Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Huffington's First Good Move
She really does have Schlesinger. Weirds. But he is way off on Yalta. He believes that Bush is wrong in claiming it was moraly repugnant to leave the Baltic states in Soviet hands after the Yalta conference at the End of WWII. His point is that the Soviet occupation was a military reality already, and therefore is not the fault of Yalta. Fair enough, but the fact of the occupation is not proof of the virtue of our tactic acceptance of the occupation.
As Schlesinger writes: this acceptance did give FDR the opportunity to have Stalin sign "the Declaration on Liberated Europe, an eloquent affirmation of 'the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live.'" That thing isn't worth the paper it was written on and did nothing to free the people of Eastern Europe.
Schlesinger is right that "It was the deployment of armies, not negotiating concessions, that caused the division of Europe." But the human rights declarations didn't tear down this wall. It was the threat of American force, the internal contradictions of Communism, and the struggle of great freedom fighters that tore down the wall.
As Schlesinger writes: this acceptance did give FDR the opportunity to have Stalin sign "the Declaration on Liberated Europe, an eloquent affirmation of 'the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live.'" That thing isn't worth the paper it was written on and did nothing to free the people of Eastern Europe.
Schlesinger is right that "It was the deployment of armies, not negotiating concessions, that caused the division of Europe." But the human rights declarations didn't tear down this wall. It was the threat of American force, the internal contradictions of Communism, and the struggle of great freedom fighters that tore down the wall.
