Historians.. can you help?

[ObaMania]

On another board, someone posed the question if Rummy meeting with Sad*dam to defeat Iran was any different from FDR and Churchill meeting with Stalin at Yalta to defeat Hitler.

Thanks for any input.

[SoCalDem]

1. When you consider the meddling we were doing at the time, I would say yes

it was different..

We were directly responsible for the Iranian instability, and were pissed at them for daring to take hostages, so of course we wanted Saddam to fight them. We used Iraq as a proxy. Stalin was not our proxy.

We did not care how many Iraqis died fighting Iran.. we wanted our pound of flesh, and of course we got to sell Saddam lots of military junk too( and Iran too..remember Iran-Contra).. We used Saddam just like we used binLaden to be our proxy in Afghanistan..

[ObaMania]

2. Beauty, Thanks! n/t

[ms liberty]

3. And don't forget while Raygun was openly arming Iraq

He was also secretly arming Iran - that's what the Arms for Hostages scandal was about. One of the reasons Sad*dam quit cooperating with us - which meant Poopy Bush then got to declare him as evil and gave us Gulf War I.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. Well, for one thing,

Iran hadn't rounded up 6 million people, put them in concentation camps, and killed them. For another, they hadn't conquered and subjegated whole countries, from France to Poland. Thirdly, they were not in alliance with another country that had bombed a port in the US. Fourthly, the Yalta conference was about opposing not one, but two foes: Germany and Japan. Fifthly, it was the heads of governments that met at Yalta, not simply an American underling and a dictator.

And finally, Yalta happened near the END of WWII, when the Allies realized victory was in sight and they were trying to decide what to do with the spoils. The ideology of Stalin vs Churchill and FDR was quite different; the latter two knew there was likely to be trouble with the former once the war was won, yet they felt they needed to keep the USSR as an ally to help defeat Japan.

The point of Rumsfeld meeting Saddam was to help a dictator punish another country that had humiliated us (and perhaps also to cover up that they colluded with Reagan to release the hostages when they did).

[Media_Lies_Daily]

5. Neither side won the Iraq-Iran War....

...that war ended as a stalemate with both sides suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties. Additionally, the U. S. ended up supplying both sides during that war.

As far as WWII was concerned, the USSR had carried the bulk of the land war against Nazi Germany by the time the Yalta Conference convened in February 1945. Since the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941, the Soviet nation had lost more than 20 million people...many more losses than that suffered by the Western Allies combined. Soviet armies had already occupied most of eastern Europe, and was poised to move toward Berlin. Meanwhile, the Western Allies were pushing into Germany from the west.

In summary, there is no comparison between the two events.

[BoneDaddy]

6. Yes it is different

In world war 2 it was necessary to make allies with Stalin, as abhorent as he was, because Germany did threaten the world. The comparisons between Iraq/Iran and Germany are apples and oranges. We sold weapons to both sides with the plan that they do as much damage to one another as they could. Arms manufacturers make a killing, we weaken both states with the hopes of setting up a presence in the region at some point. Seems that point is now.

[Zynx]

7. I thought they claimed Saddam was a Hitler clone.

Oh well, in any event I guess one could make that comparison if they wished to except for the fact that Iran wasn't very much of a threat and Nazi Germany was.

[PATRICK]

8. And if they were the same

this is equally ludicrous because neocon belligerents hated FDR for being weak at Yalta. So, either way you look at it, it is idiotic for anyone to use this "noble precedent" meme. It is either false or hypocritical and in fact, both and a nauseating hiding behind a better man they always hated.

Other presidents they have trashed and denigrated and THEN decided to use as a bolster for their policies: Kennedy as cold warrior and economic policies, Lincoln for taking all that power.

If all the good presidents were running against the modern GOP, they would be branding washington as a scary autocrat who was a lousy general, Lincoln a mentally diseased buffoon who refused to let the South be free, TR a nearsighted tree hugger who was overrated in that charge up a hill(leading "black" troops) against poorly armed Spaniards, Kennedy a playboy womanizer with secret debilitating diseases for which he was all drugged up, etc. Then when convenient they would invite them over for photo ops like Bill C., cite them as presidential precedents and have their women folk go out trash talking any war heroes who might quarrel with their version of reality.

In fact, lumping these types of arguments together would have Aristotle writing a new book on the abuses of logic. This whole class of argument is difficult only in determining if they themselves love this type of fantasy despite the inherent contradictions OR whether they must do this to subtly trash better men and irritate those who know the difference. I think underneath this as all their other lies, they bury that satisfaction deeply because their whole existence revolves around defending lies with lies and to allow it to surface in their own mind would be to cynically concede the game. I think down deep all these guys apprehend their falseness and love their conquest of reality, their dominance. Unfortunately the sane people, who similarly suppress their own instincts with abhorrence of evil, also know what is a crock and too often choose to submit to the polite consideration of false arguments.

[Squeech]

9. Moreover

Congress had actually issued a formal declaration of war against Nazi Germany.

Theoretically we were maintaining a position of strict neutrality in the Iran/Iraq war. (Which meant we were cravenly providing covert assistance to both sides, as somebody noted above.)

Also, Rummy wasn't running the Reagan administration, whereas he has entirely too much power in this one-- AFAIK a triumvirate, with Cheney and Rove.