by Patrick J. Buchanan To Americans, World War II ended with the Japanese surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, following detonation of atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9.
But for Russians, who did not enter the war on Japan until Aug. 8, 1945, "The Great Patriotic War" ended on May 9, with the surrender of Nazi Germany. Which raises a question:
What exactly is President Bush celebrating in Moscow?
The destruction of Bolshevism was always the great goal of Hitler. And the Red Army eventually bore the brunt of battle, losing 10 times as many soldiers as America and Britain together. But were we and the Soviets ever fighting for the same things, as FDR believed? Or was Stalin's war against Hitler but another phase of Bolshevism's war to eradicate Christianity and the West?
Vladimir Putin, a patriot and nationalist who retains a nostalgia for the empire he served as a KGB agent, refuses to renounce the Hitler-Stalin Pact of Aug. 23, 1939. Under the secret protocols of that pact, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the Romanian provinces of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were ceded to Stalin, as was eastern Poland.
Hitler's attack on Poland, the success of which was guaranteed by that pact, came on Sept. 1, 1939. On Sept. 17, Stalin, who had hidden in the weeds to see how Britain and France would react to Hitler's invasion, stormed into Poland from the east and claimed his share of the martyred nation. Six years of terror for Poles began, ending in 44 years of captivity in the bowels of what Ronald Reagan bravely called an "evil empire."
As a result of this war, Hitler's 1,000-Year Reich lasted 12 years and Germany was destroyed as no other nation save Japan. Hamburg, Cologne, Dresden, and Berlin were reduced to rubble. Between 13 million and 15 million Germans were ethnically cleansed from the Baltic region, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Two million, mostly women and children, perished in an orgy of murder, rape, and massacre that attended that greatest forced exodus in European history.
As a result of the Great Patriotic War, Finland had its Karelian Peninsula torn away by Stalin, and 10 Christian countries - Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Yugoslavia - endured Stalinist persecution and tyranny for half a century.
Again, what, exactly, is Bush celebrating in Moscow?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a soldier of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War. Let us hear from him about what a wonderful cause it was. As for Putin, into whose soul Bush has looked, his position is understandable. From the vantage point of Russian vital interests, the Hitler-Stalin pact was a brilliant coup.
Hitler was on the path to war. The war he wanted was one with the Soviet Union: to kill it, carve it up, and put every Bolshevik to the sword. His war was also to be a racist war. Hitler wanted to impose Germanic rule over Slavic peoples.
Stalin, with his pact, redirected Hitler's Panzers to the west and bought the Red Army two more precious years to prepare for Hitler's onslaught - years Stalin used well.
How did Stalin succeed?
On March 31, 1939, the British and French - in panic after Hitler drove into Prague without resistance - handed Poland an unsolicited war guarantee they could not honor and did not intend to honor. It was a bluff. But believing in that guarantee, the brave Poles defied Hitler over Danzig, stood and fought, and were crushed, as the British and French hid inside the Maginot Line.
But because they had declared war on him, though they had no plan to attack him, Hitler, in April 1940, invaded Denmark and Norway, and in May, the Low Countries and France. In three weeks, he threw the British army off the continent at Dunkirk, and, in six weeks, crushed France.
Meanwhile, Stalin provided Hitler all the food and fuel he had requested and declared Britain and France to be the aggressors against his Nazi partner.
When Stalin's turn came and Hitler invaded on June 22, 1941, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov, who had negotiated the Hitler-Stalin - or Molotov-Ribbentrop - pact, said plaintively to the German ambassador, "What have we done to deserve this?"
Churchill and FDR rushed to embrace Stalin, gave him everything he demanded and more, and at Tehran and Yalta, ceded to him custody of all the peoples of Eastern Europe and of Poland, for which Britain had gone to war.
What Putin is celebrating is easy to see. But, tell me again: What exactly is our president celebrating in Moscow?
I would also add Bush’s plan to put American or NATO troops in Israel’s face as a big fly in the relationship ointment.
High-ranking U.S. policymakers have “raised the idea of establishing an American trusteeship regime in the areas of the Palestinian Authority, if it should turn out that the Palestinians are not ripe for self-rule. That arrangement would require an American operational military presence along Israel’s border with the Palestinian territories.” #msg-6661778
The possibility of deploying North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops in the Middle East, as they did in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Afghanistan, has emerged. #msg-6591662 #msg-6507932
"This is Not a Conservative War" House Republicans vs. Bush By JOSHUA FRANK
Things are not looking so hot for the Bush administration. The smell of "impeachment" is in the air. A couple of Democrats are finally making a stink over the Downing Street minutes and major news outlets have found the courage to run with the story. US misconduct at Gitmo has been exposed and confirmed by the Pentagon. Donny Rumsfeld himself admitted this past week that Iraq isn't any safer than it was before the fall of Saddam. And now prominent Republicans in the House of Representatives are calling Bush a neo-con and demanding him to end the war in Iraq, ASAP.
Yep, you read that last sentence correct. The first of the House Republicans to speak out on television against the "neo-con invasion" was Mr. "Freedom Fries" himself, North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones. As Jones told the news program, This Week, he now believes that neo-cons within the Republican Party are to blame for pushing an illegitimate war on Iraq.
Based on what Jones called "bad intelligence," the Bush administration tricked Congress into supporting the invasion. Initially Jones supported the Iraq war and even went as far as to blast France for their opposition to Bush's foray. But things have changed since then.
The Representative will be introducing a bill in the House later this week, which is to call on President Bush to outline an exit strategy at once. Whether or not the exit strategy is compliant with the goals of the antiwar movement remains to be seen, but dissent within his own party can't help Bush's already plummeting popularity.
Rep. Jones isn't the only Republican to publicly denounce the Iraq invasion. On Tuesday's "after hours" segment of The House, televised on CSPAN, Tennessee Republican Rep. John Duncan, along with Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican, called on Bush "to order a phased and orderly withdrawal from Iraq."
Rep. Duncan in his televised speech recounted a briefing he had with George Tenet in 2002 in which Tenet assured him that Saddam posed absolutely "no threat" to the United States. Duncan exclaimed that this was only a brief time before Tenet spoke to the President about the Saddam danger. Duncan, like Jones, said that he was convinced the neo-con war was not carried out in order to protect the United States from Saddam.
Distancing himself from the neo-cons Duncan exclaimed, "This is not a conservative war some people call conservatives isolationists ... this war has isolated us from the rest of the world. I have traveled widely and I have experienced this."
Duncan went on to admit that the US "can't be a nation that seeks empire across the globe ... that seems to be what we are doing. Polls in Iraq show that a large majority of the Iraqi people view us as occupiers, not liberators. We should not be mouthing these thoughtless clichs like 'we can't cut and run."
Perhaps impeachment is around the corner and the Republicans are trying to save face by distancing themselves from the Bush administration. A handful of traditional conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Paul Craig Roberts have been railing the neo-cons for sometime - and it seems their dissent is starting to catch fire in the House. Let's hope the flames they've sparked spread to the White House and smoke Bush right out of office.
Joshua Frank is the author of the forthcoming book, Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, to be published by Common Courage Press. You can pre-order a copy at discounted rate at www.BrickBurner.org. Josh can be reached at: Joshua@BrickBurner.org.
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