Bush Criticizes FDR Over Yalta

RIGA, Latvia - Second-guessing Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Bush said Saturday the United States played a role in Europe's painful division after World War II — a decision that helped cause "one of the greatest wrongs of history" when the Soviet Union imposed its harsh rule across Central and Eastern Europe.

Bush said the lessons of the past will not be forgotten as the United States tries to spread freedom in the Middle East.

"We will not repeat the mistakes of other generations, appeasing or excusing tyranny, and sacrificing freedom in the vain pursuit of stability," the president said. "We have learned our lesson; no one's liberty is expendable. In the long run, our security and true stability depend on the freedom of others."

Bush singled out the 1945 Yalta agreement signed by Roosevelt in a speech opening a four-day trip focused on Monday's celebration in Moscow of the 60th anniversary of Nazi Germany's defeat.

In recent days Bush has urged Russia to own up to its wartime past. It appeared he decided to do the same, himself, to set an example for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

Bush also used his address to lecture Putin about his handling of the emergence of democratic countries on Russia's borders. "No good purpose is served by stirring up fears and exploiting old rivalries in this region," Bush said. "The interests of Russia and all nations are served by the growth of freedom that leads to prosperity and peace."

Bush spent the day with the leaders of three Baltic republics — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Many in the Baltic countries are still bitter about the Soviet annexation of their countries and the harsh occupation that followed the war for nearly 50 years. Acknowledging that anger and frustration still linger, Bush said that "we have a great opportunity to move beyond the past." His message here — and throughout his trip — is that the world is entering a new phase of freedom and all countries should get on board.

While history does not hide the U.S. role in Europe's division, American presidents have found little reason to discuss it before Bush's speech.

"Certainly it goes further than any president has gone," historian Alan Brinkley said from the U.S. "This has been a very common view of the far right for many years — that Yalta was a betrayal of freedom, that Roosevelt betrayed the hopes of generations."

Bush said the Yalta agreement, also signed by Britain's Winston Churchill and the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin, followed in the "unjust tradition" of other infamous war pacts that carved up the continent and left millions in oppression. The Yalta accord gave Stalin control of the whole of Eastern Europe, leading to criticism that Roosevelt had delivered millions of people to communist domination.

"Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable," the president said. "Yet this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and unstable."

Bush said the United States and its allies eventually recognized they could not be satisfied with the liberation of half of Europe and decided "we would not forget our friends behind an Iron Curtain."

The United States never forgot the Baltic peoples, Bush said, and flew the flags of free Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania over diplomatic missions in Washington.

"And when you joined hands in protest and the empire fell away," the president said, "the legacy of Yalta was finally buried, once and for all."

Putin, writing in a French newspaper Saturday, said the Soviet Union already made amends in 1989 and his country will not answer the demands of Baltic states for further repentance. "Such pretensions are useless," Putin wrote in Le Figaro.

Bush reminded Baltic countries that democracy brings obligations along with elections and independence. He said minority rights and equal justice must be protected, a nod to Moscow's concerns about the treatment of Russian-speakers in the three ex-Soviet republics.

Bush applauded the Baltics for supporting democracy in Ukraine and spoke approvingly of democracy progress in Georgia and Moldova.

At a news conference, Bush rejected the suggestion that Washington and Moscow work out a mutually agreeable way to bring democracy to Belarus — the former Soviet republic that Bush calls the "last remaining dictatorship in Europe."

"Secret deals to determine somebody else's fate — I think that's what we're lamenting here today, one of those secret deals among large powers that consigns people to a way of government," Bush said. He called for "free and open and fair" elections set for next year in Belarus, now run by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Bush placed a wreath at the Latvian Freedom Monument, a towering obelisk symbolizing this small country's struggle for independence. While he is unpopular across much of Europe because of the Iraq war, Bush got a warm welcome here.

Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga presented Bush with the nation's top honor, the Three-Star Order, calling him a "signal fighter of freedom and democracy in the world."

Bush has irritated Russia by bracketing his visit to Moscow Sunday with stops in two former Soviet republics, Latvia and Georgia. He arrived in the Netherlands on Saturday night, ahead of a speech Sunday at an American cemetery.

