Gorbachev NYT Op-Ed: Russia Never Wanted a War

Mikhail Gorbachev is the former president of the Soviet Union. This article was translated by Pavel Palazhchenko from the Russian.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/op...in&oref=slogin


When I find I have not seriously considered the other side of an issue I take the time, when a well spoken and knowledgeable spokesperson appears, to examine their presentation. I will do so at various other times during the life of that story. I originally took my cue from the American media but now I am seriously thinking about Gorbachev's statement.

I hope you will, too.

Not that you should or shouldn't change your mind but so that these statements of his might help inform your opinions AFTER you determine how much credence to give him.

Even though he is well respected and was lauded for helping bring the Soviet Union to an end, he IS Russian.

__________________
But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America. http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell060508.php3

Gorby is one of the greatest spinmeisters in the history of mankind. He is the Albert Einstein of spin. Anything he writes should be analyzed VERY carefully before buying into it.

__________________
~
~
~

Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

God is a conservative -

Ecclesiastes 10:2--"A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but a fool's heart to the left."

As time goes by I am becoming increasingly interested in learning how people think and weigh matters before making decisions.

You make a good point. I would not stop at Gorbachev's word as final say, just as I haven't stopped at our media and govt. and both candidate's pronouncements as representing the complete story of what's going on.

In terms of my own decision making process, I believe I have time before things get to the point where I need to have a position on which I might stand and use as a soapbox. Hopefully before that time comes I will have a chance to consider other points of view.

FWIW, I know that before joining the Bush administration, Condoleeza Rice was a Soviet expert. On the other side of the US partisan political divide, I know that Zbigniew Brzezinski advises Obama and even though he seems not to have been of help to the junior Senator at the start of the Georgian-Russian war and though he was and remains God-awful when considering the threat of Islamic expansion, he was also a Soviet expert during and before his joining the Carter administration.

So, I believe the current hard line is probably the best one to use in dealing with the Russians. But enough has changed from the Cold War days until now to make a wholesale transplant of those previous attitudes and policies into the situation today to seem foolhardy. And I hope those in charge recognize that the old ways may OR MAY NOT necessarily be the most productive way of dealing with Russia.

I have no concrete way of substantiating this, but I believe the Soviet people and their leaders understood they were the bad guys. And that realization ate at them. When Reagan called them the Evil Empire it must have struck a chord which never stopped reverberating until the wall came down. It was right and proper to engage them and their evil in a confrontational manner. In my opinion, they knew Reagan had them pegged.

However, today, the Russian people are full of confidence and optimism because they have strong, vibrant but menacing leadership which affords the people enough freedom and enough capitalism that they are able to live their lives somewhat comfortably and, for some, somewhat opulently. Their feelings of insecurity at their borders, with no natural boundaries to stop would be invaders, has to be respected or at least well understood by our foreign policy people.

I am all for our creating a missile shield in Eastern Europe (Poland) to guard against rogue nations (Iran) attacking any of our allies in that region. But they would be deployed only 100 miles from the Russian border IIRC, and we'd do well to recall JFK's reaction when Soviet OFFENSIVE missiles were set up in Cuba in 1962. Or we should try to think of how we would react to Russian "defensive" missiles being deployed in Mexico or Canada or in Siberia, north of the Kamchatka Peninsula near the Bering Sea and within distance of our oil facilities in Alaska.

The Russians have promised a non-diplomatic response to our having signed the agreement yesterday with Poland to house those 10 missiles in a football pitch sized field. The missiles are not capable of defending against Russian missiles and they are not aimed at Russia but Russia feels that this encroachment requires a non-diplomatic response.

Cool heads and experienced hands need to be in charge of this or else we could be on the road to a serious confrontation.

__________________
But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America. http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell060508.php3

IMO, our plans to build a missile shield across E. Europe may very well at the heart of this action by Russia. It wouldn't surprise me if there isn't a condition placed on their withdrawal that restricts our ability to build this shield.

__________________
~
~
~

Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

God is a conservative -

Ecclesiastes 10:2--"A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but a fool's heart to the left."