to no avail. In addition, Patton was prevented from moving into Eastern Germany toward the end of the war.
IMHO, Yalta was what Roosevelt had in mind all along.
This guys a real POS. Every column from him hangs like a bad fart.
We sentenced those people to nearly 50 years of hell. You are darn right an apology is in order. This is an acknowledgment that Roosevelt (my family's patron saint) lost the whole poker game with Stalin at Yalta and failed to heed the advice of the greatest man of the century, Winston Churchill.
We gave back territory in Eastern Germany. We pulled our troops back and allowed Soviet troops to pull up and occupy it. Greeley is a modern day Alger Hiss, a stinking liar, and a communist. He still loves and reveres his favorite nation, the Soviet Union.
Actually, if we demanded that the Soviet Union withdraw to its previous borders, and they neglected, and we massed troops on the borders, cut off all trade and blockaded the them from trading with all nations, put forces in China (in effect, saving China from communism) while British forces could move up Central Asia, the Soviet Union would be bottled in and after seeing two A-Bombs in Japan it is more than likely they would back down. And if not, we could build some more and have another demonstration over Stalingrad and the Soviets would have little to no choice but to surrender to all U.S. demands.
I don't and won't second guess FDR at Yalta. But this quote from the article says it all as far as I'm concerned. The US was not equipped to do what's described above. The war had taken a tremendous toll on all involved. The only other option was to nuke Moscow which was not a decision to be taken lightly. After VE day with the Russians being just as big heroes as the Americans, it would have been very hard to do. The American public would have never accepted this immediately after WWII. By the time the real threat of Communism was apparent it was too late.
I believe the apology is very valid and that the commies (both here and abroad) never owned up to their complicity in starting the war.
I have a cousin who was in an Armored Recon unit who has told the story of having gone through what became East Germany and was on the outskirts of Prague when the war ended.
He said they stayed a bit and then were ordered to pull way back and let the Red Army move in.
So this yo-yo has it wrong as I suspect is usual for him.
I'm not convinced we need to apologize, but Russia as well as people like Tito, Ceaucescu and other Communists or pseudo-communists (Tito) that are now long dead, had a whole lot to apologize for. I think the US did the best it could under the circumstances.
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