From: Ascmjk@aol.com
Date: Sun Jun 06 2004 - 14:29:50 BST
Mark, others
In a recent post, Mark listed footnotes regarding Nicaragua, El Salvador,
Grenada, Afghanistan, and Libya. I may have to reread it, but I don't remember
seeing the word "communist" listed in any of these footnotes, which were
apparently designed to reflect badly on Reagan. Then again, communism may have been
left out because thanks to Reagan it no longer exists in most places.
Communists at heart will hate Reagan forever.
As I said in the post that started this thread, people tend to forget the
Cold War and the influence of the Soviet Union. The Russians wanted to expand the
influence of Communism. Anyone who denies that is truly living in a fantasy
world. How we forget the Iron Curtain. Before Reagan took office, there were
less than 40 democracies in the world. Now there are over 120. THAT is progress.
Fighting the Worldwide Spread of Communism was more important than anything
else before the Cold War finally ended. The Soviets saw the world as a big
chess board, and they wanted to win the game. American Cold War Fighters like
Reagan knew that if you put a Dictator on a square of the chess board, Communism
would be kept off that square. Thus temporary support of Dictators like Saddam
was justified during the Cold War (we had the option of influencing him or
letting the Soviets influence him--which should close the book on that aspect of
the story--anyway, by removing Saddam years after the Cold War we sent a
message to ALL Dictators--"Yes, we needed you to stabilize certain regions that
could have fallen under Communist Control before the Fall of the USSR, but no
longer; you WILL help us in the Fight against Terrorism, or we CAN remove
you--that is a GOOD message to send Dictators!). We saw how close Communism could get
to American shore in Cuba. When you mentioned the Sandinistas of Nicaragua,
you didn't mention they were Communists.
You didn't mention that between 1974 and 1980 nine nations fell under Soviet
control. Indeed, communist flags went up all over the globe in the 70s. Many
truly believed Communism would inevitably expand and encompass the world, and
every nation that went Red strengthened this fear. You didn't mention Grenada's
close ties to Communism and the Soviet Union in your footnote. Almost as if
Communism was irrelevant to your point.
You didn't mention the Communist insurgency in El Salvador. Your footnote
didn't mention that the Communist insurgency had been thwarted there and all over
Latin America. As for Afghanistan, the United States helped fund a
humiliation of the Russian Army from which they never recovered, and the US has since
spearheaded a worldwide effort to bring meaningful change (like women being
allowed to go to school) to Afghanistan. We could have left the Taliban in power.
Truly much work remains, but steps have been taken in the correct direction.
But Reagan's greatest legacy will always be his staunch opposition to
Communism. Your footnotes, mentioning Nicaragua and Grenada, will be remembered by
history as exactly that--footnotes. Reagan will always be remembered for his
unyielding opposition to the Soviet Union, for his willingness to call a regime
that murdered 40 million of its own citizens "evil." The fact is, to paraphrase
an article I read today by a Democrat, some people don't appreciate how truly
monumental and morally important Reagan's anticommunist vision was.
We are consumed today wondering how we can defend the world against
Terrorism, but caught up in the present as we are, we must not neglect the past. We can
all take heart when we consider that the free world DID win against the
ideology of Communism, which spread its tentacles to every continent. By some
estimates, 100 million people lost their lives to Communism in the 20th century. In
1993, Bill Clinton signed the authorizing legislation for the Victims of
Communism Memorial Foundation. The memorial will include an eternal flame and a
marble panel with quotations from leaders in the fight against Communism. It is
a replica of the Goddess of Democracy, the same statue raised by Chinese
students in Tiananman Square in the summer of 1989.
I, for one, appreciate that for eight years the United States had as its
leader a man who did everything in his power to destroy the most dangerous
ideology ever to threaten the free world. That was, and should have been, his top
priority. The Berlin Wall didn't just fall down--it was pushed.
Jon
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