Sinergy
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quote:
ORIGINAL: WyrdRich
Here you are, Sinergy.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1754132/posts
Please note the nice quote from Gorbachev about the Cold War being over and who won. There are also some nice tidbits about the efforts made to rewrite history by Reagan opponents.
(Edit: The paragraph above the headline in the link isn't really necessary in my opinion, but there it was. I do not share the authors opinion that liberals are dumbasses.)
Lets see, Reagan tells Gorbachev to drop the wall, and the wall comes down, erego, it must have been Reagan.
But my favorite is the following. From the source you cited.
quote:
Historically it is common for nations to experience poor economic performance, but never have food shortages or technological backwardness been sufficient causes for the destruction of a large empire. The Roman empire survived internal corrosion for centuries before it was destroyed by the invasion of the barbarian hordes. The Ottoman empire persisted as the "sick man of Europe" for generations and ended only with catastrophic defeat in World War I.
Every empire that Rome defeated was defeated largely because the Roman's developed iron weapons and armor, battle tactics, and seige engines. This would be synonymous with technological backwardness on the part of the conquered people.
Everybody and their dog has a theory as to why the Roman empire collapsed. I tend to go with the whole systems approach theory that a lot of things were part of the cause.
The "loss of nerve" stated in the article, if you read about it, was because Reagan's hawkish antagonism with the USSR was correctly identified, by the intelligence organizations in the USSR, as a lunatic attempting to pick a fight that nobody could win, and the political apparatus of the USSR (helped Gorbachev decide) decided not to launch missiles when the US raised their defense levels.
I worked in Aerospaz for almost 18 years during this time period. When I would read about the various things which "Star Wars" weapons were reputed to do, I came to the conclusion that while they were a lovely idea, they were technologically unworkable and outrageously expensive.
But since Reagan was a "all big business, all the time" kind of person, when the people from large corporations like TRW, Northrop, Raytheon, etc., would brief him with "We can build an unassailable missile defense system that is satellite based and relies on lasers to shoot out missiles on the ground," his level of education in things like basic physics, etc., did not make him consider the likelihood that these things would not work.
I worked on one of the last "cost plus" contracts ever awarded. The company I worked for was told to build X and the government would pick up all costs and add something for profit. These were regularly used during most of the Cold War for the company to recommend some ridiculously unworkable thing, charge the government outrageous sums, and not have to provide a product.
After that, all contracts were flat fee contracts. Company would say it costs X amount of money to build. Government would allocate X amount of money. Company would build it or get sued.
As a side note, another lovely indicator of Reagan era policies being implemented is that almost every contract awarded while the Simian In Chief has been on watch have been cost plus.
The final quote in your article states that it was Reagan's vision that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, the article fails to prove what he actually did to make it come about.
Sinergy
edited to add a conquered people thingummy
< Message edited by Sinergy -- 1/15/2007 7:09:59 PM >
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RE: Who is going to help us take on Iran and company? - 
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