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Gorbachev’s Sermon on the Mount
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." That biblical quotation certainly applies to Mikhail Gorbachev, a man not honored enough for the example he set and whose past practices and recent cautions about Afghanistan should be heeded by Barack Obama. Or, on a secular note, if the Sermon on the Mount doesn't cut it for you, take German Chancellor Angela Merkel's praise for the former Soviet leader at the ceremony marking the fall of the Berlin Wall, which he helped destroy: "You courageously allowed things to happen, and that was much more than we could have expected."
The hero's reception granted Gorbachev when he accompanied the German leader across the Bornholmer Street bridge to mark the 20th anniversary of the end of the city's division was credit long overdue. As The New York Times reported: "More than 1,000 people lined the bridge Monday night under gray skies and a steady drizzle to hear the chancellor speak, but their loudest cheers came when she thanked Mr. Gorbachev for the reforming attitude he brought to the Soviet leadership that helped make the events of that historic night possible." The crowd, chanting "Gorby, Gorby, Gorby," understood that he had done something unique for a world leader: He admitted the error of his system's ways and radically reversed its course.
The surrender of immense political power, personal as well as international in scope, is something we never expect from leaders, but Gorbachev set a model of self-sacrifice for a larger purpose that one wishes others would follow. How rare in history for a leader of such great standing to surrender his position, along with its abundance of personal perquisites, for the larger common good. How unexpected for the leader of a military colossus to turn swords into plowshares.
That is what Gorbachev did, beginning with his bold outreach to Western leaders including Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, prompting the latter to say, "I like Mr. Gorbachev; we can do business together." The British prime minister influenced President Reagan to take a similarly open stance, and when Gorbachev reciprocated, the Cold War effectively came to an end. Gorbachev's words were followed by actions, beginning with suspension of the scheduled deployment of intermediate-range nuclear weapons. That was followed with an even bolder proposal to cut both the Soviet and U.S. nuclear arsenals by half and then act to eliminate them altogether. Most important for the current moment was Gorbachev's decisive moves to reduce the Soviet troop presence in Afghanistan, followed by his 1988 announcement of the full withdrawal of troops from that country.
Gorbachev drew on his experience in a CNN interview Sunday during which he again played the part of peacemaker, urging Obama to pull troops out of Afghanistan. "I think that our experience deserves attention," the former Soviet president said. He recommended that the U.S., in the hope of bringing an end to "the long suffering of the [Afghan] people," focus on "dialogue" and that "withdrawal from Afghanistan should be the goal."
Unfortunately, it seems from media leaks that President Obama is moving in the opposite direction. The speculation now is that he will increase U.S. forces by a number slightly less than the 40,000 that Gen. Stanley McChrystal has requested, a decision that would make no sense at all. If the goal is, as McChrystal's report defined it, to rebuild Afghan civil society from the ground up, something on the order of the half-million troops that were dispatched to Vietnam will be required. But that cannot be done without a draft, and we all know that outcome would not be politically acceptable to either the Democratic or Republican party.
Nor is such nation-building advisable, even if the American public and the treasury would support it. Our war in Afghanistan is no more warranted than the one the Soviets waged. Ironically, they were opposing Muslim fanatics we supplied with Stinger rockets and whose descendants we now blame for terrorism. In the name of fighting Soviet imperialism, our CIA recruited the worst of the worst and called them freedom fighters until we renamed them terrorists. We got it terribly wrong then, and yet we still insist that we know what we are doing in that country.
When Gorbachev came to power he, like Obama, inherited a war that was not in the interest of his nation. If the response of a Soviet dictator was to end it, might we not be justified in expecting the enlightened president of a democratic society to do the same?
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19 Comments so far
Show AllGorbachev should serve as a role model for our current world leaders. We brag that we "won" the cold war. Without Gorbachev's wisdom we might have had nuclear catastrophe. This is not a question of who WON. It's a matter of statesmanship and courage.
I love that phrase: "We won the cold war!". What did we win? I sure can't see anything...
"... might we not be justified in expecting the enlightened president of a democratic society to do the same?"
Enlightened? Obama?
A democratic society? What news has the author been reading in the past decade?
My sentiments exaclty. Mr. Scheer, typical mainstream liberal journalist, shows his sycophantic side just a bit too often.
Gorbachev did warn the US about the folly of invading Afghanistan, of course falling on deaf ears.
While I agree that it took a certain amount of political courage on Gorbachev's part; he was facing economic collapse and an unsustainable situtation. The Soviet Union had been collapsing economically for many years and it was just a matter of time. What he did was also out of necessity.
During the 80s when the Soviet Union was in its last throes, Raygun/Thatcher escalated the tensions and cast the Soviet Union as an all-powerful menace. This was all BS of course, but the elite must have a bogeyman for the politics of fear.
The Soviet Union is gone, now we have another wildly exaggerated bogeyman, so-called Al Quaida.
