A World of Enemies -- is It All Reagan's Fault?

Toogood Reports ^ | 19 February 2003 | Nicholas Stix

[weikel]

"I am going to totally dismantle every intelligence agency in this country piece by piece, nail by nail, brick by brick..." - Ron Dellums (D-CA)Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, 1993

Republicans should be flashing the twin towers explosion in the backround with this quote superimposed in campaign ads when they attack their opponents.

[BfloGuy]

Reagan deserves credit for inspiration if for nothing else. His principal function was not to spend the Soviet Union into extinction, it was to raise morale and to remind us that the ideals that had been deliberately marginalized and dismissed during the practiced cynicism of the Carter years were, in fact, real, and their proponents sincere, and most of all, that they were attainable.

Very well said and worth posting again, IMNTBHO.

[mrustow]

NTB? Not terribly bright?

[mrustow]

This is certainly a different slant on subject.

Apparently. Some folks are complaining, because I didn't attach a barf alert. Oh, well, much as you try, you can't please every paying customer.

[mrustow]

What slimy liberal rock did this confused idiot crawl out from under??

I don't know what your point is, because you didn't say anything intelligible, Newbie. Tell you what, how about you post your criteria for what articles I may post? Then I can print them out, and wipe my butt with them.

[Paul Ross]

Numerous ex-soviet officials I've heard interviewed on the topic of the collapse of the USSR beg to differ.

They were right. And you are rather pious and intemperate against those who disagree with your pet revisionist theory...especially for someone who casts unwarranted personal attacks around so freely...

[tet68]

Dear Nick, 2+2=4 try and remember that.

[mrustow]

"Unwarranted personal attacks"? Where?

[buffyt]

I visited Leipzig in formerly East Germany in 2000. The guide I had one day on a tour of the city said that during Communist rule there everyone got to go to the opera free. She acted like she yearned for the good old days. They were a country in transition. She also complained that the allies bombed Dresden area during WWII. [It was a Nazi route] There were still anti American sentiments in 2000. Well, my dear tour guide, my uncle gave his life to free you and yours from Nazi rule, in a B17, 1944, still MIA. And Ronald Reagan said TEAR DOWN THIS WALL, echoing the sentiment of the FREE WORLD. I have a piece of that God forsaken wall. My father-in-law toured there, he was one of the first tour groups to pass through after the wall came down. He was able to go chip away part of the wall and keep it. I am happy to have a piece of the wall as a reminder of the DEEP DEEP EVIL THAT HUMANS CAN DO TO EACH OTHER!

[mrustow]

"I am going to totally dismantle every intelligence agency in this country piece by piece, nail by nail, brick by brick..." - Ron Dellums (D-CA)Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, 1993

Republicans should be flashing the twin towers explosion in the backround with this quote superimposed in campaign ads when they attack their opponents.

Well, I'm shocked by Red Ron's statement, but not surprised. The guy has always been a traitor. Dellums begs the chicken-egg question: Is he so bad, because Oakland is so bad, or is Oakland so bad, because he's so bad?

[Pres Raygun]

Apparently, you only read the first couple of paragraphs -- who's the shallow one?

I read the whole article. His nostalgia for the good old days does nothing to support his thesis.

You blame everything on Bill Clinton, and deny the spread of radical Islam over the past 13 years, yet you call other people "shallow." What's wrong with this picture?

I did not deny the spread of radical Islam in the last 13 years. I did suggest that radical Moslems were emboldened by Bill Clinton's cowardice and they have said as much themselves. If you want to go ahead and defend Bill's foreign policy record regarding Islamic terrorist, be my guest. Islamic terrorism did not start after the fall of the Soviet Empire, especially considering the Soviets sponsored much of it. The following are a few of the Islamic terrorist attacks I can remember from the 60s through the 80s: Egypt, Syria et al attack Israel, Israeli olympians murdered, Aquille Lauro (sp?), Beirut marine barracks bombing, PLO in Lebanon, various bombings in Western Europe, Pan Am flight over Lockerbie.

[PeoplesRep_of_LA]

You are certainly losing your cool mrustow, and coming dangerously close to having a text based tantrum with the posters critisizing this post.

Everyone should question the validity of your post. This article was interesting, in that it didn't get to its point for a very long time. In the end I learned from it that beating the USSR was shortsighted because it unintendedly opened up south eastern Europe to immigration from Islamic countries?

