Yonivore
11-10-2010, 08:01 AM
The wall came tumbling down twenty-one years ago this week. (http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6537/the-wall-came-tumbling-down)
THEY USED TO TELL A JOKE in West Berlin:
"What are you going to do when the Wall comes down?"
"Find a tree and start climbing."
"Why?"
"Because there won't be any room to stand in the streets."
Like a lot of jokes told on the front lines of the Cold War, that one contained more than a grain of truth. There really wasn't any room to stand -- well, not much -- when, on that breathtaking night 10 years ago this week, the Central Committee of the East German Communist Party abruptly announced the end of all restrictions on travel to the west. Almost at once, a flood of East Berliners came rushing through the gates. By the hundreds of thousands they came, surging all night long and through the next day, making their way to the free world on foot, by car -- even by subway.
...
"As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind," declared Ronald Reagan on June 12, 1987. "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace . . . come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
He wasn't waiting for Gorbachev to accept the invitation. Reagan had come to office believing that the Cold War could be won by applying economic, military, and political pressure to the Soviet Union. In a landmark document -- National Security Decision Directive 75 (http://www.iwp.edu/docLib/20060710_1998NSDD75StrategicPlan.pdf) -- he had laid out the strategy by which the Soviet rulers would be forced to their knees.
On every front, he bore down. From rebuilding the US military to arming freedom fighters in Afghanistan and Central America, from funding Poland's Solidarity movement to harshly denouncing the crimes of communism, Reagan fought the Cold War to win. By the time he stood before Berlin's Brandenburg Gate in 1987, the Kremlin was under terrible strain and badly demoralized. When the endgame began in Eastern Europe two years later, Mikhail Gorbachev didn't dare send in the tanks. The Evil Empire was finished.
"As I looked out a moment ago," Reagan remarked on that day in Berlin, "I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: 'his wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.' Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth.
"The wall cannot withstand freedom."
For a time it was the planet's most visible, most nauseating, emblem of tyranny. Today its shards are sold for souvenirs. The Berlin Wall was massive enough to stop a tank. But, as Reagan foretold, it could not withstand freedom.
Reagan didn't need a fucking COO.
THEY USED TO TELL A JOKE in West Berlin:
"What are you going to do when the Wall comes down?"
"Find a tree and start climbing."
"Why?"
"Because there won't be any room to stand in the streets."
Like a lot of jokes told on the front lines of the Cold War, that one contained more than a grain of truth. There really wasn't any room to stand -- well, not much -- when, on that breathtaking night 10 years ago this week, the Central Committee of the East German Communist Party abruptly announced the end of all restrictions on travel to the west. Almost at once, a flood of East Berliners came rushing through the gates. By the hundreds of thousands they came, surging all night long and through the next day, making their way to the free world on foot, by car -- even by subway.
...
"As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind," declared Ronald Reagan on June 12, 1987. "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace . . . come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
He wasn't waiting for Gorbachev to accept the invitation. Reagan had come to office believing that the Cold War could be won by applying economic, military, and political pressure to the Soviet Union. In a landmark document -- National Security Decision Directive 75 (http://www.iwp.edu/docLib/20060710_1998NSDD75StrategicPlan.pdf) -- he had laid out the strategy by which the Soviet rulers would be forced to their knees.
On every front, he bore down. From rebuilding the US military to arming freedom fighters in Afghanistan and Central America, from funding Poland's Solidarity movement to harshly denouncing the crimes of communism, Reagan fought the Cold War to win. By the time he stood before Berlin's Brandenburg Gate in 1987, the Kremlin was under terrible strain and badly demoralized. When the endgame began in Eastern Europe two years later, Mikhail Gorbachev didn't dare send in the tanks. The Evil Empire was finished.
"As I looked out a moment ago," Reagan remarked on that day in Berlin, "I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: 'his wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.' Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth.
"The wall cannot withstand freedom."
For a time it was the planet's most visible, most nauseating, emblem of tyranny. Today its shards are sold for souvenirs. The Berlin Wall was massive enough to stop a tank. But, as Reagan foretold, it could not withstand freedom.
Reagan didn't need a fucking COO.