[driftdiver]

“Osama bin Laden may be history’s greatest military strategist. He made Washington abandon its lofty moral ideals, forced the United States into a sea of debt and played a key role in pushing the United States off its pedestal of being the world’s supreme economic power.”

That is a bunch of baloney.

[SkyPilot]

I would say when we tolerated atheists tossing God out of every institution and public sphere, we ruined our own nation.

[whitedog57]

Classic Russian revisionist history.

Socialism starting with Teddy Roosevelt (the RINO of his time) and then Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, Carter and Democratic majorities in Congress have bankrupted the USA.

[Roy Tucker]

"As time passes, I find myself agreeing with him more and more."

Of course you do, you are a Russian communist posting in the Moscow Times."

"The Soviet Union strained its resources and pauperized, exploited and oppressed its own people in order to compete with the United States, the embodiment of the bitterly adversarial capitalist system."

"bitterly adversarial capitalist system" Sheesh. Capitalism is the most moral economic system in the world. We should have more of it not less, Comrade Alexei.

"It tried to flip the truth on its head: to deny that the U.S. government after the Great Depression implemented policies that helped raise incomes while drastically improving the work conditions and financial well-being of workers."

I see you have swallowed the Keynsian version of history wholesale, Comrade. You should read Milton Friedman and Hayek among others. The US Government's actions seriously prolonged the Great Depression.

" Now, China is gradually replacing U.S. influence the world over."

China's economy is one quarter the size of the US economy. The world's second culture is American. Just got back earlier this year from a trip to Africa. I don't think the Africans are going to be learning the four-tone Chinese language and using chopsticks very soon. But I can understand your being Russian where the Chinese will probably take over Eastern Siberia why you see it that way.

"After the Soviet collapse, Washington found a different adversary: al-Qaida. As a result, the leading 21st-century military and economic power is wasting its resources on a medieval war, gradually descending to the level of its new foe."

Let's see the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and we scoured around to find a new adversary because the US always needs an adversary? Poppycock. We have defeated al-Qaeda everywhere we have engaged it and liberated 50 million Muslims from its clutches. Something the Soviet Union was unable to do.

"Osama bin Laden may be history’s greatest military strategist."

He's at best living in a cave. He has not made a video or a verifiable appearance since 2003 and you think he's a great strategist? You do realize that he was building a magnificent villa for himself and his polygamous family on the outskirts of Kabul in 2001. Guess he got that bit of the strategy a bit wrong.

This article is a total joke, vertolet. Find better sources for your editorials.

[pieceofthepuzzle]

He's right in one way. Once the USSR collapsed (i.e. we won the cold war) the liberal democrats could start pushing their social engineering policies full steam. They used the collapse of the USSR as 1) evidence that the USSR was never as big a threat as the Republicans and military had made it out to be, and 2) that there no longer was any need to invest in the military, and the ‘peace dividend’ could be used for social programs.

When the first President Bush was running for reelection against Clinton he said something that can be paraphrased as: ‘The collapse of the USSR doesn't mean the world is now safe. The vacuum created by the collapse of the USSR in some ways led us to a new kind of danger and instability that requires more leadership and vigilance, not less’. Of course, the country didn't listen and bought into the ‘it's the economy stupid’ mantra of the Clinton campaign. The liberal press saw their opportunity, and helped push Clinton across the finish line (they painted a much worse picture of the economy than was true, and ignored a recovery that was underway, and subsequently credited to Clinton). Of course Ross Perot didn't help either.

Bush senior was right. The post-USSR period was a crucial one, and we wound up with a President who ignored foreign policy, and who after recovering from the disaster that was the Hillarycare attempt, rode the wave of the dot com economy to broad popularity. When we should have been even more focused on the direction the world would take after the collapse of the USSR, we ignored it. We woke up only briefly after 9/11.

[equaviator]

Osama bin Laden? History’s greatest military strategist?

Think again, pal. No, wait!...STOP thinking, okay?

[LibLieSlayer]

Bullshit... the dims caused ALL of this... progressives are ALL communists.

LLS

[rbg81]

I don’t agree with the author that the collapse of the Soviet Union is primarily behind our current problems—but it is definitely a piece of the puzzle. More than anything else, I blame the rise of Entitlement/Nanny State and the Liberal takeover of so many institutions (schools, courts, MSM, even Churches).

IMHO, the fall of the Soviet Union removed a lot of barriers to stupidity. As long as the Soviet Boogeyman was there, we had to have a modern, ready military and maintain our anti-communist stance. Once it went away, the need for those things all but disappeared—basically, giving us a license to be stupid. Remember how eager the Dems were to spend the (non-existent) “Peace Dividend”. And our first President after the Cold War ended was Bill Clinton, the draft dodger. If you ask many young people today, they can’t explain what communism is or (more importantly) why is it bad.

9/11 sobered us up for a few years, but now I fear the previous trend has re-asserted itself and is accelerating. Can you say: Ground Zero Mosque?

[Navy Patriot]

Alexei Bayer gets all the way to the second paragraph before he fees obligated to prove he is "a patriotic American".

Then he lists chronological coincidences to try to show a causal relationship.

The simple fact is that the US Government personnel made incorrect choices (with the exception of the forced destruction of the Soviet Union) in responding to international situations and national policies.

There will always be moral and ethical degeneracy on every level. Tolerate and allow it and you lose, punish and destroy it and you and everybody else wins.

[SMARTY]

It is interesting to remember that after his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon I said: ‘That leaves Russia and the United States as the most significant nations in the new balance of power.’

[yldstrk]

When I was in the military I can remember commenting re: Russia—

That was a sophisticated game, this (fighting terror) is just a brawl

[Ben Ficklin]

mark

[GonzoGOP]

Destroying your enemy is never a bad thing. But as the Japanese proverb states, "At the end of the war, tighten your helmet straps". There will always be another enemy. America failed to appreciate that. We dismantled out military, embarked on grand social spending programs and lived large assuming that it would be a century before anyone would challenge us again. Well it only took China 20 years.

With the full manpower of the cold war military combined with the firepower or the twenty first century we could have simply overrun Iraq and Afghanistan. But with the much smaller force available in 2001 we could never hope to occupy every single town. So insurgency always had a safe base of operations. Technology is great, but wars don't end until a grunt with a flag stands atop the fallen foe and says "this is mine now". A predator drone just can't do that. And the American army of the twenty first century can't put enough boots on the ground, because they buy their boots in China.

[reagan_fanatic]

I get tired of people trying to write the obituary of the United States. We’ll come back from our current troubles, and we’ll continue to be a major player on the world stage.

And for the record, LIBERALISM is responsible for our current decline, not some flea-infested cave dweller in Afghanistan.

[mad_as_he$$]

I do not specifically agree with the author there is the boggeyman factor. Democratic types of government do well when there is a common threat. The problem for the US is that there was really now large threat after the USSR. Clinton tried to use the WOD as the evil but it could not absorb enough resources to be effective. OBL is really just a side show for Islamic takeover. Since the government cannot demonize Islam due to oil they are stuck with no real boogeyman.

[Elwood P. Doud]

This guy does seem to have a good take on what was wrong with the Soviet Union, but he’s still too “Russia Centric.” Just because it’s still geographically the world’s biggest country doesn’t mean the rest of the world orbits around it.

[mountainlion]

Don't make the mistake to think that Obama and Osama represent any country or major group of people.

[Riodacat]

Osama bin Laden may be history’s greatest military strategist.

Ummm, no. But our actions since 9/11 has made Bin Laden look like a great strategist.