Did Ronald Reagan Win the Cold War?

[NNN0LHI]

http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=136

Sorry, Reagan loyalists: the answer is no.

Tell us what we've won, Johnny

One by-product of Reaganism, though, has been the mess in Afghanistan. Reagan directed the CIA to funnel enormous material support to Islamist rebels fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the mid 1980s. Among the aid we gave Afghan Mujahideen were shoulder-held Stinger missiles, which wreaked havoc on Soviet helicopter gunships and are now a primary source of concern for our counter-terrorism efforts. It is well known that Osama Bin Laden cut his teeth as a guerilla fighter during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Once Gorbachev withdrew Soviet forces in 1989, the resulting power vacuum ensured the eventual emergence of the Taliban, as Gorbachev feared would happen. In other words, in pursuit of ratcheting up conflict with the Soviet Union, Reagan helped sow the seeds of our greatest existing menace.

Ronald Reagan became a star in the world of make believe. His hagiographers appear determined to carry on that legacy by crediting him with bringing about the exctinction of the Evil Empire. Their hope is that we won't remember the much more sobering legacy he actually left us.

[MadMaddie]

1. Those same leftover weapons were used by Bin Laden to

fight our soldiers in Afghanastan.....The repugs don't want to go there....they really don't....

[billbuckhead]

6. Low oil prices destroyed the Soviet Union&now the oil price may make Putin

the new most powerful man in the world. Is this what's really going on?

[MadMaddie]

11. If we look at Russia's history.....this is completely possible..

but you would think Condi would be at the forefront of this kind of thinking because after all she is supposed to be an Expert on Russia...

anyhoo I digress....

I think you may be on to something.....it is entirely possible that Putin has longer term plans than oh say * cabal....

Russia is seen as the moderate compared to the US and that can't be good!

[SPKrazy]

2. The Economics Of A State Controlled Economy Broke It's Back

Lots of other factors had an influence

Reagan had an influence, but not the most powerful one.


The Pope had an influence, but not the most powerful one.

The fact that Russia was basically broke, and it's people were suffering from shortages of everything, their military was becoming a paper tiger, and their citizens were living in a fog of Vodka (the state run business that was still successful)

[Theduckno2]

13. That's the way I know it too.

The USSR had been failing economically since the 60s, with a mild reprieve due to high oil prices in the 80s. Someone could say that Reagan may of hastened the demise but I understand the demise was inevitable by the time Reagan was in office.

Of course no one at the CIA seemed to know this at the time but, that as they say, is another story.

[JHB]

39. Of course, thanks to the proto-neocon's Team B excercise...

...which gave fuel to the RW's "Soviet Juggernaut" fantasy, "underestimating" the Soviet threat (in other words, seeing what was actually happening there) wasn't exactly condusive to advancing your career in the CIA.

[Bandit]

38. Sears & Roebucks had the biggest effect

People were tired of not having things those in the west enjoyed. They got a look at Sears catalogs and made the decision to become a Democracy..

[Demeter]

3. The Only Winners Are the Dead...So I Guess Ronnie Won

his own personal peace. And he didn't die in jail, either.

[Captain Hilts]

4. No. The SovUnion was a house of cards that collapsed under its own weight.

Like a big ponzi scheme.

The Afghan War delegitimized the government to many. Remember, most didn't want to be there and the decision to go was made by three people: Ustinov, Gromyko and Brezhnev. Kinda like how we went to Iraq now that I think about it.

Anyway, they told their soldiers they were invited to Afghanistan and that they'd be fighting Chinese and US soldiers. .

It was the big, fat, lie that crushed the house of cards.

[LTR]

10. That's been my theory all along

The USSR was too much of a bloated bureaocracy, and Afghanistan really hurt 'em. It was a house of cards.

Gorbachev drove the final nail in the coffin. If any one person could be considered the one who ended the cold war, it would be him. But the demise of the Soviet Union was too much for one person to take credit for.

Reagan's "Tear down this wall" speech didn't do shit. Gorbachev's reforms were already under way.

