See the video here.

“Reagan wanted to out build the USSR and surpass them in military force.”

And as our doing so too cost us a MUCH SMALLER percent of our GNP than it did the USSR in trying to keep up,, it had a HUGE negative impact on them.

———–

While I was JUST watching (and listening to) a documentary on the USS New Jersey, I hear an American Admiral say something to the effect of:

“Reagan wanted to out build the USSR and surpass them in military force.”

And as our doing so too cost us a MUCH SMALLER percent of our GNP than it did the USSR in trying to keep up,, it had a HUGE negative impact on them.

————-

Yes Dotar,

As I have been an Agnostic Atheist Activist for well over 50 years, I have found it is easier to get some religious people to become Atheists than to get ANY of the supposedly rational,
and intelligent
people to accept
provable facts and change their position. One example is the anti Iraq War FOOLS.

I have a list of 18 FACTS which PROVE the Iraq War is fully justified and yet these Clueless Clods of the Loony Left just as if FACTS do not matter if prove they are wrong.

While Christians at least have the programming they received from the time they were babies until they reached age they had a clue to blame for hanging on to the total BS beliefs they have, it really amazes me how non-programmed people will hang on to unsupported beliefs no matter how much proof there is they are wrong.

Neil C. Reinhardt: Hey Duffy,
YOU should learn how to read with a much higher degree of comprehension. I NEVER said a damn thing about Russia folding due to any FEAR of Reagan.NOR did I say he PLANNED to bankrupt them.Yet bankrupt them he did! And CHILD, THAT IS WHAT HAPPENED! Last, it makes NO DAMN difference if you, and/or any other totally Clueless Clod believes it or not!
YOUR mere belief has NO more effect on the FACTS than do the beliefs of the FLAT Earthers have on our OVAL world!

Hmmm… It’s funny that you take me to task for not reading carefully enough when I was, in the first part, quoting and responding to LarryA, not to you.

And in the second part I was re-iterating a question I raised before. So I wasn’t responding to you at all. I wonder why you took such offense. I also wonder why you feel the need to be so cantankerous.

we did, for a period of time, THINK the Ruskis had all those A bombs as well as a effective means to deliver a sufficient amount of them to our shores.

True, they didn’t have as many nukes as we estimated. But it wouldn’t have required the destruction of too many of our biggest cities to totally disrupt our economy, particularly when a lot of our communications were via paper and wire. There was also the MAD doctrine, which convinced lots of people that any nuclear war would be the end of humans.

the Russians KNEW the U.S. was WAY ahead of them in them in not only the number and size of our A bombs, our ability to effectively deliver them also far exceed theirs.

But would we have had that capability had Carter been followed by a president with a similar philosophy?

Their knowledge of our capabilities is not only what prevented them from going to war with us. it IS also the MAIN reason they backed down during the Cuban Missile crisis.

Kennedy was president during the Cuban crisis, and he was a lot closer to Reagan than Carter in terms of will and political savvy. The question with Carter wasn’t what nuclear arsenal he had, but would he have used it.

Umm, they didn’t fold when Reagan was President, so I don’t think their fear of Reagan retaliating is what finally caused them to give up.

Reagan left office in January 1989, and the wall fell in November. If Bush the Second can still be blamed for everything that’s wrong with the U.S. ten months after he left office, then I’d think Reagan is due a little credit for something that happened ten months after his departure. ;-) As others have noted, the main effects of Reagan’s policy, intentional or not, were in place for the eight years before the wall fell.

Did Bush the First inspire the same kind of fear and respect?

For this, yes. And by 1989 it was too late for intimidation to be effective.

YOU should take a course on how to read with a much higher degree of comprehension.

I NEVER said a damn thing about Russia folding due to any FEAR of Reagan. NOR did I say Reagan PLANNED to bankrupt them.

Yet bankrupt them, his policies did!

And that IS what happened!

Period!

End of Damn Story!

And Child, your mere beliefs has NO more effect on the FACTS than do the beliefs of the FLAT Earthers have on our Oval world.

YOU should learn how to read with a much higher degree of comprehension.

I NEVER said a damn thing about Russia folding due to any FEAR of Reagan.

NOR did I say he PLANNED to bankrupt them.

Yet bankrupt them he did! And CHILD, THAT IS WHAT HAPPENED!

Last, it makes NO DAMN difference if you, and/or any other totally Clueless Clod believes it or not!
YOUR mere belief has NO more effect on the FACTS than do the beliefs of the FLAT Earthers have on our OVAL world!

“On November 9th I was still a committed Communist,” Schabowski said. “Our decision to allow people to travel was not a humanitarian one. It was tactical. We had to do something to regain popularity, and relieve the pressure”.