Here is Rush's take:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_050905/content/institute.guest.html

RUSH: Let me ask you: Does the word Yalta mean anything to you? Well, I'll tell you why I ask. Because if our crumb crunchers are not being taught American history, if they're not being taught things like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and the Constitution, there's little hope that they're probably being taught about Yalta. FDR sold out Eastern Europe. FDR sold out Eastern Europe, and that's what the president basically said. Oh, and the media is beside themselves. The Democrats are beside themselves. For one thing he attacked the Soviet Union. You never do that, and the next thing you don't do is attack FDR. How would you attack FDR? How would you dare do that! And he did both. Here's what you might have missed. President Bush, honoring the 60th variance of VE-Day, scheduled to stop in Latvia. Now, for those of you crumb crunchers out there or those of you from Rio Linda and Palm Beach County, VE stands for Victory in Europe Day. It is the day that we liberated Europe from a tyrant called Saddam Hitler -- I'm sorry. Adolf Hitler -- and in a speech President Bush acknowledged that this was not their 60th anniversary of freedom because their misery under Hitler was replaced by misery under Stalin, and the heel of the Soviet empire. Well, liberals, they're shocked! They were nearly speechless. "Progressives" are shocked. You just don't criticize Stalin. I have an AP story, maybe it's Reuters, in the stack here. It says Stalin was "contradictory." Contradictory! You know what the contradiction is, according to this report? What are we supposed to think of Stalin?

Yes, he did beat the evil Hitler and he gained great prominence for the Soviet Red Army but he also killed millions of his own people. It's a real big dilemma. My point: What differentiates Stalin from Hitler? The only difference is that Stalin did his killing within his own boundaries. Hitler reached outside his. But we're talking two mass murderers. So Bush went over there and told the truth, he said, "You may have 60 years of freedom. The US has 60 years of freedom from Europe from Germany, but you people here haven't," and I'm telling you, the mainstream media is dyspeptic over this. You know, President Bush acknowledged essentially that the Yalta agreement was a bad agreement, a very bad agreement. He criticized Yalta, which means he criticized FDR -- and you're going to hear more liberals and more historians (which is the same thing), and more mainstream pundits, (which is the same thing), and more FDRophiles bounce off the wall. "He's rewriting our history! He's raising the old Republican charge of a sellout! I can hardly breathe, Mabel! Get me the vapors." So whether the Yalta agreement was an FDR sellout or misguided, naïve trust of the communists, what Yalta did -- for those of you who have not been taught this -- Yalta ended up giving birth to Soviet expansionism, i.e., the Iron Curtain, the worldwide spread of communism, and all the inhumanity and misery that followed. Now, just to illustrate how dyspeptic the media is, I have a montage here of Charlie Gibson from Good Morning America on ABC. He's badgering Dan Bartlett, the White House spokesman about Bush "poking the Russians in the eye" by daring to bring up Soviet domination and the oppression of Eastern Europe. The press seems to want to forget the entire Cold War, the entire horror of the Soviet Union. It's amazing. So here's this montage. Gibson says, "The president in Moscow celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany, but Mr. Bush has been getting the Russians a bit riled up even provoked an official letter of protest from their foreign minister. Is a new Cold War heating up?" he asked.

GIBSON: Dan, I'm curious why the president on the eve of an important visit to an important country like Russia would feel it necessary to poke them in the eye verbally and criticize them for the occupation of eastern Europe and the Balkans. But they don't share interpretations of what happened after World War II. This is an argument about history, and isn't it a slap in the face for the Russians? On the eve of an occasion that's so important to them, the celebration of the end of World War II? I'm just curious as to why the president's raised this. Are we concerned that the Russians are regressing on democratic reforms and are concerned that they might indeed occupy their neighbors again?