[whistle]

5. I think he and Nancy drew a pentagram inside of a circle...

...on the White House Lincoln bedroom floor, chanted a number of different magical phrases, then sacrificed an infant in the name of the great one....But that did not work, did it?

[DURHAM D]

7. No - he just ran the final leg of the relay.

When he got the baton the Soviets had already fallen way back - almost out of camera range.

[ComerPerro]

8. singlehandedly

[napi21]

9. The USSR folded while Reagan was in office. I blame every

President for wars they started while in office, and I will give each one credit for any that are won or vacated as well.

You are correct that the US supported the Afghan Mujahideen during the 80's, and Osama was a big part of that effort too. As far as I know, that was done to fight against the Russians winning in Afghan. I don't think anyone expected Osama to turn into what he has. Remember, that was 20+ years ago!

Before you all jump all over me for giving Reagan credit for anything, I really didn't like the guy. I always thought he was faking that "I can't hear you" crap and just didn't want to answer anything. He did a tremendous amount of damage to the USA, and we're still suffereing from his actions! I just believe in judging all Prez's by the same criteria.

[Liberal_Dog]

12. Are We Sure That We Really Won?

MAD came to pass-- but it wasn't nuclear. By the 1980s, both the US and USSR were both economically wiped out. While the Soviets decided to stop the insanity and change their political/economic system, America has decided to continue blindly along the same failed path.

We are headed towards national bankruptcy and collapse.

So, who really won the Cold War?

[Freidasfiredog]

16. I agree, except that "America" didn't decide to continue blindly along

the same path, rather the controlling corporate elites that benefit from a war-based economy decided to "continue blindly along the same failed path". Our two-winged corporate-owned political parties went along with them and took US for a ride that now has the nation in increasingly dire economic straits.

[newyawker99]

17. Hi Friedasfiredog!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Mabus]

14. Gorby won the Nobel Peace Prize, not Reagan

Why? because Reagan didn't do to cause the Berlin Wall to come down.

[Blue-Jay]

15. No, but he was frequent pants-pooper.

[WinkyDink]

18. Lech Walensa and the Pope did, IMHO.

[Virginia Dare]

28. With no small help from AFL-CIO....

whose passionately anti-communist President Lane Kirkland poured tons of money and resources into Solidarnask. You'll never hear about that in the MSM.

[MadHound]

19. No, Reagan didn't win the Cold War, Russia lost it all on their own

They spent themselves into oblivion trying to keep up with the US military. At the end there, they were spending well over fifty percent of their budget on the military, and neglecting their people and infrastructure.

Sadly, we're taking the same route, and Reagan can be blamed for stoking the current fires. His fondness for bizarre, expensive and ultimately unworkable weapons systems helped drive up the debt, and his example has been followed by those who followed him, to a greater or lesser extent.

Now we teeter on the same cliff edge that Russia fell off of. Fifty percent of our annual budget goes into the military/intelligence complex. Unworkable systems that were scrapped after Reagan left office have now been revived. Our people are suffering as more of their money goes into taxes, while their wages drop. Our infrastructure is creaking, and Bushco is looking to sell some of it off for short term cash infusions, ignoring the long term loss.

And sadly, when the collapse comes, it will hit our population harder than it did the Russians, for two reasons, the massive amount of consumer debt that the average American carries, and the lack of subsistence survival skills that we poscess. Unlike Russia, where many people grew their own food, raised a few animals, etc., most Americans don't have a clue as to how to do these things anymore. Many of these skills, once practiced even in large cities, are vague memories, something that our grandparents talked about along with the Great Depression. When food supplies become prohibitively expensive, there will be food riots in the cities, because we are dependent not on the farmer's market, or our own garden, but on the grocery store, a nameless, faceless corporate entity. And our load of consumer debt will crush the average American, who couldn't pull ten thousand dollars out of thin air, and thus will have their properities seized in order to pay off that debt.

It's going to get ugly folks, and sooner rather than later. I suggest that people pay down their debt, start becoming at least food self sufficient. If you can, move out to the country, because it has been shown that it is easier to survive a major economic crisis in rural areas than in urban ones. Be prepared, because unless the course is changed soon, we're going to be going right on over the same cliff that the Soviet Union did. And it's a very hard landing at the bottom.

