Doesn't Bubba already have it?
Posted on 06/15/2004 10:30:19 AM PDT by agooga
Excerpt from Breslin:
"The great American news industry, the Pekinese of the Press with so much room and time and nothing to say, compared Reagan to Lincoln and Hamilton, they really did. This is like claiming that the maintenance man wrote the Bill of Rights. And almost all the reporters agreed that Reagan was the man who brought down Russia in the Cold War.
Just saying this is absolutely sinful. The Cold War was won by a long memo written by George Kennan, who worked in the State Department and sent the memo by telegram about the need for a "Policy of Containment" on Russia. Kennan said the contradictions in their system would ruin them. Keep them where they are and they will tear themselves apart. We followed Kennan's policy for over 40 years. The Soviets made it worse on themselves by building a wall in East Berlin. When they had to tear it down and give up their system, Kennan was in Princeton and he sat down to dinner.
I thought that children were taught this. Instead, all week, reporters told us that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Beautiful."
Just saw where Jimmy Breslin's daughter, Rosemary died she was 47 and died from complications of some type of autoimmune disease.
Maybe this why Jimmy fell into such a state and wrote such a terrible column on Reagan.
Nobody, but Nobody, who criticizes Reagan today and who was around in 1980 believed, at that time, that the Cold War was even "winnable". Reagan believed, in 1980, what Kennan said in 1948 [I recall it was in 1947, and in an article written in "Foreign Affairs", signed "X"].
By 1980, very few other people shared that belief. I think even Kennan had backtracked from that position. At the very least, Reagan deserves credit for believing that the Cold War could be won, and acting on that belief, at a time when everyone else was saying that only a fool would believe such a thing, and only a fool would rely on that belief as a basis for conducting national affairs.
Now that belief is belittled, as pedestrial common knowledge. Moreover, there is an attempt to rewrite history by claiming that that belief was also common knowlege in 1980. It was not.
I watched some knowledgable type on television once commenting about this. They pretty much agreed that indeed, the USSR was going to fail, but that Reagan hastened its demise by at least a couple of decades. Still a very important achievement.
Doesn't Bubba already have it?
Um, wouldn't Barney Frank be better suited for the $3.00 bill?
He wrote the column that way because that's the way he feels - he's a long standing member of the "hate wing" of the DemoncRAT party and hated Reagan with a passion. The death of his daughter, IMHO, is God's way of dealing with Breslin - there were many messages brought forth and Breslin chose to let his hatred reign & dismiss them. God has obviously given Breslin a 2nd chance to recognize his mortality.
Reagan stayed the course laid down earlier when others in the political arena would have abandoned it. Moreover, he did put the pressure on the Soviets at a time when it was important. In contrast to previous leaders, he did think of the Cold War as winnable, and acted accordingly. And he adapted his approach to changing circumstances, in a way that might have seemed hasty or tardy at the time, but in retrospect, was about right and worked. Therefore, Ronald Reagan deserves a lot of credit for ending the Cold War. Using him to beat up Truman or Eisenhower or others would be wrong, but so would using them to deny Reagan's achievement.
Jimmy Breslin has always been a torn character. He has a love-hate relationship with Manhattan liberals, half despising them and half wanting to be accepted as one of them. He wavers between playing the regular guy from Queens who finds place among the elite by criticizing those he grew up with and playing the elite liberal who speaks up for the little guys he knew back when, without really bringing off either role very well. That helps account for some of his more puzzling or troubling comments.
Regardless of the Soviet system's inadequacies (once revealed), Reagan deserves a lot of credit. Sometimes hastening the inevitable is a noble and necessary cause.
Would Breslin choose to mock the Emancipation Proclamation? It is quite clear that slavery could never have survived as an institution into the 20th century. So who cares if Lincoln freed the slaves? Millions already hated the practice, and its elimination was inevitable.
When asked whether Reagan deserves any credit, I believe asking the prisoners of the Gulag, or their survivors, what they think reveals a better understanding of the situation. Breslin seems to think the U.S.S.R. was simply a nation deteriorating under a faulty economic system, rather than an evil tyranny caked with the dried blood of millions of her own victims.
He brought pressure on the Soviet Union in at least four deliberate ways. The first of these is well known – to bankrupt them through increased defense spending.
Secondly, a complicated plan was devised to cripple their inefficient economy. This included delaying the Soviet gas pipeline to western Europe (they had been counting on it for additional currency), slowing the flow of western high technology to the eastern bloc, and making a deal with Saudi Arabia to drastically drop oil prices (oil exports were the main revenue for the USSR). Reagan promised the Saudi royal family that as long as he was president they would not be overthrown like the Shah of Iran.
Reagan also turned the tables against the Soviet Union by supporting guerilla insurgencies, most notably in Central America and Afghanistan, but he also sent $8 million a year to help the Polish Solidarity movement, including sophisticated communication equipment and fax machines so they could organize.
And it was Reagan's idea to marshal world opinion against the Soviets. His “Evil Empire” speeches rallied anti-Communists such as Margaret Thatcher and the Pope. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, Ronald Reagan became the focus of Europeans leaders who cooperated in the cause of freedom.
Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, 61, has said his phrase, "evil empire," became a household word in Russia.
I think we should create a $3 bill and put Reagan on it. It will be come the replacement for the $1 bill. Put Reagan on the $1 coin and all the other $1 coins will be replaced.
It's really too bad. I love his novel 'The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight'.
That may be the only book of his I ever read and it was funny.
Breslin's commentary is not to be taken seriously. Too much alcohol, blended with too much bitterness, has left him with less than a full complement of brain cells.
Excellent-- is that excerpted from somewhere or original?
Good points-- thank you.
Excellent-- thank you.
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