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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jttmab who wrote (6222)	8/25/2001 6:14:41 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

I do not recall anything showing conclusively that it was pointless to put pressure on the Soviet Union. Do you have any links?

To: jttmab who wrote (6222)	8/25/2001 7:01:37 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

What they said... "It is a vulgar mistake to think that most people in Eastern Europe are miserable." --Paul Samuelson, Professor of Economics, MIT, Nobel Laureate, Economics, 1981. "The Soviet Union is not now, nor will it be during the next decade, in the throes of a true systematic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability that suffice to endure the deepest difficulties." --Seweryn Bialer, Professor of Political Science, Columbia University, Foreign Affairs Magazine, 1982/3. "I found more goods in the shops, more food in the markets, more cars on the street ... those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse, ready with one small push to go over the brink are wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves." --Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., 1982. "All evidence indicates that the Reagan administration has abandoned both containment and detonate for a very different objective: destroying the Soviet Union as a world power and possibly even its Communist system. [This is a] potentially fatal form of Sovietphobia ... a pathological rather than a healthy response to the Soviet Union." --Stephen Cohen, Princeton University Sovietologist, 1983. "That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene...One sees it in the appearance of well-being of the people on the streets...and the general aspect of restaurants, theaters, and shops... Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower." --John Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of Economics, Harvard University, 1984. "On the economic front, for the first time in its history the Soviet leadership was able to pursue successfully a policy of guns and butter as well as growth ... The Soviet citizen-worker, peasant, and professional - has become accustomed in the Brezhnev period to an uninterrupted upward trend in his well-being ..." --John Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of Economics, Harvard University, New Yorker Magazine, 1984. "What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth...The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth." --Paul Samuelson, MIT, Nobel laureate in economics, 1985. "It's clear that the ideologies of Communism, socialism and capitalism are all in trouble." --James Reston, New York Times, 1985. "Can economic command significantly compress and accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. In 1920 Russia was but a minor figure in the economic councils of the world. Today it is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States." --Lester Thurow, Professor of Economics, MIT, The Economic Problem, 1989. What he said... "The years ahead will be great ones for our country, for the cause of freedom and for the spread of civilization. The West won't contain Communism, it will transcend Communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we'll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written." --Ronald Reagan, Commencement Address at University of Notre Dame, May 1981. "In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis - a crisis where the demands of the economic order are colliding directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union. What we see here is a political structure that no longer corresponds to its economic base, a society where productive forces are hampered by political ones. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying freedom and human dignity to its citizens. A march of freedom and democracy will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history." --Ronald Reagan, Address to the British Parliament, June 1982. "Let us pray for the salvation of all those who live in the totalitarian darkness - pray that they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they [Soviet rulers] preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.... I urge you to beware the temptation ... to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of any evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil." --Ronald Reagan, Speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, March 8, 1983. "In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards... Even today, the Soviet Union cannot feed itself. The inescapable conclusion is that freedom is the victor. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" --Ronald Reagan, Speech at the Brandenburg Gate, 1987. What was said after the fall of the USSR... "Ronald Reagan's appeal ["Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!", Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, June 12th 1987], laughed at in the East as reverie and dismissed in the West as being a utopian dream, was to become reality a good two years later with the collapse of East Germany. After the fall of the Wall on 9 November 1989, Brandenburg Gate was officially opened on December 22nd of that year." --Berliner-Morgenpost International, From Fantasy to Wonderful Reality, 1997. "Ladies and gentlemen, if it had not been for the Reagan defense buildup, if the United States had not demonstrated that it is willing not only to stand up for freedom but to devote considerable sums of money to defending it, we probably would not be sitting here today having a free discussion between Russians and Americans." --Boris Pinsker, Soviet Economist. "American policy in the 1980s was a catalyst for the collapse of the Soviet Union." --Oleg Kalugin, former KGB general (Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union, page xi.) "[Reagan administration policies] were a major factor in the demise of the Soviet system." --Yevgenny Novikov, former senior staff member of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee (CPCC) (Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union, page xi.) "Some 100 prominent Poles have formed a committee to rechristen one of Warsaw's central squares 'Reagan Square.' In this they show a splendid sense of history, and of gratitude. The committee's honorary chairman is Marian Krzaklewski, head of Solidarity, who says, 'Reagan was the main author of the victory of the Free World over the Evil Empire.' National Review's old friend and contributor, Radek Sikorski, now Poland's deputy foreign minister, is chairman of the committee. The square in question is currently called 'Constitution Square,' and the constitution it refers to is the bogus, Communist one of 1952. Reagan Square would join plazas named after George Washington and Woodrow Wilson. Obviously enough, we wish the committee well." --National Review, July 26, 1999, pg. 12, column 1. "We are very happy that the coup failed because we have now really destroyed the communist empire, the Soviet state, and of course, as Ronald Reagan said, it was indeed an evil empire and we are glad that it is gone from the earth." --Andrei Kozyrev, Yeltsin Foreign Minister, speaking to ABC's Sam Donaldson, after the communist hard-liners coup attempt failed in 1991. godblessronaldreagan.com