That damn Reagan, he's at it again, he's been out of office since January 1989 and he's still making a mess. If he was just had some diplomatic class and knowledge of history like Old Europe things would be alot more stable. Perestroika was going so well before he got in there and had to be an ugly American cowboy.

My favorite tag line sure comes into play for this article;

[mrustow]

I visited Leipzig in formerly East Germany in 2000. The guide I had one day on a tour of the city said that during Communist rule there everyone got to go to the opera free. She acted like she yearned for the good old days. They were a country in transition. She also complained that the allies bombed Dresden area during WWII. [It was a Nazi route] There were still anti American sentiments in 2000. Well, my dear tour guide, my uncle gave his life to free you and yours from Nazi rule, in a B17, 1944, still MIA. And Ronald Reagan said TEAR DOWN THIS WALL, echoing the sentiment of the FREE WORLD. I have a piece of that God forsaken wall. My father-in-law toured there, he was one of the first tour groups to pass through after the wall came down. He was able to go chip away part of the wall and keep it. I am happy to have a piece of the wall as a reminder of the DEEP DEEP EVIL THAT HUMANS CAN DO TO EACH OTHER!

Back under communism, the tour guides were all party members; you must have had a holdover. No sane, halfway intelligent Gerry would have made such a moronic statement. Even if East Germans had wanted to go to the opera, they didn't have the time. They spent every "free" minute waiting on endless lines for luxuries like bread. And once they'd gotten their bread, they had to rush home, so as not to break curfew.

I visited Dresden, which we firebombed, killing over 100,000 civilians in one night. Dresden is one of the few honest beefs they have with us, but after all they did, they have no business complaining about any other country's conduct in that war.

[Democratshavenobrains]

The DUmbasses still refuse to grant Reagan any part in ending the Cold War. They have the gall to say that he actually PROLONGED the Soviet Union staying together, because his military spending gave the hardliners more power. Geez what morons.

[mrustow]

Do you really think the article is anti-Reagan? Or is there a teensy-weensy possibility that some FReepers have deified the man? I thought the article had an ironic attitude toward history, in emphasizing how lows follow from highs.

[mrustow]

I can remember the day the Berlin Wall fell. heck, I remember the day construction started.

But the day they started tearing it down, I told my wife, we won world war III, but world war IV will be fought in the middle east.

My view of Islam was filtered through the rantings of Yassir Arafat, but I was certain he had a vast hoard behind him, all aimed at Israel.

As the saying goes, generals are always fighting the last war -- politicians and civilians, too. But as you observed, the moment one "war" ends, you have to prepare for the next one, and think in new ways, not the old ways. Unfortunately, that's not the way things worked out.

[Paul Ross]

Republicans should be flashing the twin towers explosion in the backround with this quote superimposed in campaign ads when they attack their opponents.

[mrustow]

Gorbachev was a tyrant who stopped tyrannizing.

Horsehockey!!!! Tell that to the 13 he slaughtered in Vilnius in 1991.

Do you think that killing 13 people counts as a slaughter in the context of Soviet history? A traditional Soviet response would have seen 1300 slaughtered.

[PeoplesRep_of_LA]

Then quite honestly, you were reading a totally different article. This backhandedly, and it was quite a feat, both discredited him for winning the cold war over Gorby, and at the same time blamed him for the ending of the cold war causing "unintended consequences" which sophist's way of saying, we'd like to blame him for this but we can't find anything to say he supports terror.

You can't have it both ways, and I don't know how anyone can take this seriously. Either he was the principle figure in ending the cold war, and we can say ending it was bad, or he wasn't and then the rest of the nostalgia was unrelated to him. You can't have both.

Don't try to be cute, if it sounds like that President is being honored too much for your liking it is ONLY on FR, and here merely because there is an unending effort to smear him from the papers to the network news to NPR. To this DAY no less, which I have to laugh at or get very angry.

So which is it;
Did he end the Cold War- and we can debate whether free opera was good, or
He did not end it, and Gorby can be "inadvertantly" blamed for 9/11.

[Paul Ross]

So which is it; Did he end the Cold War- and we can debate whether free opera was good, or He did not end it, and Gorby can be "inadvertantly" blamed for 9/11.

Yup. You have him hoist squarely by his Revisionist little petard. What a maroon.