George Jonas has an excellent piece (as usual) in the National Post:
In a speech delivered at the Brandenburg Gate in the summer of 1987, U.S. president Ronald Reagan called upon Gorbachev to “tear down that wall.” Gorbachev did nothing. It was the people of Berlin who pulled down the wall two and a half years later.
And further on, Jonas talks about Gorbachev now trying to claim credit for the wall coming down:
What a fine example of historical revisionism: a half-truth becoming a total lie by the time it reaches the columns of the Guardian. Yes, there were reform-communists in the east. Their bodies decorated the gallows or filled the frozen grave sites of the Gulag. True, the fall of the wall wasn’t the cause of the changes in the Soviet system but their culmination, except Gorbachev and his fellow Bolsheviks didn’t drive those changes. They resisted them.
I remember where I was and what I was doing when the wall came down. For me, it was that kind of moment. Back in my crummy little one-bedroom apartment, I was just waking up to the sound of the radio and the news that the wall was being ripped down. It surprised me, because I never truly believed it would happen in my lifetime.
I urge you to read Jonas’ full article; in particular, the ending where Jonas revisits his own comments from that time. I believe certain situations today may require just such a “hurricane” to bring about a solution that’s acceptable to democratic and freedom-loving societies.
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