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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (148775)	10/23/2004 12:41:55 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Bingo.....

To: Neocon who wrote (148775)	10/23/2004 8:26:04 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 281500

You might do more reading on the subject. The advent of rapid advances in computers in fact was a factor, but not in the simplistic way you are probably thinking of. One of the key requirements of SDI was massive computer capacity - this was something the west had the ability to deliver, but not Russia. It was a natural built-in advantage - one which the administration didn't even need to be the primary source of funds for, since it was rapid advances were already happening in the private sector anyway. The spin offs to the military were a nice coincidental present. Of course there is some chicken and egg going on here, some advances were directly funded by the military, including DARPANET the forrunner to the Internet. Telecommunications and media were very much a factor in the demise of the soviet union. Unlike China which had for all intents and purposes remained behind a wall for the entire first half of the 20th century, many Soviet states had lesser or greater communication and interaction with the west. You could find a Coke far easier in Moscow than in Peking. Due to the juxtaposition of many Soviet states to others with more liberal ideas, the progress of thinking happened at a much quicker pace than would ever have been possible, at the time, in China. The ease of flow of ideas was exponentially greater within the Warsaw pact countries, leading to internal support for men like Walesa and Havel. Czechoslovakia already had a history of fighting back against the Soviets - its no surprise that critical thinkers continued to find support among their countrymen there. How presumptuous and arrogant to presume that the people of these countries, including Russia itself, had no role or only a tiny part in their change. What do I know. I only speak a little Russian, more Czech, and still more Polish. I've got direct family ties in the region and have spent a goodly amount of time thinking about this over the years. Read some assorted works from Rand alumni and others - you will find many that agree with me, even among conservative think-tank folks. You clearly need to do more reading and stop believing everything which is handed to you as gospel.

To: Neocon who wrote (148775)	10/24/2004 9:01:08 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 281500

MOURNING IN AMERICA Dissidents cheered 'evil empire' speech Soviet prisoners 'ecstatic' over leader who told truth -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: June 8, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com While President Reagan's 1983 "evil empire" speech horrified many critics – and even some of his staff – as a "provocation," dissidents in at least one Soviet prison were "ecstatic." Natan Sharansky Israeli cabinet minister Natan Sharansky, who at the time was confined to an eight-by-10-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia, said his jailers gave him the special privilege of reading the communist newspaper Pravda. Splashed across the party organ's pages after Reagan's March 8, 1983, speech to the National Association of Evangelicals was condemnation of the president for having the gall to label the Soviet Union in such terms. But a far different take on the speech quickly began to echo among the dissidents, who spread the story by tapping on walls and talking through toilets. "We dissidents were ecstatic," Sharansky wrote in a column for the Jerusalem Post. "Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth – a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us," said Sharansky, a Russian Jew. In the speech, delivered in Orlando, Fla., Reagan urged the evangelical leaders to "speak out against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority." The president said, "[I]n your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride – the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil." Sharansky recalled, at the time, he could not have imagined he would be in the White House three years later telling his story to the president. The Israeli leader said he was aware there had been much criticism of Reagan's decision to cast the struggle between the superpowers as a battle between good and evil. "Well, Reagan was right and his critics were wrong," Sharansky said. Those same critics, Sharansky noted, "used to love calling Reagan a simpleton who saw the world through a primitive ideological prism and who would convey his ideas through jokes and anecdotes." Sharansky conceded that Reagan sometimes mixed up names, including one occasion in which the Israeli and his wife, Avital, were called "Mr. and Mrs. Shevardnadze," the name of the Soviet foreign minister. But Sharansky comments: "Reagan may have confused names and dates, but his moral compass was always good." "Today's leaders, in contrast," he says, "may know their facts and figures, but are often woefully confused about what should be the simplest distinctions between freedom and tyranny, democrats and terrorists." He concludes: "The legacy of President Reagan will surely endure. Armed with moral clarity, a deep faith in freedom, and the courage to follow his convictions, he was instrumental in helping the West win the Cold War and hundreds of millions of people behind the Iron Curtain win their freedom. "As one of those people, I can only express my deepest gratitude to this great leader. Believe me, I will take moral clarity and Shevardnadze any day." Sharansky was arrested in 1977 for protesting the Soviet Union's refusal to allow Russian Jews to emigrate to Israel. He was accused, however, of spying for the United States and spent eight years in a prison camp in Siberia. After public protest in the West, led by his wife, he was released in 1986 in a spy exchange between the U.S. and Soviet Union. He founded a Russian immigrant party in Israel in 1996 and became Israeli minister of industry and trade. Sharansky has held various cabinet posts since then, including deputy prime minister, and currently is minister of Jerusalem affairs. worldnetdaily.com