Who Won The Cold War? Yet Another Revisionist History Moment

An fawning AP article regarding Mikhail Gorbachev’s 75th birthday has stirred up a little activity on various blogs and talk radio recently. It seems, at least according to the author of the article that Gorbachev and no one else ended the Cold War. Consider this text.

"Mikhail Gorbachev's magnetic brown eyes shine as brightly as ever, and he speaks with the same passion about the collapse of the Soviet Union as he prepares to mark his 75th birthday on Thursday.

The man who ended the Cold War and launched democratic reforms that broke the repressive Soviet regime continues to enjoy the limelight, globe-trotting on behalf of his political foundation and environmental group and taking part in charity projects.

At a meeting with foreign reporters this week, Gorbachev blamed the United States for losing a chance to build a safer and more stable world following the Soviet demise.

"Ending the Cold War was given as a gift" to the United States, but it only strengthened its arrogance and unilateralism, he said. "The winner's complex is worse than an inferiority complex, because it's harder to cure."

This reads like it could’ve come out of Pravda circa mid-1980’s, but provides an excellent example to the amateur modern history buff about how history can and is being twisted to fit the Left’s view of what it was like. I grew up hearing that the winners write history. Pieces like this make me doubt that. I think the person controlling the pen writes the history, and it doesn’t always have to be the people who made that history or “won it”.

Gorbachev won the Cold War about as much as Ike and Bradley were responsible for the battle plans that won the Second World War (hint: It was mostly Patton’s plans). He was and still is a lover of all things Communist. He doesn’t care much for the United States, either and that would be evidenced by his above comment on the “gift” he gave to the United States in his ending the Cold War. Speaking of arrogance and unilateralism, perhaps he’d like to explain the arrogance of his relic Soviet Union as it tried to hold on to its satellite states. The unilateralism that all Eastern Europe and the Republics had to fall in lockstep with whatever Moscow wanted for so long. No, Gorby, you’re right. Surely such traits are uniquely American.

The Left cannot allow or entertain that Reagan and his policies had anything to do with winning the Cold War or it would quickly unravel the very convoluted web they’ve weaved in their part in appeasing the communists of the time and/or denying that communists in the U.S. were anything more than charming and harmless intellectuals.

Gorbachev was a thug who had enough sense to see that the handwriting was on the wall when things really started to fall apart. He thought limited economic reforms would allow him to keep the USSR together and retain the Eastern Bloc. When it fell apart, his saving grace was that he didn’t send in the tanks. Hardly something worth praise, unless you’re simply praising that he wasn’t as sadistic as his predecessors.

Reagan and his policies allowed us to finally defeat the USSR and win the Cold War, one of the alleged “unwinnable wars” of the era. That’s one thing we most certainly should never forget. Another thing we should not forget is how ready certain elements of the press and the Left (in some cases one and the same) are willing to erase and rewrite those facts to hide just how wrong they were at the time. It can't help their credibility in this current crisis either, if they portray themselves so absolutely and righteously but with a shadowed history of craven appeasement and duplicity. Some more food for thought.