The travel decree hit the forty journalists in the room like a bomb. All hands went up. An Italian started badgering Schabowski without waiting to be called. At that moment, apparently, his resolve to resist questions broke down. Schabowski was by now exhausted and arguably not thinking straight. “Would travel from East to West require a passport?” barked the Italian. “No” replied Schabowski, squinting at his notes. “Would the Berlin crossings be included?” “Yes” he said. “And when would all this come into effect?” After a pause, and another consultation with various bits of paper on his desk, two simple words.

“Sofort, Unverzuglich.” Immediately…Without delay.

… Unfortunately for the DDR, all three of his answers to the press were wrong …

Thanks to all for their recollections from observation points different in time and place. Mine is the case directly affected by that big extension of the wall known as the Iron Curtain. It separated me from my elderly parents for 9 long years. In 1987, as a harbinger of further openings to come, that separation ended.

I hope you are able to celebrate this anniversary with joy as well as sorrow.

But they knew without a doubt that Reagan would have launched everything we had, leaving what was left of the USSR vulnerable to the Chinese. So they folded instead of playing hardball.

Umm, they didn’t fold when Reagan was President, so I don’t think their fear of Reagan retaliating is what finally caused them to give up. Did Bush the First inspire the same kind of fear and respect? Maybe so, but here’s another example of Reagan getting credit for stuff he clearly did not do.

And I’m still waiting for someone to show me a single shred of evidence that Reagan planned to bankrupt the Soviet Union.

Sorry, part of whart yo said is in error!

Due to the extreamly difficulty of our getting accurate intelligence on what they actually had, we did, for a period of time, THINK the Ruskis had all those A bombs as well as a effective means to deliver a sufficient amount of them to our shores.

On the other hand. due to both our very open society and their intelligence, the Russians KNEW the U.S. was WAY ahead of them in them in not only the number and size of our A bombs, our ability to effectively deliver them also far exceed theirs.

Their knowledge of our capabilities is not only what prevented them from going to war with us. it IS also the MAIN reason they backed down during the Cuban Missile crisis.

East Berlin must have looked downright awful most of the time after WWII. There was some rebuilding, of course, but pictures show large piles of rubble and open space in what was once the heart of a large and powerful pre-war capital city.

When I was there in 1966, it was still rubble. The old government buildings were bombed out shells. At one point where we stopped to look at the wall from the West, there were a few concrete floors still standing, with Vopos pointing their machine guns at us from their sandbagged nests.

Our guide (the *east german* one) told us that the scaffolding we saw on the buildings in downtown East Berlin had been there since shortly after the war, and were just for show. No repairs to the mess were in progress.

Dave N: OperationCounterstrike provides the expected liberal talking point that the Reagan policies had absolutely nothing to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In fact, the arms build-up pushed by President Reagan caused the Soviets to feel the need to respond in kind, ultimately bankrupting an intellectually bankrupt regime.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Reagan or his advisors had a plan to bankrupt the Soviet economy through arms races. Rather, Reagan’s policies were motivated by the need to combat the supposedly enormous Soviet military threat. As it happened, the Soviet military wasn’t remotely as powerful as Reagan and his advisors thought.

Perhaps the USSR really did fall because it was unable to keep up with American military spending. But if that’s what happened it’s something Reagan blundered into while trying to do something completely different.

And you are most Welcome.

2. Hey “Operation Counter Strike”

Your comments are Total BS! Your post shows you have NO Damn CLUE!

First Child, Reagan WAS, as were many of us, a IDIOT Liberal before living long enough to really understand what the hell goes on in the world.

Next, he was a GREAT Governor and damn good President

Reagan’s support of those fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, his build up of U.S. forces and his insistence our building on Star Wars is MOSTLY what caused the Russians to go broke.

This led to the disintegration of the USSR.

And let’s just be honest: we didn’t have much to do with the collapse of USSR nor with the Berlin Wall coming down. Communism collapsed because all economic activity was illegal activity.

Half true. The USSR certainly collapsed because communism doesn’t work. But there are a number of ways for an empire to collapse. One is to stave off the inevitable by attacking its neighbors or enemies. The soviets had an extensive nuclear arsenal, and had Jimmy Carter still been president I believe they would have been mightily tempted to use it. They could have knocked the U.S. out and trashed Europe. Would Carter have risked deepening the projected nuclear winter by retaliating, knowing the communist leaders were all in shelters? I think they would have gambled on his reticence. Once everyone was reduced to their economic level or below it would have been business as usual.

But they knew without a doubt that Reagan would have launched everything we had, leaving what was left of the USSR vulnerable to the Chinese. So they folded instead of playing hardball.

We drove across the nonexistent border and were amazed at the shabbiness of the border towns. It looked as if WWII had only recently happened.

I researched the economics for a short story I published, and interviewed a woman who grew up in East Berlin and later emigrated to the U.S.

After the wall came down she went across the border just to see what was there. She said there was really one thing that made her decide not to return to the East.

