NYT: 60 Years Later, Debating Yalta All Over Again

[Pirate Smile]

By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: May 16, 2005
WASHINGTON

When President Bush declared on May 7 in Latvia that the 1945 Yalta agreement led to "one of the greatest wrongs of history," he reignited an ideological debate from the era of Joseph McCarthy. For more than a week now, the left and the right have been arguing over the president's words and rearguing the deal made by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill in an old czarist resort near the Crimean city of Yalta in the closing days of World War II.

Mr. Bush has criticized Yalta at least six other times publicly, usually in Eastern Europe, but never so harshly. In the dust kicked up by the quarreling, the central questions for White House watchers are these: How did the unexpected attack on Yalta get in the president's speech? What drove his thinking? Did the White House expect the fallout?

-snip-
Robert Dallek, a Boston University historian and an expert on Roosevelt's foreign policy, agreed. "Republicans have been beating on this issue since the end of the Roosevelt presidency, and they have been consistently off the mark," he said. "This idea that Roosevelt and Churchill gave away Eastern Europe to the Soviets is nonsense."

David M. Kennedy, a Stanford historian, put it this way: "This was a stick to beat the Democrats up with in the McCarthy era."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/politics/16letter.html

[Journeyman]

1. So the Village Idiot blathers something inane. . .

and the rest of us are supposed to debate its merits?

Got better things to do, folks. If you're interested in this old canard, read a book or three. Plenty of good ones out there with all these old arguments fully explored.

[wellst0nev0ter]

2. What. . .Fucking. . .Debate????!!!!!

Abandoning Yalta would have meant continued war, which might be A-OK for the chimperor, but not for a nation weary of war and taking on wold superpowers.

There are some times Bush and his ass kissers should just STFU.

[TahitiNut]

3. Bumiller must be on the Bush Regime payroll.

Three quick, edited remarks by well-respected professional academicians in history, from Boston U., Yale, and Stanford (not exactly liberal hotbeds) and then eight paragraphs from fascist hacks including Pat Buchanan (a political gadfly), Anne Applebaum (a columnist), three paragraphs from Michael Gerson (a White House apparatchik), and an "anonymous administration official."

Detestably biased article!

[wellst0nev0ter]

5. Indeed

BUMILLER: I think we were very deferential because…it’s live, it’s very intense, it’s frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you’re standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country’s about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.

A known Bush operative indeed.

[Selatius]

4. Who here if back in 1945 would vote to declare war on the USSR???

Anybody in the mood to start another war in the rubble of Europe where 50,000,000 just died in the last war? Want WW3 on top of WW2?

[moondust]

6. Bush might have.

Believing it would be okay to go ahead and use more nucular weapons. They worked on Japan didn't they?

A nut case like that might have completely incinerated eastern Europe trying to beat the USSR.

[agincourt]

7. flash the same image again,

a little texas rat peeing on FDR's statue. Of course the media must have "balance" and think there might be some "point". The only controversy is why someone this bad is president.

[hadrons]

8. Actually if anyone is to blame, Eisnhower is to blame

Late summer of 1944, Patton and the 3rd Army had the Nazi Army on the run and the only problem was that his tanks were running low on gas and Patton was begging Eisnhower to resupply the short supply the allies had at the moment for one final thrust, but Eisnhower had other concerns about the plan (some of them logitic, some political, some diplomatic) and Patton didn't get fuel he wanted and the "unforgiving minute" had pass.

Eisnhower had many good reasons for what he did, but if Eisnhower did give Patton the fuel to made that push into Germany, Nazi Germany would have fell faster and the Russian would not have been in so deep into Eastern Europe

[indepat]

9. With some 27 million dead, Stalin was gonna do what Stalin thought he had

to do in his own mind and Yalta nor no one not willing to suffer perhaps several million casualties was going to stop him.

[The Stranger]

10. I would bet the imbecile in the White House could not even find

Yalta on a map. Let us be serious about this.

[AlGore-08.com]

11. In my mind this is all tied to Smirk Social Security "reform"

Social Security was one of FDR's (many) shining moments. Like these weasels always do, they play the man instead of the ball.

They have been trying to either erase FDR's legacy (like putting St. Ronnie of the Raygun on the dime - - which FDR was added to the dime to commemorate his founding of the March of Dimes & defeat of polio) or smear him (like the flap over whether FDR knowingly let Pearl Harbor be attacked to "drag" the US into WWII). Because if FDR is transformed into a political pariah, they can keep the weak kneed pols on both sides of the aisle in line by screaming "What are you - - a Franklin Delano Roosevelt supporter???" at them - - and the weak pols will scatter like roaches in the light.

Book it.