"Inconceivable!" -- New York Times
"Zees word, I do not theenk you know what it means." -- Inigo Montoya
Posted on 07/03/2003 10:59:58 AM PDT by kattracks
Ronald Reagan came into office with a steely determination to take on the Soviet Union and win the Cold War that America had been half-heartedly fighting since the end of World War II.
The idea of answering Barry Goldwater’s famous question "Why not victory?" with a resounding "Why not indeed!" was anathema to "liberals," who quivered in their boots over the very thought of winning and believed that President Reagan was deranged for even suggesting that we defeat an enemy that had pledged to bury us. They recoiled in horror when he called the Soviet Union an "evil empire."
In her best-selling new book, "Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism," Ann Coulter writes that "Reagan came to power announcing that the last chapter of Communism was then being written. He said that the West would ‘transcend’ the Soviet Union, which would soon be remembered as only a ‘sad, bizarre chapter in human history.’ The sophisticates said he was out of his mind and would blow up the world."
Coulter recalls the horror expressed by the New York Times, an avid booster of the Soviet Union from the days when its correspondent Walter Duranty covered up Stalin’s murder by starvation of some 10 million Ukrainians.
She also recalls the Times’ national security correspondent Leslie Gelb shaking with terror in 1984 over what he wrote was Reagan "actually seeking to win a nuclear war," which he called "lamentable." Reagan had never said he was doing this. He had a better idea: Force the Soviets to wreck their economy by trying to match the U.S. weapon for weapon.
Coulter writes: "The New York Times stylebook expressed contempt for the idea of winning the Cold War by requiring that these words be placed in quote marks: ‘superiority,’ ‘win,’ ‘evil empire,’ ‘freedom fighters’ ‘soft’ on Communism, and ‘backing down.’ This was in contradistinction to precise adjectives like ‘warmonger, ’‘unwinnable conflict,’ ‘dangerous’ or ‘simple minded’ none of which took quotes."
As the Reagan strategy took hold and the Soviet economy sank toward bankruptcy, the American left reacted in panic. When Reagan met Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, and refused to abandon his plan for a nuclear missile defense system – Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which the left derisively dismissed as an unworkable "star wars" program – and the summit ended with Gorbachev fleeing home to Moscow empty-handed, the left went crazy predicting doomsday.
"All major media went berserk at Reagan’s refusal to give up the Strategic Defense Initiative. The New York Times angrily lashed out at SDI, calling it ‘utopian’ and ‘inconceivable.’"
Coulter recalls the Times' hysterical declaration that "After Reykjavik, it is clear to everyone that SDI is a symbol of obstruction to the cause of peace, the epitome of militarist schemes, and the unwillingness to remove nuclear menace to mankind. There can be no other interpretation of it and this is most important lesson to be learned from the meeting at Reykjavik."
But there was another lesson to be learned, and it was learned in Moscow, which finally realized that it could not match the U.S. in defense spending and that SDI, instead of being "utopian" and "inconceivable," was a dagger pointed at the heart of Soviet nuclear strategy.
Ronald Reagan won the Cold War at Reykjavik. It was the beginning of the end of Soviet dreams of world conquest. With the prospect of SDI as a shield against Soviet ICBMs, Soviet nuclear blackmail was checkmated.
But "liberals," blinded by their decades-long refusal to see the evil empire for what it was and dedicated to the idea that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were simply two competing systems and not enemies in the never-ending struggle of freedom against tyranny, failed to grasp the significance of what had happened in Iceland.
In a cover story, "Sunk by Star Wars," Time magazine moaned that Reagan could have signed "the most sweeping arms control agreement in the history of the nuclear age."
Coulter quotes Newsweek as asking, "Is Star Wars Testing Worth the Price?" The Los Angeles Times ran a piece by one John Tirman, head of a "World Peace" organization, calling Reagan’s defiance at Reykjavik a "colossal mistake," a "fumble" and a "debacle."
It was a debacle – for the Soviet Union.
Coulter sums up Reagan’s Cold War victory – won in spite of "liberal" opposition – by noting that "Reagan had spent six years bleeding the Soviet Union from every limb. By walking away from the table at Reykjavik rather than abandoning SDI, Reagan consigned the U.S.S.R. to the dustbin of history. His victory over the evil empire was complete. The rest was paperwork."
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Media Bias
Russia
"Inconceivable!" -- New York Times
"Zees word, I do not theenk you know what it means." -- Inigo Montoya
Reminds me of the tee-shirt Sheryl Crow wore on some awards program, with the words "War is Not the Answer." Some astute Freeper posted her, "War is Not the Answer -- VICTORY is!"
This trick is used all the time and it never fails to infuriate me.
Close, but it's "You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means."
Yes, and if he had there would still be the communist bloc to deal with. Another benefit would be that Sadam would probably be in control the Persian Gulf.
("The Human Uzi") LOL..I just got my copy of "Treason" and look forward to a long uninterupted stretch of reading time. I think it's better for Ann Coulter to appear on assorted network and cable "spots" rather than owning a time slot where she ends up preaching to the choir.
Probably never since no network could risk having her on and state something like this from her Hardball interview:
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about this book. This book is very interesting, and I am not going to comment. I am going to let you comment on it. “The principal difference between fifth columnists in the cold war versus the war on terrorism is that you could sit next to a communist in a subway without asphyxiating.” What does that mean? I just want to know. What does that mean? I want to know.COULTER: It means what it says. The second difference is that, in far more time, the enemy that we’re up against now has killed far fewer people.
MATTHEWS: So—but the enemy smells. Is that your knock against Arabs? I mean, that’s your point here. You sit next to them and you are asphyxiated while sitting next to them?
COULTER: I’m just drawing the differences between the cold war and the current war.
MATTHEWS: Is that a way to win friends in the Arab and Islamic world, by saying they stink?
COULTER: I think it is a way to get people to read my book, so I thank you.
In East Berlin [after the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983,] there was a mad scramble to find out about American war plans for Nicaragua. "Indications are intensifying regarding a possible U.S. military engagement in Nicaragua," read a secret Stasi memorandum. "It has been learned from leading circles close to J. [Jesse] Jackson that the Reagan Administration is preparing for a direct armed intervention in Nicaragua."
In a footnote, Schweizer cites as his source "Stasi memoranum of September 24, 1984: John O. Koehler collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University."
Gelb was the author of the Pentagon papers which Ellsberg illegally gave to the New York Times. Halperin, Gelb and Ellsberg sandbagged Kissinger and Nixon on that project.
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