Danish PM calls for Russia to apologize to Baltics

[Ned]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


No you don't. The Reagan Whitehouse openly used speachwriters.

Yes. But still Reagan wrote a lot of the material himself.

[chequita guevara]

He made notes and suggestions, maybe. Certainly not after 1984.

[Dinner]

I'm sure he wrote a spech once some where. Most of his speeches were written by speech writers though.

[Pekka]

It wasn't a snap of any kind. Everyone uses speechwriters. A fact. Nothing to be ashamed about it. It's a universally accepted thing. Everyone does it. No one claims otherwise. The speech was good and Dubya delivered it. That's it.

I give credit where it's due. So I gave both speechwriters and Bush. I have given him credit before on some things, and bashed him on other things. And I continue to do that. No free meals.

[Winston]

The fact that they used speech writers in the White House doesn't change the validity of asserting that President Reagan was an excellent speech writer himself. Just as an example, he delivered more than 1,000 short radio commentaries during the 70's on a variety of topics, and he wrote more than 2/3 of those himself.

And those commentaries were brilliant examples of his ability to write (and deliver) clear and poignant speeches that instantly got a hold of the audience. I know, because I've listened to a number of them - and no it's not just me sticking up for Reagan. Others share the same view.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Lancer
Interesting. Do you think many East Germans held this view?

I have no way of knowing...
Then again many who were not "believers" of that system had a lot to cope with when that system collapsed. They just didn't understand for example how on earth it is possible for them to sleep on the street. Or not being looked after.
Then again they didn't have the freedom to buy a house for example. Or leave or own (generally).

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Winston
he delivered more than 1,000 short radio commentaries during the 70's

He didn't have Alzheimers' in the 70s, and he did have many of the symptoms of it before his second term. It's unlikely that he did much of anything he wasn't told to do after 1983.

[Winston]

Viewed through your particular optics, certainly. But I've never bought those leftist claims that he was disabled during his Presidency. Have you ever watched his Titanic speech at the 1992 Republican convention? If not, you should, and then come back here and tell me you still believe his mental capabilities were severely diminished by disease 3 years prior. I believe it's still in the C-span archives.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Winston
Viewed through your particular optics, certainly. But I've never bought those leftist claims that he was disabled during his Presidency.

Then you have to admit he was malingering when he said he couldn't remember all those meetings. Either he lied to Congress or he was suffering from Alzheimer's. He barely did anything in his second term except for public events. Since he was a good actor, it was quite easy for him to continue acting, even when he was no longer remembering what was going on around him. You might want to consider reading Weinberger's memiors.

[Winston]

Sure, if you can't remember certain things you're suffering from Alzheimers or lying. No other explanations exist.

And I do believe he did a great many things of importance in his 2nd term also. Working to keep European allies behind the 1979 double decision and establishing relations and applying pressure to the new Soviet leadership, those weren't unimportant things or merely public appearances. But he did slow down a bit compared to the first term, I'll give you that. But then I'd say it was only natural for him, and I certainly wouldn't take it as an undisputable indication of his health deteriorating at that point.

One thing I'm looking forward to reading is President Reagan's personal diaries from the White House years, which weren't meant for publication originally, but which will be out sometime next year. I hope they won't be too expensive.

[Ned]

When one reads history about the conferences that divided Europe, we see messages from historians that Roosevelt was a weak and dying man and didn't have the ability anymore to stand up to Stalin, or that Roosevelt was legitimately concerned with the Soviet Union entering into a separate peace with Nazi Germany if the Western allies took a hard line on the shape of post World War II Europe. But those explanations fail to take into account that we also asked the Soviet Union to intervene in the East and attack the Japanese in China even though at the time our top military leadership thought that Japan was on its final legs and was going to surrender sooner rather than later and wanted to keep Soviet Union out of the theater. At the same time, there were a lot of people in the US administration who actually believed that communism was a good thing and saw no problem in the Soviet Union occupying a significant portion of Europe and of China and perhaps even Japan itself. Moreover, there were Soviet agents in the administration that intended to influence US policy in exacty this direction.

