Posted on 05/09/2005 10:16:08 PM PDT by TBP
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.
Not to mention that they excuse FDR for helping to create the Soviet empire while excoriating Ronald Reagan for daring to destroy it.
Wilson did a lot for it, FDR finished building it, and LBJ put a new wing on it.
Of course, giving us the largest entitlement program in almost 40 years merely adds to it also.
Wasn't Patton already in Czechoslovakia and ordered to withdraw?
"Second-guessing Franklin D. Roosevelt, .."
SECOND GUESSING!!!!?????
Churchill knew what a b@st@rd Stalin was.
Roosevelt just liked "Uncle" Joe. And why not? He had people like Alger Hiss, born-again Commies advisiing him and he was stupid enough to believe them. Stalin was a sadistic megalomaniacal homicidal maniac. He probably butchered more people per unit of time than Hitler ever did.
Roosevelt gave away the shop. WW2 officially started to keep Poland free and what did that nut job Democratic socialist do? He turned it over to Stalin. His policies led to permitting the Russians to capture Berlin and the mass rape of thousands of innocent German civilian women. His policies led to handing over to Stalin's butchers Ukrainian P.O.W.s and even Russian P.O.W.s who were then promptly murdered by that nutjob and his lieutenants.
FDR was one of the most overrated of Presidents - a defective individual who tried unsuccessfully to achieve the glory of his illustrious relative Teddy Roosevelt.
It's a nice city?
I believe Henry Wallace's running mate in 1948, Glen Taylor, was a Communist Party member.
Sort of like the 1972 Olympic basketball final.
Was there anyone around FDR that wasn't a Communist?
One of the most important, buried truths to understanding the History of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century.
You are aware, of course, that Harry Hopkins was also one of the Chief Architects of the Socialist Insecurity System...?
Hopkins worked closely with the First Lady to promote and defend other relief agencies that include the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Federal Surplus Relief Administration, (FSRA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Most of those programs existed to the end of their usefulness, some were challenged in court and eventually cancelled, but the TVA remains a powerful and accepted agency to this day. The National Labor Relations Act, (Wagner Act, 1935), which instituted collective bargaining in the workplace, and the creation of the Social Security Administration, were two of the most powerful and durable programs of the New Deal.
<< Bush Criticizes FDR Over Yalta >>
About time the light of Truth was directed upon the evil perpetrated on this nation and upon the world at large by that evil bastard, [FDR] whose every advisor and aide seems to have been either an active Rudolph-Hess-style Soviet agent and/or to have been in and/or of the Communist Party of America!
[The self-annointing, self-appointing and self-perpetuating descendents of whose bastard offspring still own operate and control all of "our" feral gummint's awful machinery, still make up Foggy Bottom's evil Brahmanas and still clone the mindless morons who comprise our so-called "foreign service." And are most visibly represented among US in such other un-and-anti-American terroristic gangs as the ACLU, ABA, NEA, AARP et al]
Please spare US Mr Limbaugh's yabbering?
No, it's quite a good security system for Socialists. It's insecurity for the rest of us.
Hey, when Rush is right, he's right. And on this, he was on target.
If he were more like this more often -- as he was in the early days of his show -- he'd still be on over 650 radio stations instead of 600.
Hmmmmmm.....Was he talking about FDR's bungling of Eastern Europe, or Social Security...
Much like Hillary!ous likes to compare herself to Eleanor Roosevelt, the darling of the Pink Left, Bush is fairly clearly renouncing the communist past of both the USSR, and the US. (Hopkins, Hiss, FDR....)
Since the War began just after a diplomatic agreement between Hitler and Stalin and that peace wasn't broken for almost two years, that is a monumentally ignorant statement. Then again, what else would we expect from a Losertarian?
<< Harry "The Hop" Hopkins was the program's director at the time, and known now via the VENONA decrypts, to be Soviet agent "No. 19" ... also was FDR's alter ego.
Was there anyone around FDR that wasn't a Communist? >>
No there was not.
And it's the wrong question.
Right question:
Why has no-one noticed that the execrable Roosevelt was a bloody Communist!!??
China went Communist because Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang was hopelessly corrupt and could not survive even with massive American Lend-Lease support.
As for defeating the Soviets -- you've got to be kidding. The American people wanted to bring the boys home after V-E Day -- not start another war with the Soviets.
Yalta was a disaster, no question, but Stalin gained control of Eastern Europe because of the Red Army, not diplomacy.
It's fairly common knowledge to anyone paying attention....lol
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