Europe: 'It is due to him that we are free' - June 6, 2004 - Leaders, former dissidents and ordinary citizens across eastern Europe expressed gratitude to Ronald Reagan for helping to end decades of "evil empire" communism and Cold War-era oppression.
"He is the one who allowed the breakup of the Soviet Union. May God rest his soul," said Bogdan Chireac, a foreign affairs analyst for the Romanian newspaper Adevarul.
"Mr. Reagan, along with Pope John Paul II, was one of the architects who dismantled communism in eastern Europe and stopped the expansion of the Soviet Union," said Ivo Samson, an analyst with the Slovak Foreign Policy Association.
"For us, Reagan was important because we knew he was really anticommunist, emotionally anticommunist," said Zdenek Kosina, 65, a Czech. "For us, he was a symbol of the United States' genuine determination to bring communism to an end."
Laurentiu Ivan, 35, a customs officer in the Romanian capital, struggled to describe Reagan's legacy and then said: "It is due to him that we are free."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1148365/posts
They are saying exactly what I posted. Your original post stated Reagan "brought down communism" by supporting jihadists in Afghanistan. My point was no, that is not what brought down communism. What these individuals are saying, if you actually read them carefully, is that Reagan was anticommunist. That he believed East Europeans deserved freedom. That is different from actually creating the conditions which caused the demise of the Soviet bloc. But yeah, I'd agree, John Paul II gets most of the credit for that.