RUSH: The point here is, the celebration of the end of World War II is exactly what Bush is saying. There was no end of World War II essentially for people who lived under the control of Stalin. Yalta carved it up and gave it to the Soviet Union and, bam! Here came worldwide communism and Bush went over there and told them, "You know, we're all celebrating VE today but it's not 60 years of freedom for you. It's about ten. It's about ten years of freedom." Oh, and the press? "Why we want to rile these people up?" It's the same old thing. You don't want to make the Soviets mad. "Rush, there aren't any Soviets." Tell that to Charlie Gibson, not me. He's acting like the old Soviet Union over there. "Well, Putin, Putin wants to realign." Well, Putin and Bush went for a ride in that old '57 Chevy or whatever it was, everything is all cool now. It's just stunning to watch this. They have tried to revise history about the Soviet Union for all these years, they still apparently pine away for the old days of the Cold War. Maybe like Madeleine Albright, maybe they want a competing superpower to keep the evil US in check. He only killed 20 million people, why am I so upset? Stalin we're talking about. Because I don't understand this whole business that he is contradictory yes, he led his great nation to the defeat of Hitler. Well, yip yip, what did it get him? It got him 20 million more dead at the hands of their own government, and the American media, the American left, the American progressive movement, whatever they call themselves from day to day, gets uncomfortable when this truth is brought up? My gosh, it's no wonder poor old Melvin whatever his name got held back in the third grade in Florida. People aren't being taught means beans.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah, a little side note on this Yalta business. For those of you who have been taught proper history, you know George Patton... If you hadn't been taught proper history, rent the movie Patton. You'll learn it there. George Patton, when they finished with Hitler at the Battle of the Bulge, he wanted to keep going. He wanted to keep going and take care of the Russians, because he told Ike -- Eisenhower -- and Omar Bradley, he said, "I'm telling you something, the Russians are going to be the big problem. We shouldn't stop here," and they said he was a wacko and a nut case and they shut him down and so forth, and he was vindicated as right. He recognized who they were, what they were about, and what was to come. This Yalta business was, you know... Look, FDR was sick. He was ill at the time. I don't know what the stats of his faculties were, but I know that he was very, very ill at the time that this happened, and basically he just sold out these countries. Here's the BBC report on this: "President Bush Denounces Soviet Domination," as though that's a crime! It's a crime to denounce Soviet domination. "President Bush's branded the Former Soviet domination of Eastern Europe one of the greatest wrongs of history. Speaking in Latvia to mark 60 years since the end of World War II in Europe, Mr. Bush also acknowledged the US role in the division of Europe after the war. In Moscow, President Putin stressed Russians had been liberators. The Baltic states had demanded that Mr. Putin issue a new apology for the Soviet occupation, but he says this has already been done," and if you haven't heard about it, tough toenails! We're not gonna apologize again. Who do you think we are, Bill Clinton? We're not going to run around apologizing to everybody. So Bush dared to speak the truth about the libs icon, and they're going to attack him even more now. When I saw this yesterday I was going through the news and I said, "Oh, this is going to be a fun week. Look at what he just did. He just shattered the whole myth of what happened at Yalta and he did it by shattering the myth of FDR." You couple this with Social Security reform which is FDR's baby, oh man, folks. Stand by! This week is going to be fireworks. It's going to be the press is going to be dyspeptic. The express going to be dyspeptic. It's the same thing. Here's Felix in Salem, New Hampshire. Welcome, sir, nice to have you with us.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. How are you?

RUSH: Fine, sir.

CALLER: One thing that not a lot of people know that the Yalta accord not only allowed Stalin to install puppet regimes in Eastern Europe, but also the American and British troops rounded up millions of POWs that have been taken, the Soviet POWs, the Russian POWs, and they were deported directly to Siberia from the German concentration camps into the gulag.

RUSH: Yes, in fact that is the route if you trace the route to the formation of the gulag. You've all heard the word gulag. They were created after World War II, and it was one of the outgrowths of Yalta. No question about it, Felix. Great point. Here's James in Seattle. You're next, sir, great to have you with us.

CALLER: Hi, Rush.

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: The really despicable thing about the Yalta disagreement that it ratified the Hitler-Stalin Pact from 1939, and then we signed off on the borders that Stalin seized from the neighboring countries before World War II. The inception of World War II was not the German invasion of Poland alone. It was the partition of Poland between Hitler and Stalin and we signed off on that. We signed off on the seizure of a part of Czechoslovakia. We signed off on the seizure of what had been Bessarabia and is today Moldavia, 60 years later, and we signed off on all those things at the end of the war. We kept embassies for the Baltic states but we effectively ratified that in international law as the basis for the world order.

