BUSH IN HUNGARY

Recently, President Bush went to Budapest, Hungary and gave a speech commemorating the fifty (50) years since the 1956 HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION. This uprising was by the Hungarian people against their Soviet masters.

Our headlines read, “Bush compares Iraq to Hungary uprising”. In his speech, President Bush said that “…when people stand up for their freedom, America will stand with them”.

Again, I have to set the record straight because obviously neither President Bush nor his administration give a shit about history and just make up stuff as they go along.

After World War II President Franklin Delano Roosevelt handed Eastern Europe to his buddy Joe Stalin. Roosevelt just basically placed millions of Eastern Europeans into Soviet slavery, a whole generation, just like that. I should include Churchill in the decision to hand over Eastern Europe but it really was mostly Roosevelt’s call.

When the Hungarians rose up in revolt against the Soviets in 1956, the boys in Moscow sent over a few thousand tanks and took care of those upstarts. The United States just watched. We may have stood with them but only in our imagination. To our credit, we did allow many Hungarians who escaped Hungary to emigrate here under “political asylum”. Some of my Hungarian friends are here because of that move.

Now Bush wants to compare the Hungarian uprising to the situation in Iraq. I don’t see the similarity.

The Hungarians were invaded by the Soviets and occupied by them. They wanted to rid themselves of the Soviets, they wanted out of the Warsaw Pact. The Soviets could not let that happen – at that particular time in history and so they used overpowering force to quell the rebellion.

The Iraqis were not engaged in a revolution or uprising. The Sunnis in the South did try to revolt after Desert Storm but we allowed Saddam to quell that uprising with brutal force.

We invaded Iraq so we can make them into a democracy and thus start changing the world order in our favor. Invading Iraq to set the Iraqi people free of Saddam was good propaganda but not our reason for invading Iraq.

I understand that Bush needs to apply as much spin to events as he possibly can. The Hungarian anniversary was an opportunity but as evidenced by the blank stares of the Hungarians at his speech, they were wondering what the hell he was talking about.


Janusz