War on Terror deaths Vs other War

Ryan Cousineau

In article
<95bd22f6-6eda-484a-80b4-5534318c82a0@f36g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>,
"Paul G." <carbide@egine.com> wrote:

> On Jun 1, 4:16 pm, "dustoyev...@mac.com" <dustoyev...@mac.com> wrote:
> > On Jun 1, 6:07 pm, "Paul G." <carb...@egine.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Thank you. How refreshing to have someone simply admit an error and
> > > move on. You are correct that Reagan may not have known that the
> > > Libyans did it before he left office, but my statement "Reagan never
> > > did a damn thing about that" is still true. The Libyans were also
> > > behind the Pan Am Flight 73 hijacking on September 5, 1986, in which
> > > 19 Americans died. Reagan had several years to respond to that, and
> > > didn't. Bush's father also did not respond to these attacks with
> > > military force.
> >
> > > The Republican propaganda machine has been very effective at rewriting
> > > history to delete Reagan's colossal failures, and give him credit for
> > > things he had little or nothing to do with.
> >
> > Like the fall of the Evil Empire?
> >
>
> Yes. Note that Cuba and North Korea are still creaking along under
> communism, and Cuba is only a few miles away from the US. How is it
> that Reagan was able to cause the collapse of the mighty Soviet Union
> half way around the world, but was totally impotent when it came to
> itty bitty Cuba, which was being propped up by the Soviet Union?

Because the USSR was much more susceptible to the pressure Reagan had to
apply, particularly in the matter of convincing the Soviets that they
could not maintain martial parity with the US.

Cuba had some very lean years between the fall of the USSR and the rise
of Hugo Chavez, who has been an immensely useful contributor to Cuban
coffers.

> I think the obvious answer is that if Gorbachev had been as ruthless
> as Castro and Kim Il Jong the Soviet Union would still be creaking
> along.

Gorbachev deserves credit for, at the very least, hastening the
inevitable, and making the transition with something less than maximal
levels of agony. On the other hand, he tried to hide Chernobyl from the
world.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Stalinist Communism has only
survived in small and highly isolated countries. You may be right that
an evil Anti-Gorbachev could have kept the USSR stumbling along for
another decade or two, but the result would have looked a lot like Cuba
or N. Korea: a nation that was a starving, hopeless shadow of its
not-very-impressive former self.

A USSR that couldn't feed itself was a USSR that couldn't continue to
control its satellite states. Whatever else that would have been, that
wouldn't have a Soviet Empire.

Reagan is sensibly creditable with using the bully pulpit ("tear down
this wall!") to up the internal and external pressure on the USSR, as
well as using military initiatives ranging from the practical to the
ludicrous to drive the Russians completely nuts in a game of catch-up
they utterly could not afford.

Had a détente-and-love policy been the order of the day, the USSR might
have stumbled onward, been able to afford to keep hold of Afghanistan,
and been able to maintain control of its satellite states. But we're
basically making things up, here. Hypotheticals are like that.

> Reagan did stuff like spend a gazillion dollars on the B1 and B2
> bombers, and.... BWAHAHAHAHAHA! brought back battleships! Bombers
> and battleships were obsolete technologies. It's been the missile age
> since the 60's, when the B-70 was canceled. The battleship has been
> obsolete since WWII when a biplane crippled the Bismark and the
> Japanese sank a bunch of our battleships with little planes.

All four of the Reagan-era battleships were recommissioned WW2-vintage
hulls. Two of them saw action doing shore bombardment during Operation
Desert Storm. It turns out when you can rely on air supremacy (which, to
this day, the US can in almost every conceivable military circumstance),
battleships make great artillery platforms.

It's fun to mock bombers, but US bombers sure have done a lot of work
for an obsolete technology. If you want to mock specific
military-technology boondoggles, there's plenty to choose from.

Cultivator Number Six, Churchill's pet project:

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/nell...ical-mole.htm/2

Ekranoplan, doing its part to bankrupt the Soviet Union:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekranoplan

And many more.

--
Ryan Cousineau rcousine@gmail.com http://www.wiredcola.com/
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."