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Originally posted by User Name
I am from the former Soviet Union, and while I do not remember what life was like there, my parents do, and they say it was best in the early 1980s. Thank you so much, President Reagan, for fucking up the economy of my homeland. Also, seeing as Reagan gets so much credit for breaking up the USSR, perhaps he should be thanked along with Gorbachev for DECREASING THE STANDARD OF LIVING IN HALF. My parents would have never wanted to leave (though they definitely could, to Israel or the US) if the Soviet Union didn't break up and the economy wasn't in ruins.
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First, Russia's government chose to match American military spending. They could have given up. The Russian economy was ruined because it was competing against an economic system that outperformed it. Reagan simply overheated the American economy slightly, and Russia's attempts to match this exploded their economic boiler.
Second, isn't Russia's economy
looking up?
Third, the USSR had vowed to overthrow all capitalist economies. Which sort of explains why capitalist countries where, well, rather leery of USSR-backed nation states, and willing to back those who rebel against them. It was more than a bit overdone and ferile, but they really where fighting for survival at the time.
What you describe as a "political disagreement" was only held back from being a shooting war by the existance of nuclear bombs on both sides.
Was Reagan an idiot about many things, possibly a war criminal, and maybe a bit demented before he finished his presidency? I'd guess yes.
But, he brought the world back from the brink of death. That's worth some points.
Win one more for the Gipper.
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We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.
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President Ronald Wilson Reagan, June 6th, 1984
As an aside, if Bush pulls it off, if he manages to start a wave of freedom and democracy in the middle east, I'd forgive him Patriot, I'd forgive him Ashcroft, I'd forgive him Cheney, I'd forgive him for fiscial idiocy. I'd even forgive him for G.Bay.