Our Man in Vienna

Old Days

In 1939 Joe and Adi got together and tied the knot. Poland was the wedding cake. Joe went home and rubbed his hands. On September 1, 1939 Adi broke his vows, and in late 1941 Joe was on the ropes.

On September 7th of 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and saved the day for our good old Joe. By way of his next-door neighbor Alaska, oodles of weapons and supplies began pouring in, and we know the rest.

 

The Myth: Ron and John

Just as East Europe was freed from Nazism
but not freed,
Russia (or the Soviet Union, if you will)
was freed from Communism
but not freed.

There’s a myth circulating that President Reagan and Pope John Paul II brought down Communism in the Soviet Union. That’s a half truth. They helped prevent the liberalization of society in a Union that had been a dictatorship.

When Mikhail Gorbachev took the reins of the Communist Party in 1985, he set about introducing civil rights, a free press and all the trappings of a democracy.

Instead of supporting him in these undertakings, the two ant-Communist heroes undermined him. A totalitarian system cannot be changed entirely overnight, but Gorby certainly did his best.

Unfortunately, the economy didn’t pick up, so Gorby wasn’t as popular at home as he was abroad.

He was trying to take it step by step with the goal of forming a Soviet Commonwealth.

The West egged him on, and his friend, Ronnie said: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” referring to the Berlin Wall!” The negotiator sent to make things happen fast was Condoleezza Rice.

What happened? Gorby cleared out of East Germany, let it go to NATO, and got a pittance for doing so.

Now Gorby had more or less been brought to the edge.

The Russian generals said something to the effect of,
“This is madness. We have just lost World War II,
and we must put an end to having a political Santa Claus
in the saddle.”

A coup was staged in 1991.

Boris Yeltsin stepped onto the stage, put it down,
pushed Gorby over the edge and took over.
That signified the end of all the reforms.
Every republic wanted to go it alone, and some took a bloody path.

Now blood is flowing again.

Yeltsin was a drunk and a demagogue in that order. He let things slide, and in 1999, when they got too far out of hand, he turned the country over to Vladimir Putin, the former KGB man.

The Union is broken up; the reforms went down the drain. Repression and terror reign supreme in Russia and most of the former republics.

Russia is still equipped with a nuclear arsenal, and Alexander Putin is more erratic than his former comrades.

Since Gorby’s departure hundreds of journalists have been sentinto the next world

Gorby was relegated to speaking tours and doing TV commercials for Pizza Hut and the Austrian National Railways, too humiliating to describe.

The world would have been a lot better off if Gorbachev had taken the slow but certain road – minus the ads. But what’s the sense of wishful thinking in hindsight? We’ve got the world that we have.

What happened?!
Old Days became New Days.

And what have we got?!

The Hungry Bear’s appetite
became insatiable again
and he stated gobbling up anew.
Ukraine is his first meal

Thank you Ron and John!

 

– Herbert Kuhner