Posted on 07/01/2019 9:45:25 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
President Reagan was the left's most hated POTUS, evah, until President Trump. He was an outsider with no fedgov or foreign policy experience. A pro-life Christian conservative and an America-loving patriot. His anti-Communist, anti-USSR rhetoric was inflammatory, reckless and dangerous. His name-calling ("evil empire'), inexperience, war-mongering and direct confrontational (and bungling) style was going to bumble us into a nuclear conflagration.
His tone was the worst.
And his photo op meetings and one-on-one summits with dictatorial soviet leaders produced no immediate tangible results. Total failures.
And then (unexpectedly and shockingly) the walls began crumbling... followed by a complete collapse.
Now he's more hated (by the left) than ever.
Thank you President Reagan.
Btt
The soviets pretty much bankrupted themselves
Chernobyl was very very expensive and I believe it was the final nail in the coffin of soviet communism
Reagan’s strategy was simple. Make the Soviets try to keep up with his military expansion until their economy collapsed.
DOD spent several billion studying one Soviet military system. In 1994 a Soviet Colonel sold a complete system to a US Army Captain in W. Berlin for just enough to get his regiment home to Moscow. The Soviet army could not even afford to feed his men.
Let’s not forget Jesus consorting with prostitutes and tax collectors.
The were marches in Europe were 100,000s people were marching..
And we shall undoubtedly see history repeat itself here.
I remember all to well how he was to damn stupid to meet with Gorbachev. He got out of his limo in a suit and tie.
Gorby on the other hand had a very heavy overcoat.
Reagan told him in no uncertain terms we are moving ahead with space defense.
The left was riled.
They hate this nation.
RR explained how he needed to get home and have dinner with Nancy.
The Hawks on the Right were the most pissed at Reagan for meeting with Gorby.
The GHWB swamp you speak of.....
Thanks JimRob.
Also, Reagan had the Saudis open their oil spigots, so the price went down to $10 a barrel. It put a lot of us oilfield workers out of work, but it also helped bankrupt the USSR, which relied on petrodollars to fund their activities.
Not exactly apples to apples, but your point is taken.
Gotta start somewhere.
Even Reagan’s skeptics inside his administration, most notably George Schultz, were totally won over within a year. Schultz, in an internal National Security meeting that I found in my research for “Reagan: The American President,” told Dutch as they prepped for Geneva, that a number of supposedly recent concessions by Gorbachev were ALL due to Reagan hanging tough in Reykjavik: “You won those at Reykjavik, Mr. President!” Schultz said in awe.
Just watched that HBO special. Mikhail Gorbachev said the same thing about Chernobyl. It was a good show if you can watch it.
His strategy was actually more sophisticated than that. It was across the board, as I show in my new book “Reagan: The American President.”
Reagan understood that the two main Soviet exports were oil and gold. By rebuilding OUR economy, we automatically weakened theirs. For ex., Reagan urged Paul Volcker to squash inflation, even if it meant a recession. As inflation came down, the Soviet ability to sell gold crumbled. The value of a 10 pound gold ingot dropped TENFOLD in a couple of years.
Then Reagan struck at their ability to raise hard currency via their oil sales. One of his first meetings was with the Saudi oil minister and he firmly told him that they were going to lower prices & increase output . . . which the Saudis did. Down came Soviet oil prices and with it, lower sales and less hard currency.
I could go into the alliances with Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesca, the decision to pump rock and roll behind the Iron Curtain, supporting Charlie Wilson, and of course maintaining a strong alliance with the Germans and GB. It was more than just the military.
Reagan squeezed the Soviets everywhere simultaneously. It reminded me of Ulysses Grant’s command to all his generals when he became head of the Army: attack, all the time. “Anyone who can’t skin should hold a leg.”
If you go to Russia and ask the average Russian who their favorite US President was during their lifetime, Reagan would win hands down, because they respected him as a leader, and they know that he wasn’t afraid to say the truth about how life in the Soviet Union was.
We were fortunate that at the same time we had Thatcher leading Britain and Kohl leading Germany.
Unfortunately we had that douche, Mitterand, in France.
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