{"id":1316686,"date":"2019-11-13T23:16:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T06:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/ronald-reagans-policies-helped-bring-down-the-berlin-wall-now-hes-not-even-welcome-there\/"},"modified":"2019-11-13T23:16:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T06:16:00","slug":"thiessen-column-ronald-reagans-policies-helped-bring-down-the-berlin-wall-now-hes-not-even-welcome-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/thiessen-column-ronald-reagans-policies-helped-bring-down-the-berlin-wall-now-hes-not-even-welcome-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Thiessen column: Ronald Reagan\u2019s policies helped bring down the Berlin Wall. Now he\u2019s not even welcome there"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WASHINGTON \u2014 In June 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood before the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate and uttered those iconic words that shook the world: \u201cGeneral Secretary Gorbachev \u2026 come here to this gate \u2026 Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!\u201d They had been repeatedly removed from his draft speech by nervous State Department bureaucrats, but Reagan kept putting them back in. And just 2\u00bd years after Reagan spoke them, that wall came down.<\/p>\n

We speak now of the \u201cfall\u201d of the Berlin Wall, but in truth the wall did not just fall. It was pushed. It was the policies of Reagan \u2014 his insistence on speaking truth about the evils of Communism, and his support for anti-Soviet freedom fighters, increased defense spending, the deployment of intermediate range missiles in Europe and the Strategic Defense Initiative \u2014 that bankrupted the Soviet Union and brought about the peaceful collapse of the wall and the Evil Empire that built it.<\/p>\n

So it comes as a shock to learn that today Reagan is not welcome in Berlin. To mark the 30th anniversary of the wall\u2019s collapse, the United States tried to get German agreement to erect a statue of Reagan in a public square in Berlin. Berlin officials refused. John Heubusch, head of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, said that \u201cwe were told it would be near impossible to make such a statue in Berlin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faced with German rejection of a Reagan statue on German soil, the Trump administration decided to erect it on U.S. soil \u2014 on the embassy terrace overlooking the Brandenburg Gate where Reagan delivered his fateful call. In an interview, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell says, \u201cWe decided we were going to take matters into our own hands and put a statue up on the top of the U.S. Embassy.\u201d Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Berlin to unveil it.<\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s ingratitude is stunning. Perhaps no country on Earth owes more to the American people. It was the United States that rebuilt postwar Germany with the Marshall Plan. It was the United States that saved Berlin from Soviet domination with the Berlin Airlift. It was the United States that stationed tens of thousands of troops in Germany to prevent a Soviet invasion across the Fulda Gap. The threat of such an invasion was real. The Washington Post reported in 1993 that after East Germany\u2019s collapse, the German military found that the communists had \u201cprepared a detailed plan for the takeover of West Berlin\u201d in which \u201cSoviet forces and East German army, border police and local police \u2026 would storm through the Berlin Wall.\u201d The planning was \u201cso detailed and advanced that the communists had already made street signs for western cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without the United States, without Reagan, the wall would have been brought down \u2014 smashed under the treads of Soviet tanks.<\/p>\n

It is not simply Germany\u2019s refusal to honor Reagan that rankles. Grenell points out that Foreign Minister Heiko Maas \u201cwrote a definitive opinion piece that was produced in more than 20 papers across Europe \u2026 about the 30th anniversary of the fall of the wall and how far Germany is coming \u2026 and he didn\u2019t mention the United States.\u201d Indeed, his only reference to America was bemoaning how Berlin\u2019s exhortations to address issues such as climate change \u201cfall on deaf ears in Moscow, Beijing and, unfortunately, to an increasing extent also in Washington, DC.\u201d He thanks \u201cGorbachev\u2019s policy of glasnost and perestroika\u201d but not a word of gratitude for Reagan or the United States.<\/p>\n

This from a country that is failing to meet its financial obligations to the NATO alliance that secured its freedom. Germany is one of the wealthiest countries in Europe, which sends billions of dollars to Russia for natural gas in Germany. Yet it spends just 1.24% of its gross domestic product on defense, among the bottom of the NATO allies. This month, Germany\u2019s defense minister called for raising its defense spending to the required 2% of GDP \u2026 by 2031.<\/p>\n

In the 20th century, Americans sacrificed their lives and treasure to liberate Germany first from National Socialism and then from Soviet socialism. When the world wanted peaceful coexistence with Soviet communism, Reagan declared his policy toward the U.S.S.R. was simple: \u201cWe win, they lose.\u201d Lose they did, without a shot fired. And today, the United States still has 50,000 troops stationed on German soil. Germany owes its freedom and prosperity to America and specifically to Ronald Reagan. The least they could do is say thank you, and put up a simple statue.<\/p>\n

Follow Marc A. Thiessen on Twitter, @marcthiessen.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 In June 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood before the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate and uttered those iconic words that shook the world: \u201cGeneral Secretary Gorbachev \u2026 come here to this gate \u2026 Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!\u201d They had been repeatedly removed from his draft speech by nervous State Department […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 13:27:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1316686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1316686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1316686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}