America lost the Cold War.
Let me say it again. America lost the Cold War.
Let me make myself clearer. Communism may have failed, but America lost the Cold War.
It wasn't Ronald Reagan or Robert Welch or Young Americans for Freedom who won the Cold War. Two guys from Poland, Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa, with a little help from their friends in Lithuania, brought down the Soviet Union.
Well, okay, you're thinking, we didn't necessarily win the Cold War by ourselves, but we Americans took actions of fight Communism and keep it from spreading, so we certainly didn't lose it. Oh, really? Well, then, let's review those actions:
When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, President Harry Truman went to the United Nations to approve a multinational military force (which ended up being 90 percent American) to counter North Korean aggression. This was appropriate and proper, as the U.S. could not declare war on North Korea because it did not recognize the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (which is neither democratic, for the people, nor a republic) as the sole legitimate government of the Korean nation. But it allowed future Presidents to start wars in other countries without congressional oversight or even, in some cases, approval. This made the executive branch much more powerful than it was supposed to be . . . which proved to be dangerous when Donald Trump took office.
In the meantime, we built up the Japanese economy to make it a bulwark against Communism in China and North Korea. We never suspected that, in time, the Japanese economy would become a threat to our own. Now Toyota is the most popular auto brand in the United States.
When the Chinese Communists drove the Nationalist government to Taiwan, the United States continued to support the Nationalists and keep the People's Republic of China out of the United Nations, which only earned the U.S. a lack of credibility among our allies - which had long accepted the truth of the Communist takeover of China - and the suspicion of Third World countries who thought it subliminally racist that a white government was telling an Asian country how to govern itself. The United States finally relented and allowed the People's Republic of China to take China's seat at the United Nations in 1971 and became the last Western nation to officially recognize it . . . in 1979.
Speaking of subliminal racism, the U.S. government supported right-wing military dictatorships in Latin America to prevent communist governments from taking over and in come cases backed military coups to overthrow democratically elected leftist governments - like fifty years ago today, when the United States had Chilean President Salvador Allende overthrown by the fascist General Augusto Pinochet. And we wonder why so many Latin Americans hate us. Anyway, supporting right-wing dictators didn't work when we backed Batista in Cuba and got Castro and it didn't work when we backed the Somoza family in Nicaragua and got the Sandinistas.
As for Cuba, efforts to dislodge Castro almost brought the world to nuclear annihilation, and efforts to make foreign countries pay for leasing state-owned property in Cuba confiscated from American owners after the Cuban Revolution, like the odious Helms-Burton Act, created resentments from Western allies such as France and Canada.
Our biggest struggle against Communism was the war in Vietnam. You know the story about that by now.
When a socialist prime minister took control of Iran in 1953, the U.S. and Britain backed a countercoup to restore the Shah to power to prevent nationalization of Iran's oil fields. The British eventually withdrew from the Middle East, and the U.S. steadfastly and wholeheartedly continued to support the Shah to prevent Iran from becoming a Soviet satellite and keep the U.S.S.R. from having access to the Persian Gulf . . . and then an Islamic fundamentalist revolution took place, leading to a seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the holding of 52 Americans hostage for fourteen months. Iran and the United States remain bitter enemies, and Islamic fundamentalist jihad against the West has been prevalent ever since.
When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949, it was created mainly to allow the United States to come to the defense of a Western ally should the Soviet Union invade it - per the provisions of Article 5, that being at an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all of them. This led the U.S. to spend money on the military and on developing new nuclear weapons and freed Canada and the nations of Western Europe to develop the sort of highly sophisticated welfare programs, public amenities, and mass transit systems that we lack.
The Interstate Highway System was created partly for defense reasons to move troops - and missiles - around the country while also being available to employ for evacuating major cities in case of a Soviet nuclear attack. In fact, it allowed middle-class white people to evacuate cities - where interstates were built through minority neighborhoods - and move to the suburbs, while the cities went to hell and developed a pathological urban ghetto culture now perversely celebrated as "hip-hop."
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the United States aided the Islamic commandos fighting the Red Army. After the Soviets withdrew and the U.S. turned its attention elsewhere, one of those commandos regrouped with his fellow fighters into a new organization that would use their training from the CIA to commit terrorist acts to spread jihad and fight American interests in the Islamic world. That organization was al-Qaeda, and the commando who spurred its founding was Osama bin Laden. After numerous attacks on American interests abroad, bin Laden then helped orchestrate the greatest terrorist attack on American soil - or anywhere, 22 years ago today.
Ironically, the United States became the only country in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance for which Article 5 was invoked.
So, yeah, we lost the Cold War. Big time.
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