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I am so sick of the "Reagan won the Cold War" myth!

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johnaries Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 01:36 PM
Original message
I am so sick of the "Reagan won the Cold War" myth!
The Soviet Union fell from the inside, and Reagan had NOTHING to do with it! How can we get the truth out? Will Pitt! Calling Mr. Pitt!
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MADem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 01:41 PM
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1. Me, too. NT
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Nye Bevan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 01:41 PM
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2. Good link here....
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AX10 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 01:43 PM
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3. Same here.
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Mythsaje Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 01:43 PM
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4. Reagan didn't win the cold war.
Coca-Cola, Levi's Jeans, and rock-n-roll won the cold war. Reagan was just the one who happened to benefit from it.
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LanternWaste Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 01:44 PM
Response to Original message
5. I don't get presented with that point too often any more...
When presented with that particular right-wing bullet point, I usually respond with, "No-- it was Lech Walesa and Pope John Paul II who were the primary catalyst for its demise... but just in case I'm wrong, can you point me to any peer-reviewed, non-partisan thesis's that bolster your contention? No? Any monograms? No? So you're pretty much basing this on what Rush tells you?"

I don't get presented with that point too often any more...
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Xipe Totec Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 01:45 PM
Response to Original message
6. Reagan napped his way into history nt
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Burma Jones Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 01:46 PM
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7. Last time I looked, Russia still has tons of Nukes, China is still nominally Communist
and we're sending billions upon billions of dollars to both countries for Oil and Consumer Goods........

Hey, at least the Russians aren't officially Godless anymore......

And the Chinese, well, at least they haven't taken Taiwan back yet......

The Cold War never ended.

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blm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 01:46 PM
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8. Who should we thank for keeping the REAL books closed on Reagan and Bush1 eras?
Reagan and Poppy Bush have been able to rehabilitate their reps into hero and statesman status because all the outstanding matters of IranContra, Iraqgate, BCCI and CIA Drugrunning operations involving both but especially Poppy, were generously deep-sixed throughout the 90s by a Dem president willing to side with secrecy and privilege over the rights of the citizens to open government accountable to the people.


http://consortiumnews.com/2006/111106.html

The whole lot of them should have been jailed - instead, we ended up with Bush2, 9-11, and this Iraq war.
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aint_no_life_nowhere Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 01:48 PM
Response to Original message
9. I think there were many factors involved
Edited on Mon Dec-03-07 01:54 PM by aint_no_life_nowhere
The mistake the Soviets made in invading Afghanistan is one. I think Pope John Paul II did more to end the cold war than Ronald Reagan. And there are heroes like Lech Walesa in Eastern Europe and patriots like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn speaking out.
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Dukkha Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 01:48 PM
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10. the Berlin wall didn't come down under his term
poppy bush benefited from that and he as well had nothing to do with the cold war end. Gorbachev is the orly singular person who was instrumental of the collapse of communism but really is was the people of Russia themselves who stood up against the Apparatchiks coup and created the commonwealth independent states.
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rzemanfl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 01:58 PM
Response to Original message
11. Have you read "Charlie Wilson's War?" I recommend it. n/t
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Crunchy Frog Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 02:20 PM
Response to Original message
12. And why is it that Reagan is never given credit for ending aparthied?
That happened in approximately the same time frame.
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Hidden Stillness Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 02:23 PM
Response to Original message
13. The Problem is, No One has Been Opposing the Lie--Long Past Time to Start
It would help if stupid "D"LC type "Democrats" like Kerry, Clinton, etc., would stop quoting this bastard Reagan, referring to the Reagan Presidency as something wonderful and honest, which it was not, and not mentioning anymore the crimes, indictments, scandals, class warfare and union-busting against the poor and middle class, cuts to all programs that help people, secret wars and arms sales, etc., etc. It gives this horrific Administration a legitimacy and "uncontested" status, that makes it very hard then to get anyone to remember or listen openly to the truth. It would help if these Democrats would actually quote Democrats again, as they always used to, years ago.