[ismnotwasm]

20. Hell no.

This is from "Sleep Walking through History; America in the Reagan years by Haynes Johnson-- Published in 1991, I've found it strangely prophetic. An excellent book by the way.

"For East and West, the cold war became more than a way of life; it became a state of mind that led America and Russia to divert their energies into unproductive areas that sapped the strength of both societies. Policies and attitudes shaped by that war became as hardened as the underground silos that encase nuclear warheads aimed at Soviet and American targets. Decade by decade, the range and destructive capacity of these weapons increased. A single American Poseidon submarine, for example, carries more explosives than were used by both sides in World Wars 1 AND 11. By the nineties the United States had thirty two such submarines and, in addition, more than one thousand land-based missiles and six hundred bombers. As the British statesman David Lloyd George once said, "There is no greater fatuity than a political judgment dressed in a military uniform" and for two generations American and Russia fashioned their policies and allocated their wealth according to higher military priorities. That no longer needs to be so. But if winning the cold war was difficult, winning the peace will be more so, and the sad fact is that after spending more than a trillion dollars on preparation for nuclear war, the United States is not prepared for that greater effort for peace. For nearly half a century it has had extensive plans for nuclear war, but it has had no plans for peace."
------------------------
"During the long Cold war the United States came to resemble the Soviet Union in its reliance upon military force, covert operations, expanding arsenals and allocation of increasing national resources for defense. Like the Soviets, the United States adopted the devices of the National Security State, a state in which official secrecy,rationalization, propaganda, and an expanding bureaucracy wedded to the status quo thrived. The other side of national security--improving economic performance, raising educational standards, developing new technologies for peaceful and productive endeavors, combating hunger, poverty, disease, environmental degradation--received secondary consideration.
"In the nineties and beyond America will have to address those neglected areas in a world in which the United States no longer holds unsurpassed superpower status and in which many of the of national racial ethnic and religious problems that the beset the world in the twentieth century still smolder and at times flare into warfare"
-------------------------------------
"Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was a perfect example of the kinds of problems the United Sates and the industrial societies would confront. That crisis also demonstrated the heavy price America would have to pay for past policy failures."

No reagan didn't win the cold war. He was of it, part of it. He used it, he thrived on it. When the Soviet Union fell it certainly wasn't because of reagan.

[TheFriedPiper]

21. Bluejeans and Rock n Roll won the Cold War

Anything else is pure bullshit.

[blm]

56. I agree - that's why Ted Turner did more with INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION and

NEWS than Reagan ever did.

Ted showed the Russian people that we were not monsters and showed Americans that the Russain people were not godless monsters.

He showed the world that governments lie to their citizens to keep them ignorant of other cultures.

MTV's We are the World concerts batted clean up, pretty much.

[Selatius]

22. Gorbachev did more to end the Cold War than Reagan

Gorbachev wanted to cut back defense spending and divert it into social spending, but he had to struggle with the hardliners in the military leadership and the Politburo. Ironically, the hardliners were using Reagan's military build-up as justification to oppose Gorbachev on this point. He was trying reform because the path the USSR was on was unsustainable economically. The system was radically inefficient because often economic decisions were made with respect to political gain instead of the welfare of the people. That's the problem with state socialism. He was aiming for market socialism.

Because the USSR was an entity built on force, when he introduced glasnost, he awakened nationalistic forces that had lain dormant in the countryside. The hardliners tried to launch a coup against Gorbachev to stop the changes, but it merely hastened the demise of the Union, and several nations left the USSR. The Soviet Union ceased to exist by Christmas, 1991.

The Soviet Union was likely to collapse at some point anyway if not due to political reasons than due to economic reasons. Gorbachev's actions ensured that the collapse was largely peaceful as opposed to ending in a violent civil war.

[Az_lefty]

26. Definetly, Raygun just stumbled into it.

[mnmoderatedem]

27. Exactly

After the death of Breshynev, two more hardliners, Andropov and Cherneynko, took over power, and it was painfully obvious that nothing was going to change in the old USSR. Both conviently died early in their tenures, Gorby rose to power, and the rest is history.

[LSK]

29. agreed

[ck4829]

23. The Beatles won the Cold War

Not just an opinion I have.

[NobleCynic]

34. Huh?

Elaboration please?

[NewJeffCT]

42. I'm guessing...

I am guessing that the poster above means that when Western 'Culture' and music seeped into the USSR, it helped to open minds to new ideas... it spoke to many of the young people there.

Sort of like how China is gradually changing over time due to the exposure to Western music & movies as well.

The difference is that China's government is slowly managing the change, while the Soviets tried to suppress it & stamp it out. And, once you try to suppress like music something it gets even more desired as a "Forbidden Fruit"...

[NobleCynic]

54. Hmm...

Alright, I can see the merit in this line of thinking. Certainly not as the whole cause, but as a contributor to the downfall. A more open culture bordering totalitarianism has a corrosive effect upon the grip of power of the dictator / premier / party.

[Captain Hilts]

63. The Beatles taught English to a lot of folks behind The Iron Curtain.

So, yes, they did help.

[Dragonbreathp9d]

24. Gorbachev was a martyr

He committed political suicide by doing what he felt was best for Russia, Reagan had nothing to do with it.

[ProfessorGAC]

25. Ted Turner Won The Cold War

He showed the capitalist west that satellite broadcasting and 24 a day news was profitable. It spawned so many imitators and competitors that it became impossible for the Soviet bloc to filter out the information. Their big lie went belly-up.

Second on my list is Gorby, who saw the writing on the wall and began to dismantle things and subrogated the power of the military and weakened the KGB.

Then, the Soviet union began to teeter on bankruptcy as far back as the mid-60's with the "space race". Then they made things worse in Afghanistan.

Reagan was just a hood ornament on the truck careening down the hill.
The Professor

[NewJeffCT]

44. good points, as always Professor

I think somebody above also mentioned the Polish Pope, Lech Walesa & the AFL-CIO.

I think most serious economists in the US knew by the late 60s/early 70s that the USSR was not economically sustainable over time as it was configured. That included people in the Nixon White House.

[Zomby Woof]

30. One of my favorite sayings

Giving Ronald Reagan credit for ending the Cold War is like giving a rooster credit for the sunrise.

[tabasco]

31. Truman & Marshall had more to do with it than Reagan.

The USSR collapsed because it did not dominate Europe.

[ProfessorGAC]

40. Geez, I Had More To Do With It Than Reagan

I think your statement practically includes anyone. Don't it?
The Professor

[tabasco]

45. Every soldier that fought in Vietnam did too.

The downfall of the USSR did not happen over a few years. It began immediately after WWII when the US propped up W. Europe from Soviet domination. If the Soviet Union had been allowed a wider sphere of influence, it would have lasted long after Reagan's terms.

[Scriptor Ignotus]

32. before you strip Reagan of any and all kudos he may or may not

have earned, consider what could have happened if we had George W Bush was our dear leader in the same time period. The world would very likely be glowing green right now and Mel Gibson would be driving around Australia fighting leather clad bandits for gasoline.

In the context of what COULD have happened, I think Reagan did a great job. The situation in Afghanistan turned out to be disastrous for us, but that was some twenty years down the road. You're asking a lot of our government to handle every facet of their foreign policy flawlessly in the face of a global nuclear "menace" like the USSR. I know very well that the Reagan administration did some fucked up stuff around the world, but in regards to "winning" the Cold War, they get a passing grade.

In my mind, Reagan's Cold War strategies should be adapted and used in our current "Long War". We should forgo outright military engagement, like Iraq, in favor or expanded use of special forces, intelligence gathering operations and military or financial support of friendly governments that can help us root out and destroy terrorist operations in other countries. While we consolidate defensive spending on securing "Fortress America" our operatives pursue our enemies "under the radar". All the while we wage the "culture wars" and attempt to win over the hearts and minds of Muslims and Arabs worldwide with Rock and Roll and blue jeans, or whatever. There are aspects of our country that all people worldwide admire. This is what we need to communicate to our enemies of today and tomorrow. This is what we should have done. This is what we should do now.

