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

Toogood Reports ^ | 19 February 2003 | Nicholas Stix

[mrustow]

FYI

[mrustow]

FYI

[mrustow]

FYI

[mrustow]

FYI

[skeeter]

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

[Grampa Dave]

Actually it was the policies of Jimmy Carter that opened the pandora's box of Islamofacism. That Islamofacism backed by the obscene Opecker Oil $'s enabled the Islamofacists to buy the PR and war tech from Russia, ChiCom land, France and Germany.

This has to be one of the worst articles I have read recently.

[headsonpikes]

History is incalculable. Nevertheless we must act, or be swarmed.

Good article.

[Paul Ross]

This Revisionist malarkey deserves a Barf Alert! This guy does not really understand what motivated Gorbachev. Glasnost was a last desperate rally attempt by communism to DEFLECT the siren-call of the West to the oppressed subjects (note we can't call them citizens) of the Soviets. He would have ignored the restiveness of the people if he hadn't been completely foiled by the Reagan buildup to continue the Soviets extortion rackets against the West...which did drain Moscow's coffers. All in a vain effort to keep up...and achieve a level of military superiority that would cow the West into more 'protection racket' deals.

Pure squandry by the disciples of Lenin. And they haven't gone away. Eventually they recognized their failure with a strong, united, and technologically superior West to feel threatened by the communist empire. When it failed, they executed a scheme to take covert charge of the 'popular revolution' and still are pulling strings today. The real engineers of the Fall, manipulated many things to make the fall look spontaneous, and 'natural' but the strings were a little too blatant. Reagan does deserve credit for defending us, getting SDI going under the bitter circumstances of an anti-defense Congress, and forcing the Soviets into this gambit. And for whatever freedoms the spin-off state's citizens now have. The Russians meanwhile are slowly but surely fastening the manacles back in place, as their Press is muzzled and controlled once again.

[ClearCase_guy]

One of my pet peeves is people who say that Gorbachev won the Cold War. Yeah, he won because the country he was leading totally collapsed. Did you know that Hitler won WWII? Yup. His country collapsed too -- Germany was defeated because of Hitler's leadership. He deserves the victory!

Personally, I continue to feel that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher won the Cold War. Gorbachev lost.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Why do they hate us? It's a simple one word answer. Money. Money and future concessions through backdoor deals that Clinton promised these countries and couldn't deliver through his bagman Al Gore because he lost. Clinton gave these nations whatever he could under the table, but his commitments were too many and spread out at one time. They would have to wait until the next administration to collect. They weren't worried, it was Al Gorp's election to lose. When President Bush won, they were angry. Clinton's promises and obligations were now dust.

[js1138]

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.

[mrustow]

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

That doesn't make them right.

[mrustow]

This has to be one of the worst articles I have read recently.

Many ex-Soviet officials beg to differ -- just kidding, that's for the other guy. When I posted this article, I knew some FReepers would fail to appreciate it, but that's ok. It's a free country.

[Billthedrill]

If my interpretation is correct, liberty arose in Eastern Europe, and chaos elsewhere, as a fluke.

I'd like to borrow a line from my objectivist friends - when your conclusions point to something this unsatisfactory it's time to "check your premises." "Fluke," after all, is merely a term for something you cannot explain. Liberty in Eastern Europe is not a fluke, it was an ideal tenderly preserved through times of outrageous oppression, nurtured carefully by its adherents on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and allowed to flower in the muck that was the chaos of post-Gorbachev Europe. The conditions that led to this chaos were legion, with more causes and actors than will ever be known, much less listed here. But the goal was always there, and reaching it was not by accident.

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. It is that last that socialism and its proponents have never been able to offer, attainability, and they have, by way of compensation, substituted a contrived world-weariness that held that because their ideals were unattainable all ideals were so, that because their ideals were merely buttons to push to manipulate a desired mass reaction, that all ideals were that as well. It was Reagan who reminded us that this was not the case. He meant it, and between us all, East and West, we proved him right.

[Pres Raygun]

This guy is sick! He waxes nostalgic for the old Soviet Empire that allowed him to stay in a 5 star hotel in Budapest at Motel 6 prices. What a selfish, shallow man. The problems we face with Islam today, existed during the Cold War. There were Islamic terrorists during the 70s, all funded by the Soviets. 9/11 did not result because of the restraining influence of the Soviets. The escalation of Islamic terrorism to 9/11 is directly attributable to the inept foreign policy of Bill Clinton, who continually threatened the terrorists, but either failed to follow through or acted cowardly as in Somalia. Bush now has to clean up the mess.

[mrustow]

Soviets extortion rackets against the West...

Huh?

Pure squandry by the disciples of Lenin. And they haven't gone away. Eventually they recognized their failure with a strong, united, and technologically superior West to feel threatened by the communist empire. When it failed, they executed a scheme to take covert charge of the 'popular revolution' and still are pulling strings today. The real engineers of the Fall, manipulated many things to make the fall look spontaneous, and 'natural' but the strings were a little too blatant.

"They"? "Strings"? "The real engineers of the fall"? Have you taken your meds today, buddy?

[skeeter]

That doesn't make them right.

Maybe not, but you must agree that they offer a more qualified opinion than the tourist who wrote this article:)

[mrustow]

History is incalculable. Nevertheless we must act, or be swarmed.

Budweiser.

Good article.

Glad you liked it.

[B4Ranch]

This is certainly a different slant on subject.