Yada Yada Yalta

May 10, 2005

This is a follow up on Josh Marshall's and David Greenberg's thoughts on Bush's criticism of the Yalta agreement. Not only is it ridiculous for him to be criticizing FDR and Churchill's negotiations at the end of WWII as handing Eastern Europe over to the Soviets, but he of all people should know about the strange bedfellows of international relations. How many nations with questionable commitments to freedom do we support because of our needs in the war on terrorism and other geopolitical concerns?

While he's silent on Russia's continuing war in Chechnya and turns to jelly when he comes to face to face with Putin instead of standing behind his rhetoric about freedom and liberty (as Putin continues his crackdown on the press and free enterprise in Russia), Bush seems to think that the US and UK should have driven Russia back out of Poland in 1945 and continued to fight them until Russia was ready to negotiate again. And with Stalin, who knows how long that would have taken?