Hard to believe Reagan’s Chief of Staff Howard Baker and National Security Advisor Colin Powell suggested to President Reagan to remove that line from his speech. Reagan overruled them and 45,000 Germans gave President Reagan a thunderous applause and cracks in the Berlin Wall began to form.
“There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Bush might have gotten the 1980 nomination himself if Reagan weren’t in the race, and he could have kept his more liberal views in the process. If he had not been the sitting VP in 1988 he could have faced a tough fight against whoever was in that position, but he already had a strong enough resume that he might have had a chance anyway.
Ronald Reagan actually prolonged the collapse the Soviet Union and subsequent removal of the Iron Curtain.
The combination of Mr. Reagan’s inflammatory and jingoistic rhetoric, together with his Star Wars program and the largest peacetime defense buildup in history, enabled the Soviet Union to mobilize against the “American threat” and re-invigorated an already-collapsing Soviet economy.
Had Ronald Reagan been less showman and more statesman, the Soviet Union would have collapsed years before it did — taking down the Iron Curtain with it.
Sadly, the comforting lie is often embraced more easily than the uncomfortable truth.
Because Reagan built up our dilapidated defenses, that in and of itself forces the Soviets to spend monies on their defenses, rather than on other necessary programs that could help the Soviet people.
In the former Soviet Union, just as in the US (and every other nation with a GDP worth looking at), spending money on defense pumps up the entire economy. Money does not disappear when it is “spent”, it changes hands. I thought you were a “gold standard” guy — if so, you ought to know this.
My understanding, rather, was that Gorbachev’s reforms actually caused a significant internal collapse with the nomenklatura essentially transforming itself into an owner class. Not a pretty sight. Yes, there was “malaise” under Brezhnev but I don’t think that the Soviet Union collapsed out of boredom. It certainly wasn’t a cascade of secessions and territorial losses.
I don’t see where your quoted source indicates that Reagan deferred the collapse. I’d argue he was simply irrelevant to the collapse.
I have no idea how credible this is, I just pulled it from a selection of similar google hits.
I invite your attention to, for example, Reagan’s ‘Tear Down This Wall Myth” (Robert Parry, January 29, 2011). From the near the end of the piece (“Slowing the Inevitable”, emphasis mine):
In [former State Department official George F. ] Kennan’s view, the escalation of U.S. military pressure delayed, rather than accelerated, the demise of the Soviet dictatorship.
“The extreme militarization of American discussion and policy, as promoted by hard-line circles in this country over the ensuing 25 years, had the consistent effect of strengthening comparable hard-line elements in the Soviet Union.” Kennan argued.
“The more American political leadership was seen in Moscow as committed to an ultimate military, rather than political, resolution of Soviet-American tensions, the greater was the tendency in Moscow to tighten the controls by both party and police, and the greater the braking effect on all liberalizing tendencies within the regime.
“Thus the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook that country at the end of the 1980s.
“What did the greatest damage was … the unnecessarily belligerent and threatening tone in which many of [the U.S. military strategies] were publicly carried forward. For this, both of our great political parties deserve a share of the blame.
“Nobody ‘won’ the Cold War. It was a long and costly political rivalry, fueled on both sides by unreal and exaggerated estimates of the intentions and strength of the other side.”
In other words, in Kennan’s view, Reagan – along with “Team B” and other U.S. hardliners – did more to extend the Cold War than to “win” it.
It also was a tragic by-product of the Reagan narrative on “winning the Cold War” that the argument was used to rationalize some of the most barbaric actions ever committed by the United States and its allies, especially in support of right-wing “death squads” that terrorized the countries of Latin America and other parts of the Third World in the Reagan era.
Without the rationale of fighting the “Evil Empire,” these acts of Nazi-like brutality would have been easily judged as indefensible war crimes, with Reagan and other right-wing American apologists viewed as accomplices.
But none of this ugly reality is likely to find its way into the U.S. news media’s adulation over the late Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday.
Instead, the American people will get a steady dose of Reagan shouting, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” – and the Wall magically coming down.
Bush pushed NAFTA and gutted blue collar middle-class jobs. Bush is the reason I voted for Perot in 92′ and Pat Buchanan in the Republican primary.
I wish Dukakis won in 88.
I always thought the primary opposition to NAFTA was from the left.
If Product A can be built in Mexico for a fraction of the cost of building Product A in the USA, Product A will be built in Mexico. All of the protective tariffs that you would like to see restored would have done is to make US manufacturing even less competitive, and thus even less able to export, than it has been for the last 20 years. This would have made the trade deficit worse, and not better, and would have made the post-crisis recession all the worse.