[question everything]

33. The Chernobyl disaster was the beginning of the end of the USSR (nt)

[slampoet]

35. Lech Walesa was the begining of the USSR collapsing.

He and the rest of the brave souls in the Solidarity movement are the first successful confrontation with and the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.

Also extra points can be given to Pope John Paul II for having everybodies' back as well.


But Republicans don't want to admit that a LABOR MOVEMENT ended Communism, so they have to say Reagan did it.


Here is the Wikkipedia entry and how the whole world knows this history.

Solidarity (Polish: Solidarność; full name: Independent Self-governing Trade Union "Solidarity" — ) is a Polish trade union federation founded in September 1980 at the Gdansk Shipyards, and originally led by Lech Walesa. In the 1980s it constituted a broad anti-communist social movement. The government attempted to destroy the union with the martial law of 1981 and several years of repressions, but in the end it had to start negotiating with the union. In Poland, the Roundtable Talks between the weakened government and Solidarity-led opposition led to semi-free elections in 1989. By the end of August a Solidarity-led coalition government was formed and in December Walesa was elected president. Since 1989 Solidarity has become a more traditional trade union, and had relatively little impact on the political scene of Poland in the early 1990s. A political arm was founded in 1996 as Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) won the Polish parliamentary election, 1997, but lost the following Polish parliamentary election, 2001. Currently Solidarity has little political influence in modern Polish politics.

The survival of Solidarity was an unprecedented event not only in Poland, a satellite state of the USSR ruled (in practice) by a one-party Communist regime, but the whole of the Eastern bloc. It meant a break in the hard-line stance of the communist Polish United Workers' Party, which had bloodily ended a 1970 protest with machine gun fire (killing dozens and injuring over 1,000), and the broader Soviet communist regime in the Eastern Bloc, which had quelled both the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the 1968 Prague Spring with Soviet-led invasions. Solidarity's influence led to the intensification and spread of anti-communist ideals and movements throughout the countries of the Eastern Bloc, weakening their communist governments. The 1989 elections in Poland where anti-communist candidates won a striking victory sparked off a succession of peaceful anti-communist counterrevolutions in Central and Eastern Europe.<2> Solidarity's example was in various ways repeated by opposition groups throughout the Eastern Bloc, eventually leading to the Eastern Bloc's effectual dismantling, and contributing to the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the early 1990s.

[WI_DEM]

36. It was a succession of presidents from Truman thru Bush

and can't be Reagan himself as his supporters in the media want to insist. Also Gorby had a great deal to do with it.

[NobleCynic]

37. Every president since WWII up to and including Reagan won the cold war

To give the guy who comes in during the last act when it is already a foregone conclusion (in retrospect mind you) is simplistic thinking at best, outright dangerous at worst.

Truth be told, we didn't win it so much as the USSR lost it. The utter failure in getting corruption under control tore Russian communism apart.

[LuckyLib]

41. Ronnie could barely keep himself upright. Only the Repugs would

canonize him and rewrite history.

[JHB]

43. Liberal Economics won the Cold War

Progressive taxation, the GI Bill, civil engineering projects, regulated capitalism, protection of the rights of workers, the SEC, useful Keynesian stimuli, Social Security, Medicare, etc., etc.

All the policies that vastly expanded the middle class and demonstrated that "capitalism" could improve the material well-being of the ordinary working man far more than the "worker's paradise" could.

[flaminbats]

46. Communism is stronger now than it was before Reagan..

I believe it's debatable if Russia is better off now than it was with Communism! IMO it is just as undemocratic and even more dangerous to our national security than it was with Communism. If someone obtains the materials needed to make a nuclear pipe bomb, it will probably come from Russia. With Communism..Russia at least had some security over its weapons, now Russia is desperate for money..and finding this in a global black market!

