Just for the record I do not think of Reagan as an Actor as much as I do a labor Boss. As president of the Screen Actors Guild he brought fare wages and health care to actors.
Sorry I thought Charlie was a Republican. After 2 years on YA I thought everyone in Texas was Republican
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wilson_%28politician%29
BTW he is making the talk show rounds and is a bit interesting to listen to.
the Soviet empire collapsed under Reagans watch so i think the Kudo’s should go to him.
Regan was instrumental in ending the “cold war”
Both did. I have not seen Charlie Wilson’s War, but I have heard it minimized Reagan’s and other Republicans role and gave Charlie, the only democrat, most of the credit, go figure. But I think Charlie, Reagan, and others did the right thing. I think they all deserve to be recognized.
Reagan ended the Cold War
The USSR when it collapsed. Carter pretty much had the job done by the time Reagan even remembered there was a USSR.
charlie atcually help people engage the soviets in arm combat.all reagan did was asked the soviets very sternly to tare down the berlin wall
American Conservative Ronald Reagan. Like I’ve said many times, Liberals grow up to be Conservatives.
Reagan’s first act as President was to break the Air Traffic Controller’s Union, how can you think he was pro labor? Oh, maybe the Screen Actors Guild was worthy of his efforts ( see, self interest).
Have you forgotten Gorbachev in your anxiety to settle this question?
Reagan, Bah Humbug!
Neither person deserves much in the way of personal credit. Unless you believe (wrongly, in my opinion) that the USSR’s experiences with Afghanistan was the main factor in bringing down the Communist regime, then Wilson’s role in that collapse is minimal. And the Communist experiemnt carried the seeds of its own destruction long before Reagan was elected.
Ok..Let’s get this straight…
Charlie Wilson was no republican.He was a democrat..The liberal from Lufkin!!
He had Little or no no effect on the cold war except for his support for the Afghans in the invasion of Russian forces
Harry Truman deserves the credit. Just because it collapsed on Bush the Elder’s watch, or Ronald Reagan has worshippers who give him credit for his shooting-off-of-the-mouth, doesn’t mean they deserve credit.
Nobody did it just got quieter for a while. It looks like Putin is eager to start it back up. The Soviet Union collapsed largely due to it’s weak infrastructure and it’s policy of spreading itself out too thin into foreign conflicts as well as having to keep putting out political wildfires all over the empire.
C) None of the above. The majority of the credit needs to go to Mikail Gorbachev. He was the one who realized how destructive and pointless it was, and decided to stop playing the same game both sides had been involved with for decades. All Reagan did was spend more than his predecessors. That really wasn’t a great plan, considering the long-term damage it did to our economy.
Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” had the Soviets scared to the point of bankruptcy. Reagan deliberately wasted millions of our dollars on the space program to make the Soviets fear our space weapon capabilities and the Soviets couldn’t spend at the rate Reagan was without bankrupting the country.
Advantage Reagan.
Complex question, and there isn’t a wrong answer. While Charlie’s War bogged the Soviets down in Afghanistan at a greater price in assets, men, and time than any war in Eastern Europe cound have, Reagan provided the finishing blow.
Accelerating the arms race when the Soviets were ill prepared to do so by increasing the Navy to a 600 ship fleet, deploying (or threatining) the MX, and the SDI otherwise known as “Star Wars” missile defense.
Also, remember that the Soviets went through many Premiers too. Uri Andropov, Constantine Chenenko, and Lenoid Brezhnev (probably horribly butchered his name). They composed the majority of the “old guard” leaders of strict Stalinist Communism. When finally Mikhael Gorbachev came to power, there was nothing financially left. He, along with many of the “new” Communists were tired of the food lines and poverty for anyone but the Politbureau. They were tired of standing in long lines to get vouchers for potatoes, bread, toilet paper, and other essential food and clothing.
Essentially, the American supermarket buried the Soviets. Men like Gorbachev recognized the system for what it was, broken.
The military was also disaster, more soliders drank break fluid than were willing to fight for a nation rotting from the inside. The Afghan war simply decimated the officer corps worse than Stalin’s purges. Without strong leaders, nobody was willing to follow. It wasn’t superiority, or necessarily the Stinger, that defeated the Soviets. It was apathy.
What spurred the rise of the Reds over the Whites, the collapse of the Tsar, also happened to the Marxist-Lenninist-Stalinist’s. Same result, their governments collapsed from within. Every President from Truman through Reagan were responsible in one way or another…