Posted on 05/15/2005 5:51:13 PM PDT by smoothsailing
Deseret Morning News, Sunday, May 15, 2005
Bush's motives may not be about oil after all
By Betsy Hart
Scripps Howard News Service
So maybe President Bush's foreign policy isn't all about oil after all.
That's been a charge of many American elites when it comes to Bush and the Middle East: that he's really trying to stabilize Iraq in order to have better access to the region's oil — for all those gas guzzlers back home in America, they implicitly add.
But the president's speech in Latvia last weekend shows otherwise. In Russia to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, the president stopped in neighboring Latvia to make yet another gutsy move: In the Baltic republic once dominated and brutalized by the Soviets, he denounced the 1945 Yalta agreement signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. That accord gave Eastern Europe to the Soviets after the war.
As Bush lamented, "once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable." He called Yalta "one of the greatest wrongs of history."
No other American president has gone nearly so far in denouncing that pact.
The left in the United States has consistently argued that the Soviets' takeover of Eastern Europe after World War II was inevitable, partly because they were physically in so much of it at the end of the war. But with Yalta, in a very real way, America did hand over certain countries and, almost as horrifying, gave an overt blessing to the Soviet takeover of others. We gave no hope whatsoever to Eastern European democrats. In openly partnering with the Soviets, we doomed them instead.
Today the left argues that "we didn't know how bad the Soviets were then" (funny, they never did seem to figure that out until the Soviet Union was broken up, then suddenly they were anti-communists all along) or "we needed the Soviets on our side to finish off the Japanese threat" — which is not the case.
In any event, hindsight is 20/20 — and Bush has it. And in repudiating the overt American complicity at Yalta — complicity ordained by its very president — this president has rightly admitted to an American betrayal in war far more shameful than anything committed by rogue sadists at Abu Graib prison.
Talk about stepping up to the plate.
It was also clearly a warning shot at Russian President Vladimir Putin to be "careful" how he handles the young democracies on Russia's borders. Putin is being a little too friendly to authoritarianism lately — and a little too reminiscent of the old Soviet empire. He recently called the breakup of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century."
Bush clearly wanted Putin to hear him when he said: "We will not repeat the mistakes of other generations, appeasing or excusing tyranny, and sacrificing freedom in the vain pursuit of stability. . . . 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 has a vision of seeking freedom and democracy for oppressed peoples around the world, and not just when there is oil at stake. There are many in the United States who apparently don't like that vision, so they paint it as being about money or some other greedy end. (Then there are those who like the vision but not always the execution of it. I'm in that quarter at times, but that's another column.)
It's not always clear what the United States should do for those people living under totalitarian regimes. I'm the first to argue we cannot send American men to die in every oppressed nation in the world.
But too often we forget (and many simply don't like) the sheer moral power of America. By denouncing Yalta, by issuing the powerful clarion call for freedom he did this week — and from a country once hidden behind the Iron Curtain — Bush put that power to its best and highest use. He encouraged those oppressed people everywhere who seek freedom.
Betsy Hart is the author of the forthcoming "It Takes a Parent: How the Culture of Pushover Parenting is Hurting Our Kids — and What to Do About It." E-mail her at letterstohart@comcast.net.
© 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company
bump for later
Good article---I have heard several liberal pundits saying that Bush messed up by bringing up "the Yalta thing"...
Par for the course,....
We now have to pray that whoever takes Bush's place as POTUS, he will continue with this same policy, or we will be really letting those small countries down, but telling them that "we will be there for you", and then going back to being appeasers to the French and the EU in general..
It is going to be hard because there are SO many people that haven't taken the time and energy to really understand the Bush Doctrine...and his foreign policy at all---
They hear/see it through the lense of the MSM and the dems/libs and those lenses are pretty warped...
The stakes are high and as a nation, we can ill afford a president in 2009 who abandons the Bush Doctrine.
It is simply, without overstatement,the best hope for liberty in my lifetime.
Just how long did it take this ditsy broad to conclude this? The biggest D'oh piece ever. We have been in there for over a year. If he was after oil, when was he going to start taking it?
This is like the line in SNL: "Never mind."
Great article for printing and saving.
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Yeah,catchy title.
It seems to me that 'many American elites' are imbeciles and need a tuition refund.
Personally, I think it would be nice if they just all moved to France.They would fit in there so well.:)
"Been in where for over a year? Latvia?"
"that he's really trying to stabilize Iraq in order to have better access to the region's oil."
I believe the article is about IRAQ.
Ah, no Lawdude, the first paragraph mentions Iraq and oil, but the rest of the article is about Latvia and Bush's repudiation of FDR's Yalta treaty of 1945. It highlights how the Bush Doctrine transcends Iraq. Therefore, it's not about Iraq at all. And that's the writer's point. Read it again.
Your belief system needs recalibration, or you just read the first three or four sentences of the article.
They why is the article titled, " Bush's motives may not be about oil after all."?
She then goes on to explain that he doesn't seem to be after the oil in Iraq. Then she says a speech last week argues as though this is a revelation to the world.
I have understood his motives to NOT be oil based since day one.
Certainly the article is about his policies as expressed in Latvia but she pushes this against the left's insistance that he is only in it for the oil.
I don't writem, I just postem.
Thanks, well aware of it.
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