So what?

He won't be the reason people show up this time, and that bothers him...

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For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

Most rational people? Like who? You maybe?

I don't know of anyone in the academy or elsewhere who thinks Gorbachev would have acted to take the wall down. Gorbachev didn't know the wall was breached until after the fact.

The Soviet Union was in a death spiral from the mid-1970s on. Gorbachev just happened to be the guy who there when it crashed. The only thing I give him credit for is not killking a bunch of Russians as he went down.

Reagan wasn't the sole factor in the fall of the wall or the demise of the Soviet Union but the post I responded to implied that he was virtually a nonfactor. That is demonstrably false. The wall came down about three weeks after Reagan's speech, by the way. Proximity doesn't hurt.

He'll spend the day in mourning.

It was NOT Gorbatchew, it was NOT Reagan who brought down the wall, it was the people of the former GDR.

Anywas, Kennedy demanded the wall to be torn down long, long before Reagan even was thought of as inhabitant of the White House.

So give the credit to him , not to the guy who merely repeated what had been said before thousands of times by thousands of people.

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"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse
of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion.
The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner
as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit (debt) expansion,
or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." - Ludwig von Mises

The wall was brought down by the people who lived next to it. They needed no permission from Reagan.

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Uhm... dontcha guys think that maaaaybe Reagan deserves a bit of credit for forcing the Soviets into an arms race they had no hope of winning, further crippling their economy? Isn't it kind of blatantly partisan to suggest that he was a doddering old dotard who had no impact on ending the cold war?

Also, I'd just like to point out that Reagan and JFK were reading out of the same playbook, and it seemed to work out pretty well for both of them (well, ok, except for the getting shot part...). I mean, they both cut taxes by a good percentage, they both faced down the Ruskies (Cuban Missile Crisis and the End of Detante), they both tried to unite both sides of the aisle in a common goal instead of scapegoating the out party, both had a strong anti-communist fervor, both spoke with grandiosity concerning the US, which is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly when inspiration is needed.

Personal habits aside, they were very much the same leader. Much as partisan members of both parties may hate to admit it, Reagan may have done exactly as JFK did, and vice versa, from a foreign policy and economic standpoint, and the reverse is also true.

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He's come to save the day!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVFdAJRVm94

i think the arms race was underway long before reagan was a candidate.

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"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good." --Thomas Paine

yes it was, but Reagan built a 600 ship navy, ratcheted up R&D, stealth etc., pushed back ala the deployment of Pershings in Europe, AND don't discount Mathias Rust, and his spectacle as well, the soviets ,mulling the advent of our Stealth technology breakthrough and at the time could not track and stop a Cessna flown by a civilian over 500 miles of soviet heartland, to land in Moscow....... it was to say the least a shock and brought a lot to head.

Reagan could have made a deal at Reykjavik, but didn’t, don’t discount all of that either.


He followed through with an agressive agenda, 'Ich ben ien berliner" etc. that had lasped ala carter.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

oh.

well then i guess you're right. the cold war was single-handedly won by reagan and no one else had anything to do with it.

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"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good." --Thomas Paine

Ahhh, the Murdoch driven blogosphere.

I don't think anyone is saying that. As I mentioned before, Reagan and JFK were largely the same leader. All our presidents - with the possible exception of the hopelessly ineffective Carter - played a role. What we suggest is that Reagan's policies helped bring the matter to a close years before it would otherwise have been resolved.

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He's come to save the day!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVFdAJRVm94

RAHM EMANUEL Israel Terrorist---Obama adviser.Dirty Secret..

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-b..._rahm_emanuala

Son of a Zionist Terrorist: Rahm Emanuel’s Dirty Secret
Christopher Bollyn


Greg Bacon's blog / Wake Up From Your Slumber

The new "golden boy" of the Democrat Party, the Israeli-American congressman Rahm Emanuel, is the son of terrorist. Really, I am not making this up, the chief power-broker of the Democrat Party, the 5-and-a-half foot foul-mouthed Israeli named Rahm, is the son of terrorist – a real living terrorist.

So, what do we do as citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave fighting the War on Terror? Do we run and hide from the foul-mouthed little Israeli who danced ballet and swears for effect - or do we laugh? Or do we demand answers? How can we respect a U.S. Congressman who served in a foreign army and whose father was a terrorist?

Rep. Rahm Benjamin Emanuel, the Democrat congressman for the 5th District of Illinois in Chicago is the son of an Israeli terrorist. Rahm's father, Benjamin, was a member of the Irgun, the Zionist terrorist organization that coined a new word as they blew up hotels, train stations, and other buildings in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s.

Rahm was an Israeli citizen until he was 18 years old, when for obvious reasons he hid his Israeli passport in his underwear drawer. In 1991, however, he pulled his Israeli passport out and went and reportedly joined the Israeli Army to defend Zion from Saddam's Scuds.

Irgun, the army of his father, is short for Irgun Zvai Leumi, which supposedly means something like "National Military Organization" in Hebrew. As a matter of fact, the Irgun was simply a terrorist Zionist group that operated in Palestine from 1931 to 1948. They killed innocent Palestinians and British soldiers and blew up buildings.

After 1948 they became part of the new Israeli government and did the same thing. In September 2001 they put their skills to work in New York City and Washington to kick start the "war on terror" - a conflict long promoted by their chief architect, Bibi Netanyahu, son of the former secretary of Ze'ev Jabotinsky. [Ze'ev's former name was Vladimir]

The Irgun even has a website with pictures of the buildings they blew up before they demolished the World Trade Center with Thermite and high explosives:

(Note: There are numerous pictures of Irgun terrorist activities at this link.)

In Israel, the Irgun is referred to as Etzel, an acronym of the group's Hebrew initials. The Irgun was considered a terrorist organization by the British authorities as well as by mainstream Zionist and Jewish organizations, such as the Jewish Agency, the Haganah and the Histadrut. (It just has not made it onto the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations – even after blowing up the World Trade Center. Some people are slow to learn.)

read the rest on the link.

Reagan had a plan that put in place the fall of the Soviet Union.
1. He undermined them economically by slowing down their oil industry development. They wanted oil industry technology and he stopped them from getting it.
2. He supported the Solidarity movement in Poland.
"When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989." - Lech Walesa
3. He grew our military and the Soviet Union couldn't keep up. They didn't have the money.
4. He pressed for religious freedom, teaming up with the Pope.
5. He supported anti-Soviet movements in third world countries.

Had Jimmy Carter won reelection and Mondale followed, the Soviet Union would likely still be in place today.

There is no evidence that the Soviets bankrupted themselves keeping up with Reagan's profligate spending. They were already broke by the time he began spending on Star Wars. It obviously troubled them, but they couldn't and didn't try to keep up.

This is simply part of the Reagan mythology. Like crediting him for the accident of news reporting (in East Germany) that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Reagan deserves credit for his rhetoric against totalitarianism. And yes, he said the right things during the bloodless revolution in Poland. It was the high point of his presidency. But being in office during Perestroika was an accident of timing, not one of his making.

So you slept through history class. You're not alone.