Communism is a global problem, but IMO it never presented a substantial threat to our security. That threat comes from more nuclear weapons, unguarded borders, and an insolvent Federal debt. These threats would have existed with or without Communism, but blaming Communists for nuclear weapons is no more of a solution than blaming Muslims for 9/11.

China is rising as a global power, and the United States is fading. My fear is that our fate may eventually resemble that of Russia's.

[Justice Is Comin]

47. I remember the speech gave

when Reagan announced we were going to go ahead with SDI and the missile shield and said that when we get that technology we're going to share it with the Russians.

This in essence neutralized either countries advantage of a missile strike and made pointless Russia's attempt to continue the arms race.

It was the single most brilliant statement and I think it ended the cold war.

[ikri]

48. Reagan could barely tie his own shoes let alone win a war

Interestingly there are two groups who saw the fall of the Soviet Union and believe that they were the direct cause.

The Neo-Cons, who oversaw the massive military build-up and thought might obviously makes right! and decided that a massive, bloated military budget where any idea, no matter how impractical or stupid, could be funded to produce a weapon.

And there's Al Qaeda. The Mujahideen went up against the might of the Red Army and came out on top. They saw the fall of the Soviet Union as a direct result of their actions in Afghanistan.

Watch the first part of The Power of Nightmares. It gives a great synopsis on the beliefs of the two groups and the effects their beliefs are having on today's world.

[Cleita]

49. There was no cold war anymore than there is a war on terror.

What we had were two giant and destructive nations that kept each other in check and out of war. When the Soviet Union collapsed, then only bully America was left.

Back then though we realized that the phrase "cold war" was only a euphemism for two nations who could have had actual war with each other if cooler heads hadn't prevailed back then. Washington was always in contact with the Kremlin and vice versa.

But today the weak minded among us believe that the euphemism, "war on terror" is a real war. It's so stupid.

[FrenchieCat]

50. According to Wes Clark, it was a cumulative effort started long

before Reagan!

From Kevin Drumm quoting Wes Clark....

Wes Clark believes that the Bush administration has a lesson to learn from the Cold War. But they have to learn the whole lesson, not just the fairy tale version in which Ronald Reagan won it singlehandedly:

"Rising Soviet defense spending aimed at competing with the United States may have hastened the economic decline in the Soviet Union, helped convince the Russian generals that they couldn't compete with U.S. military technology, and strengthened Gorbachev's hand as he pushed for glasnost. But this end-game challenge of Reagan's would have been ineffective had 40 years of patient Western containment and engagement not helped undermine the legitimacy of the Communist regime in the eyes of its subjects.

It was popular discontent with economic, social, and political progress, and people's recognition of an appealing alternative system, that finished off the repressive regimes of Eastern Europe, and eventually the whole Soviet Union. No Western threat of force or military occupation forced their collapse."
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_05/003948.php

[rinsd]

51. Is this guy unknowingly making the case for occupation?

"Once Gorbachev withdrew Soviet forces in 1989, the resulting power vacuum ensured the eventual emergence of the Taliban, as Gorbachev feared would happen. In other words, in pursuit of ratcheting up conflict with the Soviet Union, Reagan helped sow the seeds of our greatest existing menace."

:shrug:

[Odin2005]

52. The Poles and Gorby ended the Cold War.

The success of the Solidarity labor movement showed that resistance to Soviet domination was possible. Gorby ended the arms race.

[B Calm]

53. NO ONE WON THE COLD WAR! It's still going on! If any one person

won a cold war it was John Kennedy!

[leesa]

55. I think ending the Cold War was the single most disappointing thing

our government, especially the Republicans, have had to face. There's no way Reagan would have ended the Cold War by choice. Waaaaay too money being made and they would have to come up with a new war, which they did, the War on Terror. It plopped into Reagan's lap after the USSR overextended itself.

[LaPera]

57. The Reagan truth...(and the bullshit)!

The myth that it was simply Reagan who single-handedly brought down the USSR...(Because Reagan has no other legacy for the sheep to hang on to).

