From: ZEITLIN@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Cary Zeitlin)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: Who toppled Communism??
Date: 21 Aug 92 19:11:51 GMT
 <1992Aug21.142956.26531@athena.mit.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

In message: <1992Aug21.142956.26531@athena.mit.edu>
jfed@athena.mit.edu (Jude G Federspiel) spiels:

>      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*?

No argument here: you are hardly the first person to figure out that
the USSR fell largely because of economic collapse, in *part* due to
military expenditures. It is rather simple-minded to arge that the
arms race alone caused the downfall of the Soviet Union. There were
many, many other factors operating.

>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.?

Oh, please. During the Nixon era, both sides publicly acknowledged
the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, i.e., once a nuclear war
starts, both countries would be utterly devastated. So how do you think
they planned to overpower 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.

Yeah, we *never* pick on "little guys" (like Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Guatemala, Chile, the Phillipines, Iran in the 50's...) to make sure our
"interests" are protected.

>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 think we all agree that such power and control in the hands of the few is
a bad thing. So how about the distribution of wealth (and concordant power,
via the corruption of our political system) in the U.S.?

> 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.

Well, I'd like to see it. In any case, it sounds like empty posturing to me.

>        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).

Some numbers, please, to back up these rather wild assertions? I don't think
any knowledgable person believes that Soviet military technology was equal to
the U.S.'s. An "obscene advantage in sheer numbers" -- numbers of what? Nukes?
Troops? If they had such a tremendous advantage, what kept them from attacking?

>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.

Sonny boy, read some history. There were over 1 million (that's million)
Soviets killed during WWII. The pain and cost of war is something deeply
etched in their conciousness, in a way it is not so etched in ours. No
living American has ever had to defend the U.S. from invading armies.
They didn't need Ronnie (What the hell did he do during WWII? He made
*movies*, wow.) to make war look ugly to them. You're totally wrong here,
totally presumptuous, and totally ignorant.

>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.

Again, you reveal your ignorance of even recent history. After the invasion
of Afghanistan in 1979, Carter *increased* the defense budget. He was *not*
dismantling the Pentagon. In fact, he pissed a lot of liberals off with his
defense increase.(Remember Ted Kennedy's challenge in 1980? Probably not.)

>That's naive and stupid.

Takes one to know one, eh?

>Obviously, our defense expenditures hurt a lot.  The economy sucks right now
>in large part because of those expenditures.

We finally found some common ground here.

>But freedom is never free.

No, but it *can* be extremely profitable for the military-industrial complex,
given enough fear-mongering. What a great bunch of patriots those defense
contractors are.

>Jude Federspiel
>jfed@athena.mit.edu

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Cary Zeitlin                              ZEITLIN@SLACVM.SLAC.Stanford.Edu
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