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Editorial: Russia and Democratic Neglect
One of the biggest issues with this Russian/Georgian conflict is the fact that there is a lack of verifiable information. One minute you hear that the conflict has ended and the fighting has stopped the very next, you hear that the fighting is still happening, and that the Russians are not honoring the cease-fire agreement. It is all rather confusing, and it makes for a very frustrated blogger. Because the last thing a blogger wants to be, is wrong.
However, more than that is the lack of the Main Stream Media’s ability to look at this entire conflict in a historical context. Many are pointing to the actions of Ronald Reagan for dissolving the Soviet Union Empire, as being the cause of this conflict. I happen to disagree with that notion. I believe personally that it was the foolish actions of President Harry Truman, that is the cause of this conflict or shall I say the harvest of seeds planted by Harry Truman’s actions.
On December 7, 1941, the empire of Japan attacked the United States naval base in Oahu, Hawaii. This act of brazen hostility brought the United States of America into World War II, despite President Franklin Roosevelt’s pledge to remain neutral in the ever-growing conflict. As history would show, The United States fought the war and finally Hitler was defeated, and Japan surrendered. However, the method used to end the war, is in my opinion the underlying cause of this conflict.
It is a known fact that the United States soundly defeated Hitler by fighting them on the ground and air, using conventional weapons. However, we stopped the war, and to end the conflict with Japan, we used atomic weapons. This I feel was a tragic mistake. This is because Truman was a different kind of a Democrat than Roosevelt. Roosevelt was an “old line” Democrat, who saw the Communist threat, knew what the Communist doctrine was truly about, the repression of freedom and he stood to defeat it. No matter how long it took.
However, Truman was another matter entirely. President Truman represented the “new line” of Democrats who felt that war was unneeded and that peace was a better path. This was a precursor to the “peacenik” Democrats of the sixties. This was evident when President Truman gave his infamous “Military Industrial Complex” speech, at the end of his term. * - See below, please. With Hitler out of the way, Truman, feeling the ever-increasing pressure to end the war and return the country to pre-war status, devised a plan to end the conflict with Japan.
While using the Atomic bomb might have been an effective means of ending a war, its impact and stain upon the United States would be long ranging, to this very day, is to be considered a very poor decision by the United States. On many websites in Japan, including those in English, denounce America as being brutal for dropping the bomb. However, those who had friends and relatives that died at Pearl Harbor felt that Japan got what it deserved.
It is in the opinion of this writer, that the United States should have fought the war, all the way to Russia, until communism was soundly defeated. Furthermore, The United States of America, should have never dropped the atomic bomb on the empire of Japan, but rather, should have fought that war on the ground, until Japan surrendered. This would have resulted in the total defeat of communism. However, as we all know, this never happened.
Because of this obtuse neglect, the United States of America began a “Cold War” with the empire of the Soviet Union that lasted until a Conservative President, a real conservative President, whom came on the scene in the eighties to plant the seeds that would eventually bring down the soviet empire. However, as we have seen here in the last few days, Russia is not a free and democratic society; it is simply a police state, without the outright communism.
Putin, a man who is sympathetic toward the old soviet empire, filled to the brim with communist doctrine, is wagging his finger in the face of the United States and making a mockery of the supposed democracy in the European continent. This is the harvest of the neglect of the Democratic Party of the forties.
* Update: Oops! I blew it, Truman did NOT give the military-industrial complex speech, Dwight Eisenhower did. My bad. I blew it, I should have checked.
But my point about the Democrats and the cold war as it relates to Russia still stands.
- Chuck Adkins's blog
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Comments
To be quite honest, I disagree.
I think you have Truman and FDR largely reversed. To even suggest that FDR took a hard line against Communism is to either ignore or rewrite history. FDR openly aided in the expansion of Communism across eastern Europe with the agreements he made late in the war. Additionally, FDR is likely the reason that the Soviet nuclear program took off when it did; as if the Soviets having a spy on the Manhattan Project was not enough, President Roosevelt ordered our forces to not liberate Berlin, allowing it and nearby German research facilities to fall into Communist hands. Working with Stalin to win the war was important, but letting Stalin gain the hold he did in Europe after the war was nothing short of criminal.
Let us compare this to the Truman administration. Truman led us into a war which sought to curtail the growth of Communism. He established NATO, and his Truman Doctrine spared the periphery of free Europe from falling into Communist hands. Truman had his faults, but compared to his predecessor, Truman was the diehard anticommunist, not FDR.
More to this story.....
The VP from 1940-1944, Henry Wallace, was an adamant peacenik and coddler of Stalinism. Urban political bosses, aware of FDR's probable inability to complete Term IV, made sure that Wallace was ousted from the 1944 ticket in favor of someone with a more realistic sense of American foreign policy.
As for "capturing Berlin", the Germans fought bitterly for the city and inflicted serious casualties on the Soviets. At the time, the possibility the Nazis might set up some resistance movement in the Alps or the Sudetans seemed serious, and that was going to be in the American occupation zone. Halting the 9th Army at the Elbe might not have been the best outcome in hindsight, but it wasn't egregriously irrational, either. The suggestion that once this army got there it should have fought itself to Moscow through 5 million troops in its path was irrational. Once the Red Army got west of the Curzon line , much of the pain of postwar eastern Europe was going to be a "fact on the ground". Best case was a bunch of "Finlands" would occur, allowed to manage themselves so long as they didn;t offend the Kremlin. We got the worst case--communist satellites.
Finally, "not dropping the A- bomb" on Japan? I have no reason to believe the estimate of over a million US KIA in occupying Japan after a contested invasion would have been wrong. The marginal utility --if any-- of proving we could do this certainly was less than the cost. American postwar dominance persisted for decades because the American "greatest generation" largely survived the war---their demographic cohorts in Europe, Japan and Russia didn't.
I'm not saying march to Moscow.
I'm saying that, while it is true that the Nazis fought the Soviets bitterly to the end, they practically surrendered as the allies approached from the west. If the Soviets had been stopped at the Oder and Neisse, things after the war may have been quite different, even if population transfers still occurred. Free Poland would have been more likely to survive, for example, as might have a free Czechoslovakia. The dynamics of the following 50 years would have been quite different, and potentially quite a bit better.