quote:

ORIGINAL: cloudboy

quote:

Cloud boy, perhaps you might remember a few other things about Regan's administration. Just before Regan took office, the United States had already be relegated to a position of second place militarily behind Russia with S.A.L.T. 1. Carter had agreed to S.A.L.T. 2 but wised up at the last moment. Even still, out military was at its weakest since the demobilization after WW II. Russia had invaded Afghanistan. What was our tepid response? We boycotted the Olympics. Carter had absolutely destroyed the economy. We had hostages in Iran.

Ok.....cloudboy??? That is the shit storm Ronaldus Maxmus took the country in. At the end of his presidency, he bankrupted and destroyed the Soviet Union without a shot being fired. No one YOU know was deployed to fight the Soviets, right? Reagan took them down with competitive military spending, subterfuge and poking the Soviet Union in the eye wherever he could, 24 hours a day. He was THE LAST PRESIDENT with a pair of balls.

There is not one credible Sovietologist who would agree with your assessment. Gorbachev's reforms and glasnost had much more to do with the break up of the USSR than the actions of the US. Reagan's buildup was wasted money and tax dollars, and it was Ex. A. of the US military industrial complex overstating a threat to our national security. (A grave threat would not have collapsed like a house of cards.) It also legitimized borrow and spend policies that continued unabated for 30 years except for a brief period under Clinton.

If you want to give credit to Reagan, remember that he armed Islamic extremists in Afghanistan -- a move that came back haunt us. As a result, we've been embroiled in Afghanistan for 10 years.

To think we could have avoided spending all that money on "Star Wars" et. al. -- kept out of Afghanistan -- AND the USSR would have collapsed on its own. 9/11 arguably would never have happened.

quote:

ORIGINAL: mnottertail

Carter actually started the funding of guerillas in afghanistan 1979.  St. Wrinklemeat was a johnny come lately.  

He ended Carter's grain embargo of the Soviet Union, which did not help hasten the fall.

The Soviet Union was pretty much unwilling to reform their economy (like the US) which was in serious trouble long before St. Wrinklemeat.

They were short of natural gas and paying thru the nose for it (much like us with oil) and funding what they could with oil exports (much like us borrowing).

They were worn out by a war that they couldnt win and would never end in Afghanistan (much like we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan)

So, it goes a little beyond St. Wrinklmeat singlehandedly destroying the Soviet Empire, but he was in the right place at the right time, and some of his policies helped. 

Unfortunately most of his policies were very bad for the US in the long term, and that is what the neo-cons got out of it in their wrong as usual fashion, and are still espousing.