In West Berlin she walked into a store anyone could shop in and selected a box of a dozen manufactured disposable sanitary napkins from a shelf full of different kinds. The whole process took less than ten minutes. In the East, she still had to wait three or four hours in a line to purchase, at a much higher cost, cotton wool, cloth, and thread to hand-make her own pads.

In order to disparage the idea that Reagan had anything significant to do with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR, the lefties argue that communism didn’t work anyway and was doomed to failure. I kinda’ like that.

Those of us on the non-communist left never had this issue. We were always telling the commies they were fools.

I don’t know if it was him or not, I’ll I’m saying is that it sounds kinda funny for the folks who were saying he was nuts for thinking that the cold war was winnable (I was one for a while, but I was in high school) are now saying that no action on his part was needed.

This strikes me as odd. The whole point of the containment doctrine adopted by Truman was that the Cold War would be won in the long run. That’s pretty much what containment does, it isolates the problem until it goes away. Now, I don’t doubt there were those who had given up on the idea of winning after 40 years, but I don’t believe these were the people in charge of foreign policy at any time (if someone has a Carter or Brezinski [I never can spell that name] quote, then obviously I’m wrong).

Mark Field: ShelbyC, how’s that knee condition? :)

:-). I don’t know if it was him or not, I’ll I’m saying is that it sounds kinda funny for the folks who were saying he was nuts for thinking that the cold war was winnable (I was one for a while, but I was in high school) are now saying that no action on his part was needed.

“Oh my God, this had better work. I think we’re all going to be shot in the morning.”

Fortunately, it did work.

I went to Berlin in 1994 to visit an aunt who had lived in West Berlin in the 80’s and I was amazed by the contrast between the two halves of the city. This was 5 years later and you could still tell which side was which just by looking at the conditions of the buildings, with the western half being nicer than the equivalent areas in most big cities I had been to in America and the Eastern part significantly worse. There were construction cranes all over the place at the time so I doubt that this is still the case 15 years later, but if East Berlin was one of the least worst places to live in the Eastern Bloc that is pretty depressing.

This is consistent with what I saw. East Berlin must have looked downright awful most of the time after WWII. There was some rebuilding, of course, but pictures show large piles of rubble and open space in what was once the heart of a large and powerful pre-war capital city. That in itself is a pretty strong condemnation of communism. And as I say, you can still today see open space (not parks, empty spaces where buildings should be) in a central city area, which is unimaginable in, say, London or NY.

I was in East Berlin right around the fall (just before, and about six months afterwards). I recall seeing damage on the side of a building that appeared to be the trace of a machine gun-a series of bulletholes roughly horizontal, but rising slightly from one side to the next. We assumed it was still damage from the Battle of Berlin in 1945.

Sk

Mark Field: I was there 6 weeks ago, and there’s still a lot of shabbiness, less so in Berlin than in other towns (Dresden, say). Plus some holes in the ground that you’d never see in a Western city. But a lot of rebuilding has taken place in the last 20 years thanks to the fact that the West German economy has had the resources for that.

I went to Berlin in 1994 to visit an aunt who had lived in West Berlin in the 80′s and I was amazed by the contrast between the two halves of the city. This was 5 years later and you could still tell which side was which just by looking at the conditions of the buildings, with the western half being nicer than the equivalent areas in most big cities I had been to in America and the Eastern part significantly worse. There were construction cranes all over the place at the time so I doubt that this is still the case 15 years later, but if East Berlin was one of the least worst places to live in the Eastern Bloc that is pretty depressing.

Does anyone have any evidence of any time where Reagan said that he would destroy the Soviet Union by encouraging it to spend itself into oblivion? He gets all the credit for it nowadays. And perhaps he should. If it was the goal of his policy, then its also a goal that you would probably not want to broadcast to the enemy, else it might not take the bait. But are there any private records that have been released that show that this was part of a plan?

My impression back then was that Reagan and the right wing people thought the Soviet Union was a strong, enduring threat. And that we must be ever vigilant against it. The idea was that we were actually somewhat behind in the arms race, that there were windows of vulnerability, and we needed to spend more to catch up. I never for a moment thought that are military spending policies were part of an orchestrated attempt to make the Soviet Union collapse. Also, I find it hard to believe that this was our policy, given the utter astonishment of the intelligence communities about the internal weakness of the Soviet Union when the collapse did happen.

Because I had been thinking “this is all the lull before the storm” all along, expecting repressions at any moment.

And the next day I read an article about it that said that 99% of the East Berliners who had crossed the wall had gone back to go to bed.

So — they must have been really confident that the next day they could cross it again. And if they believed it was real. . . .

So it seems a little disingenuous to hear those folks arguing now that Reagan’s efforts were unnecessary. But I guess that’s the best they’ve got, isn’t it?

In this mold we have Obama playing the role of Carter, with our adversaries giving him the same level of respect.

Only after the wall fell did lefties start to say that the collapse of the Soviet Union was inevitable.