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Letter: Reagan helped bring down Berlin Wall

Letters to the Editor
Published: November 20, 2009

I was angered and saddened, but not surprised, at the AP story of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9. I see the history revisionists are hard at work, as no one mentioned the influence and work of former President Ronald Reagan in bringing the wall down.

In June 1987, Mr. Reagan stood at the Wall and implored Mikhail Gorbachev, then secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, to “tear down this wall.” A little over two years later, the wall indeed came down, ending almost three decades of fear, separation and Communism in East Germany.

No president before or after Reagan has been so blunt in admonishing a foreign leader to reverse his direction and do the right thing. Neither President Barack Obama nor Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave any credit to the former president for his part in bringing down the wall.

Sure, Gorbachev got credit, and even President John F. Kennedy got a mention, but nothing for former President Reagan. How soon we forget!

Let’s not allow the revisionists to reverse true history.

Mike Martin
Dothan

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Flag Comment Posted by Clifford Spencer on November 20, 2009 at 5:12 pm

Dear Sirs,
There are many great histories about the Berlin Wall.
CRUSADE IN EUROPE, by Dwight David Eisenhower, explained why he was more concerned about the possibility of a national redoubt than he was in a race for Berlin.
CLOSING THE RING, by Winston Churchill, showed his contempt for Russian “justice” and his anger at the mere suggestion that England would settle for revenge instead of justice.
I noticed that the Berlin Airlift was omitted.
The very existence of ULTRA was not disclosed until much later.
That, alone, made it necessary to revise our thinking about World War 2.
History, unfortunately, has to be consistently revised for the simple reason that so much happens.
Keeping up with history is not as easy as it sounds.
Clifford Spencer

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