What Would Reagan Say???

[Bonnie]

This is a great article, and is very relevant today, worth reading!!

Echoes of the Gipper
What would Reagan say about Iraq, Ukraine and President Bush?

BY PETER ROBINSON
Saturday, April 2, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

What would Ronald Reagan say? Democracy movements rising to power in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan; elections in Afghanistan and Iraq; a new Palestinian leader who appears genuinely committed to establishing a democratic state; pro-democracy demonstrations in Beirut. What would the man Margaret Thatcher called the Great Liberator make of it all?

Pondering this the other day, I decided that if William Safire could commune from time to time with his old boss, Richard Nixon, in the New York Times, then I ought to be able to commune with my old boss in this publication.





Picturing the Gipper's famous grin, I shut my eyes. A moment later, I detected the scent of live oak and the tang of horse sweat. I heard a whinny, then the squeak of leather as a big, square-shouldered man dismounted. "Remember the inscription I used to write on those photographs that showed me up at the ranch, riding my Arabian stallion?" Ronald Reagan asked. " 'This isn't the South Lawn, it's heaven?' Well, by golly, I was right about that. Whoa, boy. Settle down. You'd like to ask a few questions?"
Q: If I may, Mr. President. You called on Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, but these days all sorts of walls seem to be falling. Are there any particular lessons we ought to learn from what has been taking place?

A: [With a self-deprecating shake of the head] Well, I'm no historian. But while the professors are writing their big books, maybe I can offer a couple of simple observations. The first ought to make everybody happy. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were right--Adams sits a mount pretty well for a stocky little fella, by the way--but they were right. We really are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and no matter what his culture, his religion, or his language, everybody would rather have a say in electing a government than have some tyrant tell him how to live.

Remember that 1982 speech to Parliament that I delivered over in London?

Q: I have it right here on my desk. I was looking it over before I got in touch with you.

A: There's a passage in the middle of that speech that I inserted in my own handwriting--you speechwriters did a good job most of the time, but every so often I did a little writing myself. It's about the 1982 election in El Salvador. Would you read that passage aloud?

Q: My pleasure, sir. "On election day the people of El Salvador braved ambush and gunfire, trudging miles to vote for freedom. A grandmother who had been told by the guerillas she would be killed when she returned from the polls told the guerillas, 'You can kill me, kill my family, and kill my neighbors, but you can't kill us all.' The real freedom fighters of El Salvador turned out to be the people of that country."

A: Now, does that 1982 election in El Salvador remind you of anything?

Q: The 2005 election in Iraq.

A: See what I mean? People are people. They'll take freedom whenever they can get it.

Q: Your second observation, sir?

A: A lot of folks won't like this one. Powerful as the aspiration for freedom can be, sometimes it isn't enough by itself. Sometimes the United States needs to step in.

Look at Eastern Europe. East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968--Soviet tanks rolled in every time. Then came Poland in 1981.

In March, the month I got shot, the Soviets began moving forces in and around Poland, and it looked for all the world as if they were going to do to Walesa in Gdansk what they'd done to that Dubcek fella in Prague. What stopped them? American resolve. One of the first things I did when I got well enough to sit up in my hospital bed was to write Brezhnev a letter with the bark off.

Our 600-ship navy, the invasion of Grenada, support for freedom fighters in Afghanistan and Latin America, the Strategic Defense Initiative--the revolution of 1989 was soft as velvet because the United States had spent eight years being hard as steel. Young George Bush understands all that. He knows there's nothing quite as important to the cause of human liberty as the armed forces of the United States.

Q: People often compare President Bush with you. What do you make of that comparison, sir?

A: Well, I certainly like his style. He makes a few important decisions every day but delegates the rest to his staff, exercises, gets plenty of rest, and leaves Washington for his ranch just as often as he can. Wonderful wife, too. A lot like Nancy. Elegant and feminine, but strong. On substance, though, the chief executive George W. Bush reminds me of most is Harry Truman.

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http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006506

 

[NATO AIR]

Thank you for posting this, its a feel-good but make ya think at the same piece. Everyone else will like this I think.