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The problem w/ Buchanan's article, and many of the defending posts in response, is that it takes a utopian view of history and behavior. Unless the perfect solution is executed, no solution should be executed at all. This is an inversion of a leftwing argument--a leftwing worldview--that suggests since the U.S. isn't perfect, the US is not better than the USSR. I am reminded of what Garofalo said prior to the Iraq War, she said Turkey in the antebellum period killed millions of Armenians, and because of that, our positive relationship w/ Turkey was "less than ideal". Therefore Iraq's atrocities weren't all that bad, or weren't bad enough to act upon. She conveniently neglected two key facts 1) there was no overlap between national interest and human rights back then, and 2.) it was 75 freaking years ago, so nothing could be done to stop those atrocities now, whereas the meat grinders were still running in Iraq. Discernment counts. Just because there isn't an ideal solution to a problem, doesn't mean the problem shouldn't be solved. Just because we won't be able to feed every starving child, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to feed as many as we can.

Buchanan inverts this dubious "Garafola" rationale--since Academia and Hollywood and the media has not lampooned Communism the way it has attacked Nazism, and they think Communism isn't all that bad, therefore Nazism really isn't that bad, and Hitler didn't have ambitions behind Eastern Europe, and it shouldn't be that big of a deal if we stick up for Hitler's political rights to Eastern Europe and Europe as a whole. There has been a pattern in Buchanan's writings, going back to the "President Reagan you should make a speech about dead Nazi soldiers" through his willingness to swallow the "research" of Holocaust deniers hook line and sinker (the diesel gas controversy, he got his information from "Institute for Historical Review", a Holocaust denying institution) through his suggestions that Hitler could have been left alone no harm no foul to the U.S. (re: Republic, not an Empire), this pattern suggests Buchanan isn't just throwing out something for discussion, but he has a worldview that doesn't view National Socialism as *evil*, and he's desperately trying to find ways to rationalize his tolerance of Nazism. And I find this "Hitler only wanted Eastern Europe, he wouldn't have attacked France" disturbing. Why is Adolf Hitler given the benefit of the doubt? Meanwhile, Churchill is blamed for instigating and accelerating WWII. Who is the great conservative ideologue of the 20th Century, Winston Churchill or Adolf Hitler?!? This thread has been a DU wet dream come true.

Buchanan doesn't stop at a common sensical, uncontroversial critique of Yalta and its consequences. If he merely suggested that the good allies in WWII backed down to the whims of the bad ally at Yalta, that point wouldn't be contested. He draws the line when he takes the results of Yalta, and suggests that the whole enterprise might not have been worth it, and that there is no redeeming value in defeating two of the three anti-american totalitarian regimes of the 30s (Germany and Japan). It's that "ideal or nothing, utopia or distopia" leftist psychology coming into play by Buchanan, which leads him to float the indefensible notion of even suggesting stopping Hitler wasn't worth it, and U.S. and Nazi Germany could coexist (yeah, and Germany declared war on the U.S., remember?) along w/ the USSR. The principled argument, it seems, would be instead of the US staying out of the European front, that the US should have taken Patton's Moscow option. The Brits and US would have genuinely been percieved as liberators in Eastern Europe and even in the USSR, and the second European front might not have been as arduous as historians suggest. The Nazis were percieved as liberators at first, until the Germans treated the Eastern Europeans worse than the Soviets did, which led those caught in between to switch back to being Soviet partisans. The U.S/U.K = genuine liberators.

Here are some numbers, in the "Nazi vs. USSR domination of Eastern Europe" argument. According to the Black Book of Communism, which is legitimately considered a Bible for conservatives documenting the evils of Communism, 1 million Eastern Europeans were killed in 45 years of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.

However--

In 6 years of Nazi domination of Poland, 3-4 million non-Jewish Poles were killed (and 3 million Polish Jews, close to 7 million Poles overall). This is just ONE eastern european country under Nazi domination. The Nazis had plans for the systematic elimination of *peoples*. The Soviets were evil, but they targeted classes, you get rid of the breadwinners and the rest are just slaves to the state. The Nazis, it was simple extermination. So if the Nazis had controlled Eastern Europe for 45 years, there would be no Eastern Europe remaining, no ashes for the Phoenix of Poland to rise from.

Does this exonerate Communism? No. But it puts things in a pragmatic perspective--Communism might have been worse for the world--100 million dead in 85 years and counting, and it might tick us off that it isn't as condemned as it should be, but Nazism was worse for Eastern Europe. So Buchanan's premises (and thus conclusions) are flawed. WWII was worth it because we defeated the greater threat to Europe's survival at the time, we ended two out of three anti-American regimes heading into the nuclear age, and Eastern Europe was at least given an evil ideology that killed them slowly, slow enough that they could overthrow it a generation later, instead of the evil ideology that planned on killing them immediately in the gas chambers. It isn't perfect, but waiting for the perfect solution merely allows the blood of evil to spill without a tourniquet. Insert famous Burke quote here.