Thanks for Clarifying, Pat
In the Yalta posts, I kept wanting to say, “This is the kind of argument Pat Buchanan would make,” but I thought it would be unfair. Not anymore. Obviously, Buchanan’s views are not Bush’s views, and Bush is not responsible for what Buchanan says. But Buchanan articulates starkly the ideas in the distinct and self-conscious ...
In the Yalta posts, I kept wanting to say, "This is the kind of argument Pat Buchanan would make," but I thought it would be unfair. Not anymore. Obviously, Buchanan's views are not Bush's views, and Bush is not responsible for what Buchanan says. But Buchanan articulates starkly the ideas in the distinct and self-conscious historical tradition with which Bush, wittingly or not, aligned himself:
In the Yalta posts, I kept wanting to say, “This is the kind of argument Pat Buchanan would make,” but I thought it would be unfair. Not anymore. Obviously, Buchanan’s views are not Bush’s views, and Bush is not responsible for what Buchanan says. But Buchanan articulates starkly the ideas in the distinct and self-conscious historical tradition with which Bush, wittingly or not, aligned himself:
If Yalta was a betrayal of small nations as immoral as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, why do we venerate Churchill and FDR? At Yalta, this pair secretly ceded those small nations to Stalin, co-signing a cynical “Declaration on Liberated Europe” that was a monstrous lie. As FDR and Churchill consigned these peoples to a Stalinist hell run by a monster they alternately and affectionately called “Uncle Joe” and “Old Bear,” why are they not in the history books alongside Neville Chamberlain, who sold out the Czechs at Munich by handing the Sudetenland over to Germany? At least the Sudeten Germans wanted to be with Germany. No Christian peoples of Europe ever embraced their Soviet captors or Stalinist quislings.
[Love that throwaway line about “Christian peoples.” — Ed. Don’t get me started. …]
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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