RUSH: That's right. You've phrased it in a different context and a different way, but it's the same thing. We basically carved up all these countries and said, "Okay, Stalin, they're yours." It makes it even funnier to read -- let me see if I can find this very quickly before the break -- about the terrible contradiction that Stalin represents. Yes. Yes, here we go. It's AP. "One poster stands out among the billboards splashed across Moscow for celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany: Josef Stalin against the backdrop of a Red Army soldier raising the Soviet hammer and sickle over the Reichstag in Berlin. [Poster Image] Stalin always has been a controversial and contradictory figure in Russia, seen as either the powerful boss who led the country to victory over the Nazis and made it a Twentieth Century industrial giant [sic] or the tyrant responsible for killing millions of his own people. Putin said today, 'I can't understand you equating Stalin and Hitler. It goes without saying Stalin was a tyrant who many called a criminal but he wasn't a Nazi.'" So Putin even admits, "Yeah, he was a tyrant. He was a criminal, but he wasn't a Nazi." The communists have always had a soft spot for Stalin. It's because they hated the Germans. They hated them, and the Soviet Red Army was victorious over the Germans. The fact that Stalin then went out and in a "contradictory" fashion to kill 20 million of his own citizens in the ensuing days and what industrial giant, could somebody tell me what...? They were a Third World country were it not for their military. Can we be honest?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I gotta tell you, there's some days I'm not all that enthusiastic about some of the things George W. Bush does or doesn't do but I'll tell you on this, I am 110% behind him. You know what he's doing here? He is literally taking aim at the icon of the Democratic Party, FDR. He's taking aim at it. Social Security reform and now going over to Yalta and saying what he said about that deal. This is going to infuriate the Democrats and the press and the progressives and the historians and the professors. It's all the same thing. They're all a bunch of leftists. You just wait for this week. You think the Democrats are mad now? Folks, I'm telling you, this is a gutsy, gutsy thing. You don't -- I mean, when he goes after Social Security reform, he at least praises FDR. "Ah, it was a great program." But if you take a look at what he's trying to do, he's trying to basically reshape it so that it is not the every-four-year electoral aid for the Democratic Party that it is, which is why it was set up. It was set up with the full knowledge that it was going to empower the Democrats for 50 years. That was the hope, and it did. It did until the welfare state in this country started imploding of its own weight. Now, we often talk on this program, and it's said of me, that I am a very lightweight thinker because I don't see nuance. I'm so black and white. I'm a simpleton, and all of you who also see black and white, right and wrong, good and bad, you are simpletons. You don't understand "nuance." Stalin was nuanced, and so are the progressives who analyze Stalin. You want a definition of nuance? It's right here in this story I just read for you. "The contradictions of Stalin."

Yes, he did prevail in battle over the dreaded Germans and Hitler. But, he also killed 20 million of his own citizens in the aftermath. "We must be able to see nuance to appreciate the goodness and greatness of such a man." That's nuance for you. To have nuance, you will see Stalin as merely a contradictory figure. BS about created an industrial giant. Yeah, to build missiles and submarines and aircraft with technology stolen from the United States. Go talk to anybody who lived in the Soviet Union for any period in the Cold War, and ask them about this great industrial giant that fed the country. Ask them about this great industrial giant that had few prisons and very few jails and all kinds of freedom for people. Ask them about it. You won't hear any tales of a great industrial giant. What you'll hear are tales of a Third World country that had a military that was first rate, and that's it. You know, the truth is, World War II -- and I have said this before -- World War II did not end 60 years ago. World War II ended ten years ago with the defeat of the Soviet Union. That was the real end. We call it the Cold War, but World War II really didn't end until the Soviet Union ended and was no more. Fergus Falls, Minnesota. This is Neil. I'm glad you called, sir. Great to have you on the program. Welcome.

CALLER: Rush, I never thought a liberal high school history teacher would get a chance to talk to you.

