[lit-ideas] Re: Who won, or lost, the Cold War

From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 15:16:29 -0500
We've picked up the mantle of the old USSR.  Roll in with our tanks, point
our guns, demand democracy whether they like it or not.  We're no better
than anybody.  If anything, invading Iraq has given Putin credibility in
dealing with Chechnya militarily.  We like to think ourselves superior, but
the facts just are not there.



> [Original Message]
> From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 1/21/2006 2:21:44 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Who won, or lost, the Cold War
>
> Lawrence: it was the pressure applied by every 
> administration from Truman through Reagan that was 
> necessary to the fall of the USSR in 1989.
>
> Eric: People tend to forget that we were in a 
> death match with the USSR, with tens of thousands 
> of nuclear warheads pointed at population centers, 
> forget Khrushchev's announcement of a 100-megaton 
> nuclear weapon (I once calculated that the 
> crater--just the crater--from a single 100-meg 
> explosion would be fifty miles across. Could 
> easily kill most people in five states.)
>
> As a result, the US is remembered for propping up 
> every evil dictator, every repressive regime. For 
> example, an old man in Brazil told me that America 
> gave Brazil two things, "John Wayne and the death 
> of teachers all over the country." Older 
> Brazilians remember that our CIA trained the 
> Brazilian dictatorship in torture and abetted the 
> disappearance of hundreds of suspected 
> Marxist-leaning school teachers.
>
> Read Pinter's Nobel Prize Speech. Without 
> mentioning the fact that the survival of the 
> entire human race was at stake, Pinter brings all 
> these realpolitik moves back to roost. He wants to 
> blame, so he blames, context be damned.
>
> We could have done better, sure in retrospect. But 
> at the time (and how we forget!) the entire planet 
> could have been rendered uninhabitable, and all of 
> humanity was at stake.  Because in the present 
> conflict, less is at stake, we are not nearly as 
> Draconian as we were then. Yet people often lump 
> the entire history of misdeeds together, out of 
> context.
>
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[lit-ideas] Re: Who won, or lost, the Cold War

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