I don’t think that either political party has an answer to the decline in blue collar middle-class jobs. Each just uses the situation as reinforcement for what they already believe.
Per usual, the promises made by NAFTA supporters never came true. Al Gore said passing NAFTA would stem illegals from Mexico from crossing the border into the USA. Now he is hustling global warming predictions and fixes.
While many good Democrats voted nay, prominent progressives like Lahey and Kennedy supported NAFTA. Republicans like Rick Santorum voted nay.
As the Duke himself has now stated many, many times to Democratic audiences, “You can blame me – if I hadn’t lost to the ‘old man’, we would have never had Junior!”
Oct. 7 was Oliver North’s 70th birthday. I know you wouldn’t want to miss such an important and progressive milestone again. Also, while you’re celebrating Christmas, don’t forget that it’s Karl Rove’s birthday. I’m sure he’d appreciate a card.
We have a man who ascended to the highest office after decades of public service. The diarist did not praise his presidency and I suspect did not ever vote for him. He simply wished him a happy 90th birthday. There are times to remember to separate personal from political, and this is not the thread for trashing a legacy. This is a time for if you can’t say something nice about someone… Even if someone were to post a birthday wish for North or Rove I would not use that thread to talk smack about them despite having no use for them politically. After all, while I am celebrating Christmas as you allude to I will be trying to remember the message of the One whose birthday many of us do celebrate that day.
This is a time for if you can’t say something nice about someone…
Why, exactly? If this were an obituary, I would not jump in to remind everyone what a privileged, silver-spoon twit the guy is. He’s not dead, and he had a direct deleterious effect on my country, so I don’t feel any need to go easy on him. Maybe for some, the appeal is that that he’s American royalty, but I do not subscribe to that outlook.
Why do you feel he deserves a birthday message? He wasn’t a good President, or even a good person. He’s earned every bit of crap I can put on any thread about him. Are we going to celebrate his son’s birthdays, too? If so, you can expect me to remind everyone what a dick he is, too.
What did he ever do to me? He helped sell my country to his buddies in the oil industry and as you might have seen on Kos, Poppy’s
legacy can be summed up in three words he introduced to enable Republicans and their conservative amen corner to brush off charges of their own corruption and law-breaking: “criminalization of politics.” From Iran-Contra, Plamegate and Tom Delay to the U.S. attorneys purge and his son’s regime of detainee torture, 41’s criminalizing politics defense has been part of the GOP scandal playbook ever since
Yes Christopher, he’s one of the people who have done everything in their power to screw things up. He doesn’t deserve birthday wishes any more than his son does, or Nixon or Reagan did. A suggestion: if you’re going to actually be progressive, you might consider not giving the silver-spoon crowd a pass just because they’re members of the upper crust. We decided 230-some years ago that we weren’t going to do that any more.
…it starts with seeing and acknowledging the human side of all of our fellow citizens including (and maybe even especially) those we don’t like. This isn’t about who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. It is about basic respect, decency, and dignity. I missed the memo that said we were going to stop treating each other respectfully 230 years ago. I do not completely share the Kos-quoted assessment of his legacy. He was much better than the party that came after him. Even his son has redeemable qualities compared to what that party has become.
Bill has had presidential ambitions known to his friends since high school and actually considered the 1988 race himself. If Dukakis had won in 1988 and again in 1992 I can see VP Bentsen not running due to age and Clinton possibly winning in 1996.
Indirectly, I am absolutely furious at the cartoon that McCain has become and his reaction to Iraq yesterday is in part, why I was trying to juxtaposition Bush 41 against the current crop of brain dead rejects the GOP is offering now.
31 years ago this October, Ronald Reagan sacrificed 242 US Marines to his ego, then pulled the survivors out of Lebanon so everyone could move on to his glorious triumph in capturing the impregnable fortress of Grenada. He left Islamic Jihad, the destroyers of the Marine barracks alone, knowing their guilt would surely make them feel really bad.
But Ross Perot, who paid [McCain’s first wife Carol’s] medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics.
‘McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,’ he said.
In an address to the American Legion today [Sept 7, 1988], Vice President George Bush astonished the veterans by declaring, “Today is Pearl Harbor Day,” jumping the gun by three months.
Bush’s error dumbfounded the 6,000 people attending the 70th annual convention of the American Legion and set them to murmuring among themselves during his speech.
“Today, you remember. I wonder how many Americans remember. Today is Pearl Harbor Day,” the Republican presidential nominee said to a stunned audience.
“Forty-seven years ago to this very day, we were hit and hit hard at Pearl Harbor and we were not ready,” Bush said.