Is insulting, to every other American president before Reagan, (and after)...Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford & Carter (and Bush Sr., as well)...ALL, increased military spending, (each year during their respective terms)...Carter for instance, increased military spending no less than 5% in each of his four years...as had all the other's increased spending...

I'm not defending "Military Industrial Complex" here...

The Soviet Union could not keep pace with our military spending and Gorbachev knew it would be suicidal for his country to continue trying to keep up the madness & pace, with the US...

Not to mention the FACT that Reagan was long gone, out of office, when the Soviet Union actually threw in the towel in 1991, during Bush Sr. presidency... http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/19335/art-1.html

All Reagan has to show for his presidency is union busting, environmentally he was a disaster, corporate deregulation, destruction of equal time via the FCC, huge deficits, Grenada, (to change the story, after 271 US Marines were blown up by terrorist), where he "cut & run" Iran-Contra, the mentally disable thrown out into the streets, etc. etc...And the republicans are successfully distorting the facts.

Reagan, started this fascist corporate take over of America and so many voted for this republican liar and blindly & carelessly went along with the greed and selfishness...

It irks me to no end, how democrats, liberals, refuse to recall, nor speak the truth, the way the facts really are!

[hogwyld]

58. Rocky won it

when he beat Drago in Rocky IV :rofl:

[jmowreader]

59. Yevgeny Shaposhnikov won the Cold War. All by himself.

The Cold War wasn't really either won or lost. It just kinda faded away.

Democratic reforms in the Soviet Union caused it to end, and we have Marshal Shaposhnikov to thank for that.

Think back to the 1991 coup attempt in the Soviet Union. Basically, eight hardline communists in the government formed a group calling itself the State Emergency Committee. These eight men (according to Wikipedia, they included the vice president, the prime minister, the internal security minister and the head of the KGB) were pissed off about a treaty Gorbachev signed with the trades unions and acted. They waited until Gorbachev was on vacation in the Crimea, then pounced: they placed Gorbachev under house arrest and announced that they were the government now.

Boris Yel'tsin came out against the coup plotters. The Red Army came out against them. Pretty much the only people on the coup plotters' side were the coup plotters. They figured that Yel'tsin was responsible for turning public opinion against them and set out to arrest him for state treason.

General-lieutenant Shaposhnikov was the commander of the Soviet Air Force in 1991. He caught wind of the plan to arrest Yel'tsin and called them up. He claimed that he had ordered a bomber to be fueled, crewed and loaded with a nuclear bomb, and if Comrade Yel'tsin were to be arrested, he would direct the crew to arm the bomb and drop it on the Kremlin.

You will notice that the Kremlin is still there.

The Soviet Air Force didn't have time-in-grade rules for promotion above colonel, so Gorbachev, who was very grateful to Shaposhnikov for saving the democratic reform process, promoted him from Lieutenant General to Colonel General, Army General and finally to Marshal in about a week. He appointed him Chief Marshal of Aviation. Now he's retired from the military. He ran Aeroflot for a couple of years and turned it into a decent airline--not the greatest airline in the world, mind you, but one someone would actually pay to fly on.

[theanarch]

60. yes...but only by five minutes and about ten dollars...if Gorby

could have held out for another week, the USSR would have won.

[rasputin1952]

61. Truman had more to do with the tear-down of the former

Soviet Union than Reagan ever had.

The USSR went down because it was economically unstable, and we had more to spend than they did. In essence, we wasted the National Treasury for 50 years in an attempt to bring down the Soviets. More horrifying that spending ourselves into the verge of oblivion, close to 150,000 American lives were lost, from Korea on, and untold thousands of others were lost.

Let us not forget "tough guy" Reagan running out of Beirut either. That set up what is happening now. We should never have gone there in the first place, but when Reagan cut and rand, the stage was set for what is happening today.

He never left the Hollywood fantasy land, it was with him all his life, and the country suffers for his, and his proteges blunders.

[ThomWV]

62. Its Like The Question: Did The Atom Bomb Win WW-II?

No, the atom bomb did not win World War II, it ended it but it did not win it. What won the war, in a technological sense, was British-invented Radar.