RUSH: Well, here you are, sir.

CALLER: Yes, here I am. My comment about the Yalta conference is that the United States and the UK and Western Europe weren't about to continue fighting and it wasn't so much that they thought that Eisenhower and others thought that Patton was a complete goofy guy.

RUSH: Lunatic.

CALLER: But -- whatever, whatever you want to say -- but that he wasn't that but he did have good ideas was just that the people of United States were tired of war. We were also fighting the Japanese at that time, and Western Europe was in no condition to continue to fight. Britain, with Churchill, he was in no condition to continue fighting, and they also understood the complexity of Russia, that Russia had a history of providing a buffer zone around them because of their attacks going all the way back to the Mongols --

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: -- paying high reparations to those people for years and years and had to wait them out until they could finally overcome them --

RUSH: But professor, professor, isn't it true that the Russians lost more than anybody else in World War II? They weren't in condition to fight, either.

CALLER: Well, that's true. But the trouble is, is that even though they weren't in the position to fight, they also have a history of pulling back and waiting for their attackers to become complacent or overconfident.

RUSH: And that's exactly what happened at Yalta. That's exactly what happened at Yalta. One step forward, two steps back, the old communist dialectic.

CALLER: Yeah, right. I mean they played it very smart.

RUSH: So it was a sellout. You don't think it was a sellout but it sure looks like a sellout. I mean we created the Soviet Union. We basically at this Yalta conference, seems to me, created the circumstances, especially by the way you're describing it here. "Everybody is too fatigued. We'd been at war for so along, and we'd just had enough. Let's all go home and blah, blah," and the Soviets said, "Fine, everybody is retreating," and Stalin was a communist and believed in it, was a committed Marxist and, bammo, here we have a worldwide movement born right out of Yalta.

CALLER: They weren't completely sure of all those things. He they didn't, they didn't know, you know, everything that was going to happen, because a lot of these things that you're talking about happened after the fact as far as the way Stalin reacted after that, once he had control.

RUSH: Well of course because he was able to see firsthand. Can you imagine Stalin at Yalta? "They're giving me this? They're giving me this?"

CALLER: Well, it wasn't a matter (Laughing).

RUSH: They're giving me?

CALLER: You've been in negotiations, and you understand how they work, and so --

RUSH: I guess this is a "nuance."

CALLER: -- and it wasn't a matter of giving anything. It was a matter of trying to negotiate something that neither side could continue with.

RUSH: But they continued with it is the point. It's like negotiating arms control with them. The communists by definition don't tell the truth. They're liars. You see some complexities here, and I understand that given your job and your understanding of history, but you see the complexity at the beginning of this, when the Yalta conference took place and the carving up occurred. There may have been some complexities there, but I look at the end result.

CALLER: Right. Well, whether or not we should have continued to stand by as years passed, no, that goes into a whole different question.

RUSH: No, I'm basically saying that FDR's lionization after this is not deserved. This was a big diplomatic blunder.

CALLER: Well --

RUSH: Something that John Bolton would not be confirmed for the United Nations over.

CALLER: I don't think FDR was alone in this decision. He had to take into account, you know, Churchill and de Gaulle, and the rest of those Western European countries. So we didn't even want to get into the war in the beginning, and in fact we were even -- the war, we were questioning what way we were going to go before we got into it, so I mean --