To: jttmab who wrote (6222)	8/25/2001 7:04:23 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

From the American Enterprise Institute: Justice to Ronald Reagan By Dinesh D'Souza Many eminent commentators derided Ronald Reagan's policy toward the Soviet Union during his presidency. But events vindicated President Reagan's confidence that communism was failing, and history will credit him over all others for helping to bring about its demise. Our current economic boom is in large part a legacy of the end of the Cold War, which confirmed the triumph of capitalism over socialism, opened up world markets for American investment, and enabled the sharp reduction in military allocations that has helped bring the budget virtually into balance. Yet many historians and pundits refuse to credit Ronald Reagan's policies for helping to bring about the Cold War victory. Rather, they insist that Soviet communism suffered from chronic economic problems and predictably collapsed, as Strobe Talbott, a journalist at Time and now President Clinton's deputy secretary of state, put it, "not because of anything the outside world has done or not done . . . but because of defects and inadequacies at its core." If so, it is reasonable to expect that the inevitable Soviet collapse would have been foreseen by these experts. Let us see what some of them had to say about the Soviet system during the 1980s. In 1982, the learned Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer of Columbia University wrote in Foreign Affairs, "The Soviet Union is not now nor will it be during the next decade in the throes of a true systemic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability." This view was seconded that same year by the eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who observed that "those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse" are "wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves." John Kenneth Galbraith, the distinguished Harvard economist, wrote in 1984: "That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene. . . . One sees it in the appearance of solid well-being of the people on the streets . . . and the general aspect of restaurants, theaters, and shops. . . . Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower." Equally imaginative was the assessment of Paul Samuelson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Nobel laureate in economics, writing in the 1985 edition of his widely used textbook: "What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth. . . . The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth." Columnist James Reston of the New York Times in June 1985 revealed his capacity for sophisticated even-handedness when he dismissed the possibility of the collapse of communism on the grounds that Soviet problems were not different from those in the U.S. "It is clear that the ideologies of Communism, socialism, and capitalism are all in trouble." But the genius award undoubtedly goes to Lester Thurow, another MIT economist and well-known author who, as late as 1989, wrote, "Can economic command significantly . . . accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. . . . Today the Soviet Union is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States." Throughout the 1980s, most of these pundits derisively condemned Mr. Reagan's policies. Mr. Talbott faulted the Reagan administration for espousing "the early fifties goal of rolling back Soviet domination of Eastern Europe," an objective he considered misguided and unrealistic. "Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end," Mr. Talbott scoffed, adding that if the Soviet economy was in a crisis of any kind, "it is a permanent, institutionalized crisis with which the U.S.S.R. has learned to live." Foreseeing the End of Communism Perhaps one should not be too hard on the wise men. After all, explains Arthur Schlesinger in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, "History has an abiding capacity to outwit our certitudes. No one foresaw these changes." Wrong again, professor. Ronald Reagan foresaw them. In 1981, Mr. Reagan told the students and faculty at the University of Notre Dame, "The West won't contain Communism. It will transcend Communism. We will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written." In 1982, Mr. Reagan told the British Parliament in London: "In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis. . . . But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union." Mr. Reagan added that "it is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying freedom and human dignity to its citizens," and he predicted that if the Western alliance remained strong it would produce a "march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history." In 1987 Mr. Reagan spoke at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin. "In the Communist world," he said, "we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards. . . . Even today, the Soviet Union cannot feed itself." Thus the "inescapable conclusion" in his view was that "freedom is the victor." Then Mr. Reagan said, "General Secretary Gorbachev . . . come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Not long after this, the wall did come tumbling down, and Mr. Reagan's prophecies all came true. These were not just results Mr. Reagan predicted. He intended the outcome. He implemented policies that were aimed at producing it. He was denounced for those policies, by Mr. Talbott among many others. Still, in the end his objective was achieved. Margaret Thatcher remarked a few years ago that Mr. Reagan would go down in history as the man who "won the Cold War without firing a shot." Perhaps it is too much to ask the wise to admit their errors. But it's only right that we who are enjoying the benefits of the post-Cold War boom should give Mr. Reagan due credit during his lifetime for his prescient statesmanship. aei.org

To: jttmab who wrote (6222)	8/25/2001 7:20:35 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93284

