Pelosi and Lantos may go to Iran

Syria and Iran are lead by unsavory characters who deny the Holocaust, but we must have dialogue. Lantos (a holocaust survivor) said the democrats have their own foreign policy while Speaker of the State Pelosi contradicted that and said their message to Syria was identical to that of Bush, but then today said he has no Middle East policy.

Regardless, the democrats turned down the request to speak with Bush on funding the troups, but we must have dialogue with Syria and Iran. Well, after the stunning success with Syria, they need to visit North Korea subsequent to Iran.

Gotta love that house leadership. Peace through weakness.

It is not peace through weakness.
It is attempts at peace through attempted diplomacy.
US lawmakers ready to visit Iran after Syria trip

Gosh...does anyone besides me that peace through superior firepower, aka the Reagan doctrine, isn't peace? It is fear...

While they arm and train insurgents in Iraq, resulting in bodybags or maimed U.S. Servicemen coming back to the U.S.? Why does it always have to be the U.S. that bends over and says "please hit me in the xxxx" while we try to have a mutual understanding? They violate the Geneva Convention, kill U.S. Servicemen in a conflict that does not involve them, make threats to annihilate a sovereign nation, and seek to develop the means to do so. The Speaker of the State (I love that one Pale)is employing the Jimmy Carter and Neville Chamberlin doctrine, both of which historically failed.

Reagan bankrupting the Soviet Union was one of the single most important accomplishments of the 20th century, the threat of assured mutual destruction was overcome by that peace through superior firepower

Right Pale...
Because Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika had nothing to do with it.
It was all b/c of Saint Ronald Reagan.

I can't think of a time when isolation really worked. Our Cuba policy has largely failed, in my opinion. That said, the U.S. government should have one policy voice, and that's the president.

I agree grmasterb.
There shouldn't rouge leaders conducting their own foreign policy.
BUT...on the larger scale...we can't just go around threatening to cut other countries off or to blow them up...

It worked in South Africa, Grm, but admittedly, it took many nations persevering for many years. It takes alot of resolve; to borrow a line from the movie "Siege" -"He who is most committed, wins."

But I agree, the thing that urks me most is the lack of a unified voice these trip give the impression of. Establiashing relations can work, in so far as we practice the concept of "keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

Right Neo, and U.S. Policy and Saint Ronald had nothing to do with influencing the eventual shift that became known as perestroika.

I recall an earlier Soviet leader:
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev famously used an expression generally translated into English as "We will bury you!" ("Мы вас похороним!", transliterated as My vas pokhoronim!) while addressing Western ambassadors at reception in Moscow in November, 1956.[

I agree we shouldn't completely cut off dialogue, but I don't believe the Bushies go around recklessly theatening to blow up other countries. Certainly we never take military options off of the table. You always want to keep the other side guessing about that sort of thing. Iraq, as I see it, was a tactical decision that blew up in their faces.

A good bit of which is due to mismanagement on the part of the Bush Admin and his generals.

Good one. You got me there.

Evil people like Chris Wallace of Fox News need to be isolated. Misunderstood folk like the genocide-baiting Ahmadinejad need to be engaged. Ok, got it.

But when the USSR fell...it was due in part to perestroika and in part to Reagan...

No one person or thing was responsible...

When have I ever called Chris Wallace "evil" or said he should be "isolated"?

-J- must be in one of his "Liberals hate America" moods...

-J- , Grm is not a libby, nor is he a conservative. He is among that group in the middle, watching all of us conservatives and liberals fire shots at oneanother. He is also one who proudly served the country during the Gulf War as a soldier.(Sorry to speak of you in the 3rd person Grm, not that you need me to defend you ;)).

Why do you think Gorbachev tried perestroika?

Gorbaechov tried perestroika because the country's economic infrastructure was in shambles due to 50 years of arms race and the Communist leadership was too corrupt to do anything about it. All Reagan did was give a push to an already collapsing economy. He gets way too much credit for bringing down the Soviets.

If any one man could be called responsible it has got to be John Paul II, for supporting the workers in Poland. This led to changes all throughout the Eastern bloc, which ultimately led in the Baltic states withdrawing from the Soviet Union, and the entire country falling apart.

And just as an interesting aside, the majority of people living in the former Soviet Union despise Gorbachev, particularly the older people who lost their pensions. He's not the hero to them that we often make him out to be.

And didn't Reagan's arms build up put that much more pressure on the Soviet system?

My response was to the topic of the thread in general, not to you specifically. You just happened to have been the latest post at the time I replied. Sorry for any confusion.

Regan did not single handedly topple the soviets. Yet, without him, it probably would not have happened so quickly. In fact, without him, it would Russia would likely still be the USSR. So, go ahead and claim Regan did next to nothing. But the man understood how to use economics. Which, I believe is the US's most powerful weopon.

When have I ever said Reagan did next to nothing???!!!

