From: jfed@athena.mit.edu (Jude G Federspiel)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: Who toppled Communism??
Date: 21 Aug 92 14:29:56 GMT
Reply-To: jfed@athena.mit.edu.UUCP (Jude G Federspiel)
Distribution: usa
Organization: MIT Project Athena

In article <92233.173023DART@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU> DART@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (415) writes:
>
>I'm so sick, nearly violently so, of hearing of how the Reagan and
>Bush won the cold war.  This is an awful lie that is nothing but a
>huge slap in the face to the real heroes of the revolution.  Lech
>Walesa and Gorbachev are a couple of names that come to mind right
>off.  Then there were many others who held high ideals of a better
>life for them and their fellow countrymen/women, and were put in
>prison and killed for it.  We'll never know who a lot of them were,
>but I'm sure none of them were named 'Reagan' or 'Bush'.

      What you fail to see is that Gorbachev did his darnedest to keep the 
Soviet Union (yes, the _communist_ Soviet Union) alive and kicking until
it's painful death.  What forced the collapse was economic--anybody stop
to think that the reason the economic collapse occurred when it did was
because Gorby was spending so much of his GNP on defense and had been for
*years*?  That his country was always starving because that was how he
spent his money? That he had to do so because he still had the dream of 
overpowering the U.S.?  Before you start flipping out on me and saying they
would never attack us, just remember how communism spread...by knocking
out the little guys one bye one.  I think a lot of people have forgotten 
what Communism is all about.  It's only partly about a Utopian distribution of 
wealt which has never worked.  It's about power.  Centralization of
decision-making in the hands of a small few.  Control.  I'm no McCarthy, but 
I remember something about Kruschev saying he wanted to bury the capitalist 
pigs.  If anybody wants me to, I'll even dig up the quote I have of Mister 
time Man of the Year oh yeah look at how I ended communism Gorbachev saying 
something to the effect of "when they think we are down and completely 
destroyed, it is then that we will strike and crush their complacent armies 
to a pulp."  I'm totally serious.  He said that.  
	
	Does anybody out there honestly believe _his_ defense buildup was
_defense_?  The truth of the matter is, Soviet Arms were being produced faster,
the technological gap between U.S. and Soviet arms was decreasing rapidly, and
they already had some obscene advantage in sheer numbers when Gorbachev 
"ended communism." (over three to one in men at least; similar for arms and
supplies, Navy excepted, we had'em toasted there).

Now I don't know about Bush, but I do know nobody else of significance in the
country at the time had the balls Reagan did to stand up to them, to _deter_
violence by making war look so painful and costly and ugly to the Soviets that
they would never try it.  That was what "defense buildup" in this nation that
everybody whines about so much is all about.  In that sense, Reagan/Bush played
a *huge* part in ending communism.  If we had put some peon like Carter or 
Mondale in office who would have dismantled the pentagon by stripping it of 
funding, do you think history would have run the same course?  Wrong, pal. 
That's naive and stupid.

Obviously, our defense expenditures hurt a lot.  The economy sucks right now
in large part because of those expenditures.  But freedom is never free. 

>
>Marty L. Dart
>My opinions are mine and mine alone.

Jude Federspiel
jfed@athena.mit.edu
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections