Notes supplémentaires concernant Budapest en 1956

Nous avons retrouvé un article précédent de Charles Gati, concernant l’insurrection de Budapest de 1956 et le rôle des Américains dans cette affaire. Gati y demandait, avant la visite de GW Bush en Hongrie, que Washington rétablisse la vérité concernant l’attitude US durant la crise. Ce ne sont pas des choses (reconnaître un tort passé) qui se font à Washington. Bush est passé en Hongrie et l’Histoire officielle est restée en place.

Cet article, publié le 21 juin 2006 dans le Washington Post, introduit déjà nombre d’éléments qu’on retrouve dans l’article de l’International Herald Tribune que nous utilisons dans notre commentaire de ce jour sur le 50ème anniversaire de Budapest-1956. Certains autres passages contiennent des détails supplémentaires.

Nous reprenons notamment le passage ci-dessous, qui donne quelques précisions sur la position des USA à cette époque, sur leur degré de préparation, sur leurs capacités de répondre à la crise. Litanie des mêmes erreurs, des mêmes faux jugements, etc.

«The United States, according to the usual version of what happened, could not help the Hungarians because any action would have triggered a military confrontation with Moscow. This explanation misses the point: There were actions short of war that Washington might have taken. It could certainly have urged the Hungarians to temporize and pursue limited, evolutionary goals. It could have taken the issue to the United Nations before, and not after, the Soviet crackdown. In an imaginative move toward post-Stalin detente, it could have proposed immediate talks about withdrawing American forces from a small Western European country in exchange for Soviet withdrawal from Hungary.

»Instead, Washington offered only hope, no help. "Poor fellows, poor fellows," President Dwight Eisenhower said privately as he campaigned for reelection. "I wish there were some way of helping them."

»Washington's hands-off stance had nothing to do with the concurrent Suez crisis either. With Suez or without it, the United States had no means available to aid, let alone "liberate," Hungary. For despite all the talk about "liberation" since 1952, neither the National Security Council nor the State Department had devised plans for diplomatic or any other form of assistance. Nor was the CIA ready. When I received permission to study the agency's operational files for my book "Failed Illusions," to be published in September, I was stunned to learn that the CIA had but one official operating in Hungary in 1956. In Austria, as first reported by Evan Thomas a few years ago, the CIA did not have a single Hungarian-speaking agent. The handful of emigres trained for behind-the-lines activity were let go in 1953.»

Mis en ligne le 9 ocobre 2006 à 14H27