Who can forget the honor and respect he brought to the office of President when he puked on the Japanese Prime Minister?
And yes, he had a significant role in Iran-Contra, bot during and after the fact.
On December 24, 1992, twelve days before former Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger was to go to trial, Bush pardoned him.1 In issuing pardons to Weinberger and five other Iran/contra defendants, President Bush charged that Independent Counsel’s prosecutions represented the “criminalization of policy differences.”
President Bush also pardoned former National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane, former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, former CIA Central American Task Force Chief Alan D. Fiers, Jr., former CIA Deputy Director for Operations Clair E. George, and former CIA Counter-Terrorism Chief Duane R. Clarridge. The Weinberger pardon marked the first time a President ever pardoned someone in whose trial he might have been called as a witness, because the President was knowledgeable of factual events underlying the case.
fixating on his parachute jumping.
The effects Bush’s career, and his long, malign involvement with spooks and Central American death squads can best be seen in the Southwest, where children are fleeing the countries he helped ruin.
…on whether he were planning to celebrate again by jumping from a parachute?
One of the few Republicans I’ve voted for. He was a friend of my Dad’s.
Hard to believe Reagan’s Chief of Staff Howard Baker and National Security Advisor Colin Powell suggested to President Reagan to remove that line from his speech. Reagan overruled them and 45,000 Germans gave President Reagan a thunderous applause and cracks in the Berlin Wall began to form.
“There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
God, I really miss Ronald Reagan….
The NYT began publishing the Pentagon Papers.
But that is also irrelevant to this thread.
That is why it’s relevant.
Bush might have gotten the 1980 nomination himself if Reagan weren’t in the race, and he could have kept his more liberal views in the process. If he had not been the sitting VP in 1988 he could have faced a tough fight against whoever was in that position, but he already had a strong enough resume that he might have had a chance anyway.
Ronald Reagan actually prolonged the collapse the Soviet Union and subsequent removal of the Iron Curtain.
The combination of Mr. Reagan’s inflammatory and jingoistic rhetoric, together with his Star Wars program and the largest peacetime defense buildup in history, enabled the Soviet Union to mobilize against the “American threat” and re-invigorated an already-collapsing Soviet economy.
Had Ronald Reagan been less showman and more statesman, the Soviet Union would have collapsed years before it did — taking down the Iron Curtain with it.
Sadly, the comforting lie is often embraced more easily than the uncomfortable truth.
Because Reagan built up our dilapidated defenses, that in and of itself forces the Soviets to spend monies on their defenses, rather than on other necessary programs that could help the Soviet people.
I do believe deep down you know this to be true.
In the former Soviet Union, just as in the US (and every other nation with a GDP worth looking at), spending money on defense pumps up the entire economy. Money does not disappear when it is “spent”, it changes hands. I thought you were a “gold standard” guy — if so, you ought to know this.
Sorry to bust your bubble.
My understanding, rather, was that Gorbachev’s reforms actually caused a significant internal collapse with the nomenklatura essentially transforming itself into an owner class. Not a pretty sight. Yes, there was “malaise” under Brezhnev but I don’t think that the Soviet Union collapsed out of boredom. It certainly wasn’t a cascade of secessions and territorial losses.
I don’t see where your quoted source indicates that Reagan deferred the collapse. I’d argue he was simply irrelevant to the collapse.
I have no idea how credible this is, I just pulled it from a selection of similar google hits.
I invite your attention to, for example, Reagan’s ‘Tear Down This Wall Myth” (Robert Parry, January 29, 2011). From the near the end of the piece (“Slowing the Inevitable”, emphasis mine):
The reference in question is to At a Century’s Ending: Reflections, 1982-1985, by George F. Kennan.
I cannot imagine why anyone calling themselves “progressive” would celebrate anything to do with this person.
He wasn’t so bad. He gave us Clarence Thomas!
Don’t forget David Souter to SCOTUS.
Bush pushed NAFTA and gutted blue collar middle-class jobs. Bush is the reason I voted for Perot in 92′ and Pat Buchanan in the Republican primary.
I wish Dukakis won in 88.
I always thought the primary opposition to NAFTA was from the left.
If Product A can be built in Mexico for a fraction of the cost of building Product A in the USA, Product A will be built in Mexico. All of the protective tariffs that you would like to see restored would have done is to make US manufacturing even less competitive, and thus even less able to export, than it has been for the last 20 years. This would have made the trade deficit worse, and not better, and would have made the post-crisis recession all the worse.
I don’t think that either political party has an answer to the decline in blue collar middle-class jobs. Each just uses the situation as reinforcement for what they already believe.