Doubledown, it is interesting to note that Reagan worked behind the scenes with the Vatican in toppling Communism in the former Soviet Union. Both Reagan and Pope John Paul II had a similar vision of Russia free of Communist oppression.

No, they were in a downward spiral for their last 20 years. They had an economic system that was totally disfunctional and "crop failures" every year.

Reagan played a part, as did many US leaders over the years. But in the end, it was the US' overall economic vitality and the USSR's economic weakness that brought them down, not individuals.

Yeah, the US was so "economically vital" under the Carter administration.

is st louis being renamed "reagangrad" this year or next?

Yossarian's got it, it was more internal inefficiency than external pressures that brought down the Soviet Union. True, our arms build ups throughout the Cold War tied up a vast amount of Soviet resources, and led to an earlier collapse, but to say Reagan was largely responsible, that's just naive.

Did he help? Sure, just as every previous president helped, but the Soviet economy had been headed down the toilet since Brezhnev (which is why he opened detente with Nixon)

Seeing as how St. Louis votes about 90% dim, I doubt that's on the agenda. They're worried more about the fact that the state has had to come in and take over their failing school system.

j, i know you are a st louis card fan. that's the only association.

but if it were up to you, it would be renamed reagangrad, right?

Oh, right. Reagangrad. Kind of like you're pushing to get Pennsylvania renamed "Barackistan".

Correct, Reagan helped, but he helped alot more than his predecessors. Here are some observations:

http://wais.stanford.edu/History/history_ussrandreagan.htm

What a surprise.

A former visiting fellow from the Hoover Institution, a leading neoconservative and libertarian public policy think tank, has something nice to say about Ronald Reagan?

I mean afterall, none of what he said actually took place. He just made it up.

For goodness' sake Fella...Reagan was an honorary fellow of the school...of course they're going to agree with him...

I'm not saying Reagan didn't help...but he doesn't deserve to replace FDR on the penny, he doesn't need to be on Mt. Rushmore. Reagan is not, was not, and will never be God, and conservatives need stop viewing him as this messiah like figure.

You're in banking, eh?



Why does conservative respect for Reagan bother you so much?

Written like someone who has no real understanding of how the Soviet Union worked. I was actually agreeing with this article until this paragraph, which totally discredits the author in my opinion.

There were indeed ways to advance within the USSR, and contrary to popular opinion, workers were not all paid the same wages regardless of job. Being a good worker and citizen was well rewarded (relatively, not in terms of life in the US), as the government provided apartments and dachas free of charge.

Also, individual achievements were glorified like our pop icons. Every Soviet city had (and has) monuments to popular heros like Schevchenko, Sergei Bubkin and Tolstoy, not to mention the thousands of monuments to Geroev Truda, or the heros of labour.

You may wantg to expand your knowledge by reading the writings of former Soviet dissident Alexander Solzenitzen. He'll detail just how "inspiring" soviet society was.

Who said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that a poor man would rather vote for someone or something that he thinks will at least give him a chance to be rich then to accept the reality that he is poor?

From my personal experiences and conversations I have had with people who live in Russia and Ukraine and were born into the Soviet system, I think I've got a better handle on the Soviet Union than anyone on this board.

I'm not saying it was a paradise, but it wasn't as bad as the American propaganda machine would have had you believe. Aside from Stalin's reign, it really wasn't the scary police state you probably think it was. The KGB didn't just come and snatch people off the street for no reason. If you were a dissenter, or journalist who published unpopular (with the party) opinions, then you may have had reason to fear, but it's really no different in Russia today. Look at how many journalists have been killed in Moscow in the last year alone.

Dissenters aside, most Russians were proud to be Soviets and viewed their nation as inherently better than the US, just as we view the US as being the superior nation (and history has vindicated us)

And when you get past the economical differences, isn't the bolded section the heart of the difference between the two cultures. Russia has always been totalitarian. America has never been.

Neither side can really understand the other because of these vast historical differences.

Putting propoganda aside, which system would you rather live in?

in a perfect world, j...

I will take the US everytime. It's interesting to live there, but you really miss the creature comforts like microwaves, dryers and hot water everyday (2 months in the summer cities are without hot water, as pipes are cleaned. Most people don't have hot water heaters and it's pumped hot from a station in the district)

Corrruption is so rampant also. It might be nice to bribe a policeman to get out of a speeding ticket, but when mafia killers are bribing detectives and getting away with murder, that's out of hand. At least we are only corrupt at the very top, with crooked lobbyists, etc.

To tell you the truth, I always took life here for granted until I went to Eastern Europe. We really do have it good here.

(and history has vindicated us)[/quote]

Thankfully, but now in place of totalitarian communism we have mindless radical ideologies.

Just talk to Cuban Ameircans. They are fiercely appreciative of our liberties, having lived under and escaped from little russia...Cuba.