AP Lists Timeline of events Leading to the Fall of Communism; Leaves out Reagan & Thatcher

Figures, I click on a link to an article from the AP entitled Timeline of events leading to communism’s collapse and lo and behold… no mention of Reagan, Thatcher, or Pope John Paul II

• June 4: Poland holds first partially free elections in four decades; Solidarity-led opposition wins all but one freely contested seat in parliament.

• August: Tens of thousands of East Germans swamp West German diplomatic missions in East Berlin, Czechoslovakia and Hungary seeking asylum.

• Aug. 24: In Poland, longtime Solidarity adviser Tadeusz Mazowiecki becomes Soviet bloc’s first non-communist prime minister.

• Sept. 11: Hungary opens its border with the West to East German refugees.

• Oct. 7: During visit to East Berlin, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev indirectly urges reform; thousands demonstrate against East German regime in first of series of protests that grow to rally of 1 million people Nov. 4.

• Nov. 7-8: East Germany’s ruling Politburo resigns.

• Nov. 9: Berlin Wall falls: Border between East and West Germany opens.

• Nov. 17: Students clash with police, starting Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution.”

• Dec. 17: Romanian police fire at protesters; dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and wife try to flee uprising five days later and are executed Christmas Day.

• Dec. 29: Communist rule ends in Czechoslovakia; dissident Vaclav Havel elected president.

1990:

• Oct. 3: Germany is reunited.

• Dec. 9: Lech Walesa wins Poland’s first popular presidential election.

But history shows Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II we instrumental in facilitating the fall of communism.

Ronald Reagan

Reagan was ridiculed by the conventional-wisdom crowd for his quaint anti-communism. He embarrassed many, including some in his administration, with his talk of the evil empire. He was thought na?e in his persistence in seeking nuclear disarmament. He was considered rude and unsophisticated when negotiations with Gorbachev collapsed at the Reykjavik summit because of his refusal to abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative. Yet a year later, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the first nuclear-arms reduction of the Cold War.

Reagan’s principal tactic to bring an end to the Cold War was to build up conventional weapons and deploy them in Europe. Possibly more significant, however, was the weapon of his rhetoric. (His famous Brandenburg Gate speech was given in June 1986, between the collapse of the Reykjavik Summit and the eventual signing of the nuclear-arms-reduction treaty in December 1987). “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Margaret Thatcher

John O’Sullivan, in an article in USA Today, wrote that Thatcher “was the most consistent, outspoken, determined and reliable friend to Reagan and the United States in this final climactic struggle with totalitarian communism.”

O’Sullivan notes that Thatcher matched the U.S. arms buildup and was a strong voice against martial law in Poland. “Above all, she rallied the Europeans to ensure the installation of the U.S. missiles in Western Europe to match the Soviet planting of SS-20s in the Soviet satellites.”

Pope John Paul II

Finally, the pope. Eight months after becoming pope, he visited his native Poland in 1979 and, arguably, ignited the Polish uprising which led, ultimately, to the collapse of the Soviet empire.

During his nine-day visit, an estimated 13 million Poles saw the pope in person. Nearly all the rest saw him on television or heard him on the radio. George Weigel, in his massive biography of the pope, “Witness to Hope,” concludes, “John Paul, though never descending to partisan argument or maneuver, was in fact conducting a kind of national referendum. Before his pilgrimage had begun, the results were in. A revolution of the spirit had been unleashed.”

Liberal’s revisionist history really knows no bounds!