Per usual, the promises made by NAFTA supporters never came true. Al Gore said passing NAFTA would stem illegals from Mexico from crossing the border into the USA. Now he is hustling global warming predictions and fixes.
While many good Democrats voted nay, prominent progressives like Lahey and Kennedy supported NAFTA. Republicans like Rick Santorum voted nay.
NAFTA was bad because random fact.
As the Duke himself has now stated many, many times to Democratic audiences, “You can blame me – if I hadn’t lost to the ‘old man’, we would have never had Junior!”
Oct. 7 was Oliver North’s 70th birthday. I know you wouldn’t want to miss such an important and progressive milestone again. Also, while you’re celebrating Christmas, don’t forget that it’s Karl Rove’s birthday. I’m sure he’d appreciate a card.
We have a man who ascended to the highest office after decades of public service. The diarist did not praise his presidency and I suspect did not ever vote for him. He simply wished him a happy 90th birthday. There are times to remember to separate personal from political, and this is not the thread for trashing a legacy. This is a time for if you can’t say something nice about someone… Even if someone were to post a birthday wish for North or Rove I would not use that thread to talk smack about them despite having no use for them politically. After all, while I am celebrating Christmas as you allude to I will be trying to remember the message of the One whose birthday many of us do celebrate that day.
Why, exactly? If this were an obituary, I would not jump in to remind everyone what a privileged, silver-spoon twit the guy is. He’s not dead, and he had a direct deleterious effect on my country, so I don’t feel any need to go easy on him. Maybe for some, the appeal is that that he’s American royalty, but I do not subscribe to that outlook.
If you feel a burning desire to critique his legacy start another thread.
Why do you feel he deserves a birthday message? He wasn’t a good President, or even a good person. He’s earned every bit of crap I can put on any thread about him. Are we going to celebrate his son’s birthdays, too? If so, you can expect me to remind everyone what a dick he is, too.
…says a lot more about you than it does about him. What did he ever do to you? It sounds personal.
What did he ever do to me? He helped sell my country to his buddies in the oil industry and as you might have seen on Kos, Poppy’s
Yes Christopher, he’s one of the people who have done everything in their power to screw things up. He doesn’t deserve birthday wishes any more than his son does, or Nixon or Reagan did. A suggestion: if you’re going to actually be progressive, you might consider not giving the silver-spoon crowd a pass just because they’re members of the upper crust. We decided 230-some years ago that we weren’t going to do that any more.
…it starts with seeing and acknowledging the human side of all of our fellow citizens including (and maybe even especially) those we don’t like. This isn’t about who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. It is about basic respect, decency, and dignity. I missed the memo that said we were going to stop treating each other respectfully 230 years ago. I do not completely share the Kos-quoted assessment of his legacy. He was much better than the party that came after him. Even his son has redeemable qualities compared to what that party has become.
It all part of the 3 dimensional chess game.
Bill has had presidential ambitions known to his friends since high school and actually considered the 1988 race himself. If Dukakis had won in 1988 and again in 1992 I can see VP Bentsen not running due to age and Clinton possibly winning in 1996.
He served in the Navy throughout the Korean War era, until Oct 1953.
There was a string of veterans, but I believe the diarist was pointing out there hasn’t been one since and maybe won’t be for a while.
Indirectly, I am absolutely furious at the cartoon that McCain has become and his reaction to Iraq yesterday is in part, why I was trying to juxtaposition Bush 41 against the current crop of brain dead rejects the GOP is offering now.
FYI, McCain is absolutely correct about firing all of Obama’s national security team. Stay tuned for my next diary.
Oh, I can’t wait.
31 years ago this October, Ronald Reagan sacrificed 242 US Marines to his ego, then pulled the survivors out of Lebanon so everyone could move on to his glorious triumph in capturing the impregnable fortress of Grenada. He left Islamic Jihad, the destroyers of the Marine barracks alone, knowing their guilt would surely make them feel really bad.
Reagan cut and run in Lebanon.
He negotiated with terrorists in Iran.
I’d like to see his long form birth certificate.
McCain is a total dipstick. He made a complete ass of himself in Kiev back in March. He is totally out of step with the AMERICAN people.
From The wife John McCain callously left behind
Also see Make-Believe Maverick for a thorough demolition of the McCain facade.
Who can forget the honor and respect he brought to the office of President when he puked on the Japanese Prime Minister?
And yes, he had a significant role in Iran-Contra, bot during and after the fact.
Not a jolly good fellow.
The other two are just minor embarrassments.
fixating on his parachute jumping.
The effects Bush’s career, and his long, malign involvement with spooks and Central American death squads can best be seen in the Southwest, where children are fleeing the countries he helped ruin.