Yup, and Al Quaida will be the gift that will keep on giving for them, because it is so etherial. How do you know when you finally beat them? Who will surrender for them? How do you know that they won't pop up somewhere else? Are they everywhere or are they nowhere?
Al Quaida is the ultimate bogeyman, it will allow the US to fight the never ending war that the MIC has always wanted. We will NEVER be at peace again.
The point of Scheer is that MANY, no, pretty much every leader in power, placed in the same position that Gorbachev was, would have done things differently, "out of necessity". They would have used every violent totalitarian measure to hang onto power.
Mssrs. Gorbachev and Scheer offer some good points but do not address the driving factors of the Afgan-Nam adventure:
Oil, Natural Gas, and the pipelines the energy corporations need to exploit them.
shhh, we are not supposed to know that, a national security secret you know.
I object strongly to calling Gorbachev a dictator. He was elected General Secretary by the Politburo. I object also to calling Obama an enlightened president of a democratic society. American democracy consists of media-manipulated citizens duped with carefully framed "choice" that ultimately benefits elitist members.
Note to CD editors: Many of the authors that you publish on CD are second-rate hacks who write poorly without any research. You would have a much better website if you selected your authors carefully based on criteria of journalistic excellence and verifiable facts.
"I object strongly to calling Gorbachev a dictator. He was elected General Secretary by the Politburo."
The dictatorship of the bureaucracy. The dictatorship of the elite bureaucrats.
I wonder if his CIA pension is adequate for his needs these days?
And the rich keep on winning while the Left devour each other.
what Left?
Anyone who sides with the poor against the rich and tries to arrange a way for everyone to have a decent life. "The world contains enough for everyone's need, not for everyone's greed". I apologize to the author of that; I've forgotten your name.
It's a class war; it's always been a class war since long before the "glory that was Greece" was built on slavery. The problem is that the Left, (by my definition) spend way too much time arguing about purity of doctrine and methods. I follow Quaker teachings; no violence, live simply, God didn't shut up when the Bible was published, He's still talking to us all the time, and integrity. That doesn't mean I'm going to badmouth atheists, proponents of violent revolution (though I won't pick up a gun to help them but I will bandage their wounds)and all the other people with whom I don't agree but who's end goal, eradicating poverty and inequality, are the same as mine.
We need to spend more time finding common ground and less time arguing doctrine and tactics.
After his selection as CPSU General Secretary (by the Politburo, via the bogus principles of Democratic Centralism), Gorbachev's policies of glastnost (openess) and perestroika (restructuring) showed his willingness to risk radical 'thinking outside the box' -- something no comparable US leader has ever done (FDR coming the closest, but only faintly.)
Given the USSR's growing political dysfunction and economic weakness at the time, it could be argued that Gorby, once ensconced, had no choice but to talk and act honestly about the unfairness and abject failures of his country's governing system.
But of course, Gorby's near-dictatorial official powers means that he did have a choice. He could've continued denying the inhumanity and rot of the Soviet system, and just kept tightening down the old screws, as most Soviet leaders had done before him.
Instead, he decided to adroitly let the cat out of the bag: decided to stop the use of state propaganda and violence as standard tools of statecraft: decided to pretty much let truth and fundamental internal reform lead where it may.
And while the ultimate result of G's humanity and honesty didn't prove to be anything superb (there were many other 'players,' domestic and foreign, who entered on-stage), it did transform at least some the world for the better.
G's legacy is not only nothing to sneeze at, therefore, I think it marks him as a great man, and an example of what abused citizenries have a right to expect from their reform-promising officials.
There's more than a little irony in realizing the impossibility of any comparably-high US political leader ever arising from within our rotten system, to similarly challenge its condradictions and inhumanities.
If our high-visibility reformists aren't assassinated in short order, they're either soon rendered invisible by the MSM, or, like happened just recently, created in faux form by a far more PR-clever oligarchy.
I recall even THEN , Religous nutballs in the USA claiming that Gorbachev was the Anti_Christ and that Roanald Reagan doing "Gods work" in fighting the Evil Russian empires.
They cited "Biblical prophecy" mentioning the birthmark on his head.
The Anti-Christ seems to jump form body to body with this group. Tricky feela he is. One day its Gorbachev and the next its Saddam Hussein. Now its Ahmanijeed.
Tomorrow it will be Lula or Chavez.
The Anti-Christ always seem to be someone the US GOvernment has its eyes on for "Elimination".
Except Obama's a DEM Bush-blackmailed instrument of a halfascist state.
Former British PM Marg. Thatcher praising anyone is a sign for us to worry. The U.S. got what it wanted, the downfall of the USSR; only, President Putin revived, rebuilt it, and the process likely is still underway. Mr Gorbachev had been suckered by the U.S. and the Thatcher government. The Cold War was never about the USSR really being a threat to the U.S., militarily, for the USSR would not have threatened the U.S. in such ways. It was a power challenge to the real rulers of the government of the U.S. and other western governments.
She is an international criminal of higher order!