WISHING REAGAN AWAY By Balint Vazsonyi [First published March 20, 2001 in The Washington Times, under the title “Trying to wish Reagan away.”] I had no plans to continue the Reagan theme after reporting on the christening of the USS Ronald Reagan, but two items changed my mind. Last Thursday, on CBS/TV’s “Late Show,” Cokie Roberts made a sour reference to it (“Don’t you get the feeling we are about to name the whole country after Reagan?”), and on Saturday the Washington Post published an article by former U.S. senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Although his topic appears to be criticism of the Central Intelligence Agency, the piece turns out to strip President Reagan, again, of his magnum opus – winning the Cold War. Cokie Roberts’ tasteless remark followed her bursts of adolescent giggles at replays of President George W. Bush bumping his head as he boarded a helicopter. But Senator Moynihan is a national icon, a history scholar, and one whose service as permanent U.S. representative at the United Nations during rocky times was legendary. Senator Moynihan’s article recalls his resignation as vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when in 1984 the CIA concealed mining of harbors in Nicaragua and then accused the protesting chairman, the late Barry Goldwater, of failing memory. The new president’s men, pleads the senator, are not to keep anything from the commander in chief. That, for sure, is sound advice. But as for rationale, Senator Moynihan cites his criticism of the CIA made in the early 1990s that “a more timely appreciation of Gorbachev would have been greatly to America’s advantage.” He then claims: “Actually, this critique began in the 1970s, when I became convinced the days of the Soviet Union were numbered.” How so? Gorbachev did not even rise to power until 1985. And in the 1970s, America was reeling from a virtual war by OPEC on its energy supply, from a tumbling currency suddenly off its fixed parity with gold, from attacks on traditional institutions by a generation that cut its teeth on protest movements, and from a collapsed presidency. If any country looked as if its days were numbered, it was the United States. Its airliners were hijacked with impunity; its military seemed unable to land a few helicopters on sand. President Carter told us to accept $2-a-gallon gas (if we could stay in line at the pump long enough), demonstrated that American power was now limited to a boycott of the Moscow Olympics, and watched helplessly as soaring interest rates relegated the American dream of home ownership to tales of yore. America and Americans were held hostage in Iran by a medieval apparition, without an end in sight. By contrast, when Ronald Reagan was sworn in as 40th president, “the Soviet Block was triumphant everywhere...having even established beachheads in the Western Hemisphere in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada and threatening the Persian Gulf and its energy resources from Afghanistan. The Western Alliance was in retreat everywhere... Meanwhile the U.S.S.R. was rapidly closing in on what had once been a large Western lead in nuclear and missile technology,” writes Norman A. Bailey in “The Strategic Plan that won the Cold War,” published by the Potomac Foundation. The plan was officially designated “National Security Decision Directive [NSDD] No. 75,” and was signed by President Reagan on January 17, 1983. Its unassuming title, “U.S. Relations with the USSR,” appears at the head of a comprehensive prescription for winning a real war without firing a shot. Such strategic thinking – incorporating diplomacy, propaganda, economics, subversion, and military display – had few precedents in U.S. history. Achieving victory without sending troops to their death made it unique. No wonder such accomplishment by a “B-movie actor reciting script” is hard for intellectuals to stomach. And, since notions of an “unavoidable, automatic implosion” of the Soviet Union are equally unacceptable for anyone with a brain who claims any knowledge of the U.S.S.R., it was necessary to designate a person who brought it about. Hence the appointment of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev as Savior of the World. What did Mr. Gorbachev actually do? According to Senator Moynihan, he said he wanted to “free international relations from ideology and seek unity through diversity.” He also said the Soviet Union “no longer aspired to be the bearer of the ultimate truth.” He uttered both these earth-shaking pronouncements more than two years after Ronald Reagan was tarred and feathered by the world – and by plenty of Americans – for refusing to yield on the Strategic Defense Initiative at Reykjavik. Indeed, by the time Mr. Gorbachev spoke peace, the Soviet Union was no longer capable of war. Yet for Senator Moynihan, a couple of sentences by Gorbachev had done it all. “It was over,” he writes. “The Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union dissolved.” Just like that? Unless I am mistaken, President Reagan had the idea to call upon Mr. Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, and Secretary Gorbachev would have none of it. Had he responded to Reagan’s call, his many admirers would be justified as they experience episodes of what Rush Limbaugh calls “Gorbasm.” But it was Hungary’s and Austria’s collaboration in letting thousands of East German “tourists” escape to West Germany that led to the spontaneous dismantling of the Wall. And it was the monumental humiliation of Soviet military advisors and equipment before a global audience watching Desert Storm on CNN that brought about the collapse of the Russian Empire, of which the Soviet Union had been an extension. Why the need for clarity in viewing the past? Because once again we are debating missile defense, and the Russians once again are protesting America’s desire to be safe. Because while NSDD 75 succeeded in denying technology and U.S. economic support for Soviet strategic goals, just the opposite has happened under Clinton’s watch in the case of China. That’s cause for more worry than the senator has about the CIA. Apologies to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a great American. But Ronald Reagan’s accomplishment dwarfs everyone else’s in recent memory; it cannot be wished away. founding.org