But the thought that we should oppose occuppation of Europe and China by the Soviets would raise significant questions as to whether the whole war was wrong in the first place. Perhaps we were fighting on the wrong side? Perhaps we should have been fighting with Germany against the Soviet Union rather than with the Soviet Union against Germany? What was the point of the war an at all?

It is said that we were fighting fascism. But that is not the reason why the war started, as the war started over Poland and the Treaty of Versailles. But to say the war was about the liberation of Poland and the right of self-determination of peoples would not justify the occupation of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union after the conflict ended. Thus the planners at Yalta and other conferences had to change the subject and divert attention and say that the war was about fascism and not about liberation of Poland and the right of self-determination of peoples.

But let's assume that the war ended as a fight against fascism. What is wrong with fascism? In practice it is an anti-democratic form of government that rules with barbarity rather than with any respect for human dignity and life. But, so is communism, at least the form of communism that we found in Stalinist Soviet Union. But to justify the war against Germany as a war against fascism, we would have to downplay that our ally, the Soviet Union, was equally as anti-democratic and barbaric. And we now know that we did just that: we called the Soviet Union some kind of worker's paradise and the murderous Stalin, "Uncle Joe." We ignored any evidence of massive Soviet war crimes and the rape of Berlin. That was too inconvenient and an embarrassment for the administration, who after all, were politicians.

So the way the war ended was a violation of its first principles. The war ended badly for the Western allies as it betrayed the very purpose of the war: the liberation of Eastern Europe and the self-determination of peoples. That war was not about fascism as fascism is no more inherently evil than any totalitarian form of government and we made allies with the very worst totalitarian government in the history of mankind.

Truman had been kept out that of the loop of all policymaking regarding World War II, so that when he first took over as president when Roosevelt died he was given a fate accompli regarding the state of Europe and, for that matter, China and Japan. To the extent that we have his notes, Truman was clearly uncomfortable with our use of atomic weapons against Japan as well. But he was, at that stage, still in that he clutches of Roosevelt's administration and could do nothing to stop them from carrying out their prior plans. So I don't blame Truman for allowing the Soviet Union to stay in Eastern Europe or two enter the war against Japan. That was all Roosevelt's doing.

It is good that President Bush has now apologized for Yalta and the decisions of President Roosevelt. But this should also raise serious questions as to why we fought World War II or why we allowed it to end the way we did with a betrayal of all the reasons that we were fighting it in the first place.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Pekka
It wasn't a snap of any kind. Everyone uses speechwriters. A fact. Nothing to be ashamed about it. It's a universally accepted thing. Everyone does it. No one claims otherwise. The speech was good and Dubya delivered it. That's it.

I give credit where it's due. So I gave both speechwriters and Bush. I have given him credit before on some things, and bashed him on other things. And I continue to do that. No free meals.

Pekka, agreed. I have had my differences with Bush on policy. But, while I agree he can be inarticulate at times, I have no doubt that he is calling the shots and making the decisions about policy. I like what I see there -- on the international front -- a lot. Bush has been the strongest president since Reagan (and Kennedy for that matter, but Kennedy was more rhetoric that action), for liberty of the peoples of the world.

[Ned]

Does anybody have a link to Bush's actual speech? The headline reads as if he were talking about the Baltics. But the quoted text seems to suggest he was talking about the whole of Soviet-occuppied Europe (and for that matter, Far East -- two of which, China and Krazy Korea are still held captive by communism).

He called the Soviet Union "evil." Certainly. But this does raise a lot of questions about Roosevelt.

[Winston]

I agree that as Presidents go, Bush has an above average determination for advancing freedom and democracy in the world.

And for that he is to be commended. Also for mostly leaving out the window dressing part of it that we've seen all too often.

Ned, that's an interesting (and long!) post on the war and its objectives. I'd like to comment on some of your points, but it's getting too late tonight for it. Just so you didn't think the post had gone invisible to everybody.

[Winston]

I'd keep an eye on c-span.org for the speech in the days to come. It's bound to go up there sometime.