RUSH: That may well be, but we got into it and we won. We got into it, and he won. We may not have wanted to, that's a great testament to us. But we still got into it and won. You may not like the word "sellout" because it's too blunt or too direct, but, again, you're looking at how this whole thing happened, and a lot of us are looking at the result of what happened after; how it happened, happened and how it happened is, you know, you can't divorce the two. Basically said to Stalin, "Here's what's yours. This is the price that we're willing to pay to end World War II," or what have you, and I think incumbent in this was a lack of understanding on the part of the American left of the nature of communists, which manifested itself throughout the period of the Cold War. Look, professor, I'm glad you called. It's nice to have you on the program.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, it's interesting when you look back at the call we just had. The high school professor from Minnesota. He said it wasn't entirely our fault. Well, we weren't the only participants. De Gaulle was there and Churchill was there, and of course in the case of de Gaulle, what the hell was de Gaulle doing having any role in this whatsoever? De Gaulle didn't have a country for much of World War II. We got it back for him. The Brits, great allies, and Churchill was a great man, but, you know, had it not been for the US entering this war, neither France nor UK would be what it is today. Who knows what it would be, but it wouldn't be what it is today, and Yalta was exactly, if you want to look at it in current context, Yalta is exactly what John Kerry would have done if he was president: Turn it over all to the Europeans; let the Europeans make sure we don't offend the sensibilities of the Europeans. "We can't make the Europeans mad; they're our buddies. We must be in solidarity with the Europeans," and so we had to take those things into account and whammo-bammo, we get Yalta and blah, blah, blah. You know the rest. So Yalta? A classic illustration of what a John Kerry presidency would have been, the issues are just different. This time it's Al-Qaeda and Iraq and Iran and North Korea. You pick it, but we would have turned over our own best interests and self-interests to a bunch of people who have a whole different agenda than we do. Theirs is cowardice and fear and making sure that other people like them while their country is overrun with an immigration problem every bit as bad if not worse than ours. George, Port Washington, New York. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir. You're next. It's great to have you on the program.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking the call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Rush, I just wanted to remind you that even though Roosevelt was not well during Yalta. He also was inflicted with the advice he was given by certain individuals, among whom was Alger Hiss.

RUSH: Yes. I've been hoping that I would get a call about this so I would not have to be the one to say it, but you're exactly right. Alger Hiss, member of the American Communist Party. Some people say that it was Hiss who actually wrote our position paper on Yalta, wrote whatever it is that Roosevelt used, and for this, Hiss was identified as a communist agent. It was Whitaker Chambers and Richard Nixon. It was Nixon who finally convicted Hiss, and that's why they hate Nixon. That's why they hated Nixon all of those years. You can talk about everything else, Watergate and everything else. It was Hiss. Nixon was despised by the American left because what he did to Alger Hiss. He is exposed an agent.

CALLER: And Alger Hiss did time for his lies.

RUSH: Yeah, Alger Hiss did time for his lies, but to this day he's celebrated by the American left, is he not, George? I mean, all during the eighties and nineties on the anniversary of this or that with Hiss we get ABC World News Tonight what I great profile of Hiss. What a great man he was! How wronged he was! I mean, the left never gave up on Hiss. They lionized the guy.

CALLER: They did, but still Alger Hiss was convicted, and he did time, and with all his appeals, he never was able to overturn it.

RUSH: Well, that's true. It's exactly right. He was never able to overturn it and it was Nixon that got the conviction, and that's the primary reason why the American left hated Richard Nixon for the rest of his life, and why he had a bull's-eye painted on him ever since.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We have a caller online who wants us to not forget Potsdam in all this. It is Larry in Antioch, Illinois. Hello, Larry. Welcome to the program. Got about a minute here.

CALLER: Yeah, Rush, compounded the problem in Potsdam where Truman had the atomic bomb in his hand and he went ahead and he could have put his own agendas forward but he went it Roosevelt's and therefore splitting up Europe, making it into a Cold War, you know, into the whole Cold War that followed.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: That didn't have to happen.

RUSH: Yeah, but you still got Yalta as the root of this.

CALLER: Remember, Churchill was against it. The biggest mistake we made was not taking Berlin. We let the Russians take Berlin. Consequently women got raped by the thousands. (Germans Relive Soviet Mass Rapes) People went into slavery. We could have prevented all of that, but they said, "No, that's a political thing," and we didn't go into Berlin.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: But Truman could have pushed his own agenda forward. He was the president of the United States with the atomic bomb in his back pocket.

RUSH: That's right, we had the bomb. We had the bomb, and we could have (Laughing.) I think Nagasaki and Hiroshima were enough for everybody at that point. We did have the nuclear option then, and Democrat failed to pull it when it came to the Soviet Union. But no, Potsdam is a part of this, but there's no question it was Truman following in the footsteps of FDR at Yalta that dictated Potsdam.

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