There was such a huge, widespread revolt growing against Communism, from Czechoslovakia to Romania, from the former Soviet Union to its satellite States breaking away from it, that no one in the West predicted the total Fall of Communism at all--they obviously didn't cause it. Give credit to the Eastern Europeans and Russians who could not take it anymore, and turned. Of course, after the disaster of importing deregulated capitalism and not citizens' rights, court systems and the rest of democracy to Russia, it is all collapsing and reverting to Communist-style oppression again anyway. The recent "election" of Putin has had countless reports from international election-watch agencies, of vote fraud, fake "spoiled ballots," including that cast by opponent Gary Kasparov, etc. Russia may not last much longer, because it turned capitalist, and not democratic, with laws and protections, and rights.
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BeFree Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 02:25 PM
Response to Original message
14. Carter's fault
Jimmy Carter weighed heavily on the Soviet empire and with his calls for Human rights, set the seed for the Soviet downfall. Reagan was just around to see it fall.
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DutchLiberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 02:41 PM
Response to Original message
15. True that! I always have to laugh whenever I hear Americans claim they "won" the Cold War.
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cigsandcoffee Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 02:48 PM
Response to Original message
16. The Cold War isn't over. It's just halftime. n/t
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B Calm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 03:03 PM
Response to Original message
17. The ONLY cold war ever won was by President Kennedy. Cuban Missile Crisis
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-03-07 03:05 PM
Response to Original message
18. SIMPLE. By prosecuting the surviving Iran-Contra conspirators for murder and war crimes.
For example, Portland, OR, native Ben Linder was shot in the temple, point blank, in Nicaragua while working on community development. In particular, the prosecution should include VP Bush, who said after his murder,"he was on the other side".

Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer
Ronald Reagan's Death Squads
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindner06162004.html

By GARY HANDSCHUMACHER

Ronald Reagan touched many peoples' lives, many he killed...one was Ben Linder.

Ben Linder was murdered by Reagan's contras on April 28, 1987. He was an engineer who had gone to Nicaragua in 1983, as many thousands did during the years of the Reagan regime, to act as a counterweight to the contra terror campaign. He was an engineer and he was working to build a small hydroelectric project that would bring light to the nights in the community of El Cua, in Jinotega Province.

On that spring day he was inspecting the dam with two Nicaraguans, Sergio Hernandez and Pablo Rosales. A band of Contras hurled a grenade at the men. All three were seriously wounded. Ben was executed with a shot to the head a few moments later. The two Nicaraguans were also killed, one of them stabbed in the chest.

Ben Linder was also an accomplished juggler and unicyclist, and often dressed as a clown to perform for Nicaraguan children, for whom he had particular affection. In his journal he wrote, "I see the kids and I feel like taking them all away to a safe place to hide until the war stops and the hunger stops and El Cua becomes strong enough to give them the care they deserve. But I can't do that and even if I could, it wouldn't help the neighboring towns. So, instead, I try to put in light and hope for the best."

At his funeral in Nicaragua, Ben's mother Elizabeth said, "My son was brutally murdered for bringing electricity to a few poor people in Northern Nicaragua. He was murdered because he had a dream and because he had the courage to make that dream come true. Not many of us can say that. What was that dream?...to make it possible for the peasants of a few villages to have a light bulb in their homes so their day does not have to end at six o'clock when it gets dark, to get drinking water to them so their children don't have to die of diarrhea in the first years of their lives, to raise them out of poverty so they can raise their children with hope for the future....We understand why Ben came to Nicaragua, and we now know why he stayed. Ben told me the first year he was here, and this is a quote, "It's a wonderful feeling to work in a country where the government's first concern is for its people, for all its people." I am grateful that he had his three and a half years in Nicaragua."

Ben was just one of tens of thousand killed by the Contras. Of Ben Linder's death, Ronald Reagan said nothing, though earlier he said, "I am a Contra, too!" Vice President Bush said,"he was on the other side".

................

=======================================
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Linder

The Biography of Ben Linder
biography of an American volunteer who died in Nicaragua of a CIA bullet.
www.scripter.net/backpages/blinder.htm

Ben Linder Mystery
The Ben Linder Mystery is an activity for students to use Internet resources to learn about the politics and history behind the death of Ben Linder. ...
www.stanford.edu/group/arts/nicaragua/student/linder/index.html
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