Gorby tells it like it is

Tonight, I heard Doug Urbanski (who the fuck is he?) say that the Cold War is not over.
Huh?

 

In some small pockets of far eastern Europe ...
Sort of like that episode of Gilligan's Island where the marooned Japanese soldier won't admit the war ever ended.

 

Well, there's North Korea and Cuba.

 

Go back to skool, Henry. Maybe the local ding dong community college will let you audit a course.

 

There's a school of though out there that not only is the Cold War not over, but that we're still fighting the ending battles of WWI right now in Iraq.

Not endorsing it, mind you, but not dismissing it, either. All a matter of perception, I guess.

And dog's post is spot on. Reagan gets some credit, as do Pjp and Gorbachev, though I think his better efforts were in guiding the aftermath.

 

The Cold War died of natural causes. If Fredo were president then, he would have been taking a victory lap for that one, too.

 

One of the real fun things in this debate is going back and reading what Reagan's acolytes in the press -- especially George Will -- were writing about these events in real time. Most of them believed Gorbachev was running a ruse to "buy time" until the mighty USSR could steamroll us all.

 

The Russians lost the Cold War, ultimately, because they invaded a foreign country (Afghanistan), overextended themselves in a military sense, and an economy which was weak, collapsed. If it was a moral or economic failing, the Communists would have fallen before Reagan ever became president. Reagan pretty much told Gorbachev when they were in Iceland that the Soviets couldn't outspend the US in terms of the military. The result in our economy was increasing budget deficits during the Reagan years, and in 1986 Congress passed new tax laws which raised taxes; yeah, they said it wasn't a tax increase but when revenues increased that much, that's a tax increase. The deficits continued thru the Bush years, so that was a price we paid. I mention that to show the effect on our economy, but that was like a bad cold; the Russians got pneumonia and their economy collapsed.

Gorby deserves credit in recognizing that and not digging his heels in and risking a nuclear confrontation or exchange. The US would have come out better in any conflict. Both Kennedy and Reagan talked about the Russians passing us in missiles and military strength, but that was political bluster and was never a fact. A nuclear exchange would have been a disaster for the world. Gorbachev pretty much had to manage the mess he had been given by the three or four old creeps before him. He was not popular in Russia because of what he did, any maybe it was a Profiles In Courage type of thing.

 

Uhhh, try again Hej. Where should I look it up? The Hej Harry Blinders Encyclopedia?

Like Dog says, Reagan deserves some credit for ending the Cold War and driving one of the final nails into that morally and economically bankrupt system that is communism.

For that matter, so does every president since Harry Truman, all of whom wielded the hammer in various ways, shapes and forms.

Giving Reagan all the back-pats is intellectually dishonest, not to mention flat-out wrong.

 

Looks like he's giving the back pats to more people than just Reagan...

 

I do find it interesting that all the countries that still call themselves communists are ones against whom we directly took up arms -- NK, Cuba, Vietnam.

 

Reagan had it both ways. Nurture and warm Cold War ideology like a pet viper for years and make it look like you're being tough on the Russkies. Clamor about the Cold War and call for its termination and you cement your legacy as the one who ended it. He knew he could play either end of it, he wasn't functionally stupid like this unelected president.