Even at his best, he's not so good

"He" being Chris Matthews. Wonky Muse in a post yesterday focused on Dan Froomkin's comments about Bush's Iraq War speech this past week in It Came From Planet Bush Washington Post Online 09/14/07. In the article, he also discusses Matthews' response:

On MSNBC last night, anchor Chris Matthews was incredulous: "The fact that we have 36 countries fighting on our side in Iraq must be news to the soldiers over there. I don't know who these people are or how many divisions they have. I mean, all we read about in the papers are American GIs getting killed by IEDs and terrible accidents and all kinds of enemy action over there, usually in the battle of the civil war over there. The idea we're one of 36 countries fighting the war I think is ludicrous and why the president would throw that out there, I think it only opens him up to ridicule."

Despite his habitual drooling about the manliness of Bush and the 2008 Republican Presidential candidates and his warped attitude toward Hillary Clinton, Matthews has been critical of the Iraq War all along.

In this case, as Froomkin points out about the 36 countries to which Bush referred

A recent State Department report shows a total of 25 countries with armed forces in Iraq - and that includes Slovakia's six soldiers and Moldava's 11. Non-American troops total under 12,000, with most in non-combat roles, compared to over 160,000 Americans.

But even in making a sensible criticism of Bush's speech, Matthews made a fairly amazing blunder:

Matthews later asked Democratic Sen. and presidential candidate Joseph Biden about "the strange world we had described to us tonight... We're given a picture in 20 minutes of a country over there, an ally, you know, like Chiang Kai-shek used to be against the Japanese or Hungary against the Soviets, an ally, a country we care about and it's fighting for its life against our enemy, which is al Qaeda. No real references except once to the fact there's a civil war going on in that country. The notion that we're one of 37 countries fighting over there against the bad guys. There's so much of this that's truly - and I don't mean this in a cartoon sense - fantastic. When you're with the president, does he live in this world or does he just sell it?"

Biden's reply: "I don't know, Chris." (my emphasis)

Hungary was our ally against the Soviet Union? Say what? Actually, Hungary always fell within the Soviet sphere of influence and domination after the Second World War. It fairly rapidly became a "people's democracy", i.e., Soviet-style socialist country. And it remained a Soviet ally until the Warsaw Pact was dissolved in 1990. The Library of Congress has a country study of Hungary from 1989 available online. (Don't they update those country studies any more?)

My guess is that Matthews was thinking about the 1956 Hungarian uprising, which Charles Sudetic describes in that country study:

On October 23, a Budapest student rally in support of Polish efforts to win autonomy from the Soviet Union sparked mass demonstrations. The police attacked, and the demonstrators fought back, tearing down symbols of Soviet domination and HWP rule, sacking the party newspaper's offices and shouting in favor of free elections, national independence, and the return of Imre Nagy to power. Gero called out the army, but many soldiers handed their weapons to the demonstrators and joined the uprising (see Historical Background and Traditions , ch. 5). Soviet officials in Budapest summoned Nagy to speak to the crowd, but the violence continued. At Gero's request, Soviet troops entered Budapest on October 24. The presence of these troops further enraged the Hungarians, who battled the troops and state security police. Crowds emptied the prisons, freed Cardinal Mindszenty, sacked police stations, and summarily hanged some member of the secret police. The Central Committee named Nagy prime minister on October 25 and selected a new Politburo and Secretariat; one day later, Kadar replaced Gero as party first secretary.

Nagy enjoyed vast support. He formed a new government consisting of both communists and noncommunists, dissolved the state security police, abolished the one-party system, and promised free elections and an end to collectivization, all with Kadar's support. But Nagy failed to harness the popular revolt. Workers' councils threatened a general strike to back demands for removal of Soviet troops, elimination of party interference in economic affairs, and renegotiation of economic treaties with the Soviet Union. On October 30, Nagy called for the formation of a new democratic, multiparty system. Noncommunist parties that had been suppressed almost a decade before began to reorganize. A coalition government emerged that included members of the Independent Smallholders' Party, Social Democratic Party, National Peasant Party, and other parties, as well as the HWP. After negotiations, Soviet officials agreed to remove their troops at the discretion of the Hungarian government, and Soviet troops began to leave Budapest. Nagy soon learned, however, that new Soviet armored divisions had crossed into Hungary.

In response, on November 1 Nagy announced Hungary's decision to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact (see Glossary) and to declare Hungary neutral. He then appealed to the United Nations and Western governments for protection of Hungary's neutrality. The Western powers, which were involved in the Suez crisis and were without contingency plans to deal with a revolution in Eastern Europe, did not respond.

The Soviet military responded to Hungarian events with a quick strike. On November 3, Soviet troops surrounded Budapest and closed the country's borders. Overnight they entered the capital and occupied the National Assembly building. Kadar, who had fled to the Soviet Union on November 2, assembled the Temporary Revolutionary Government of Hungary on Soviet soil just across the Hungarian border. On November 4, the formation of the new government was announced in a radiobroadcast. Kadar returned to Budapest in a Soviet armored car; by then, Nagy had fled to the Yugoslav embassy, Cardinal Mindszenty had taken refuge in the United States embassy, Rakosi was safely across the Soviet border, and about 200,000 Hungarians had escaped to the West.

With Soviet support, Kadar struck almost immediately against participants in the revolution. Over the next five years, about 2,000 individuals were executed and about 25,000 imprisoned. Kadar also reneged on a guarantee of safe conduct granted to Nagy, who was arrested on November 23 and deported to Romania. In June 1958, the Hungarian government announced that Nagy and other government officials who had played key roles in the revolution had been secretly tried and executed.

Anybody can make a slip. But referring to Hungary as being an American ally against the USSR in the way that China was a US ally against Japan during the Second World War is really kind of goofy.

Froomkin's column has quite a few links to critical and analytic commentary on Bush's speech.

Tags: bush, chris matthews, hungary, iraq war