A Forgotten Memory
The first speech I heard Ronald Reagan make was six weeks after Russian tanks rolled into Saigon in 1975 and we lost the Vietnam War.
Voice mellow, soothing, humble, his speech wasn’t a history lesson it was a reminiscence, a man telling a story he’d watched, lived through, remembering storm troopers goose-stepping into Vienna, the ‘tap, tap, tapping’ of Nevile Chamberlain’s umbrella on the cobblestones of Munich in the darkness.
The room fell silent, people remembering living through the same dark times then Reagan said it was as foolish to appease the communists as it was to appease Hitler.
After the Vietnam War a string of nations fell into the arms of the Soviet Union; running for President, Reagan said over and over that strength, not détente, was the way to stop the Soviet Union – that doesn’t sound shocking today but in 1980 only one man running for President believed it. Reagan won. Eleven years later the Soviet Union broke apart, collapsed.
Henry Kissinger just passed on. Obituaries praised his ‘realism,’ his brilliance, his power as a diplomat – hardly a soul remembered he was the father of détente.
Today, dictators are on the march again: Putin in Ukraine, Ayatollahs in the Middle East. And forgetting the past means repeating the same mistakes. And paying a price.
A Forgotten Memory
The first speech I heard Ronald Reagan make was six weeks after Russian tanks rolled into Saigon in 1975 and we lost the Vietnam War.
Voice mellow, soothing, humble, his speech wasn’t a history lesson it was a reminiscence, a man telling a story he’d watched, lived through, remembering storm troopers goose-stepping into Vienna, the ‘tap, tap, tapping’ of Nevile Chamberlain’s umbrella on the cobblestones of Munich in the darkness.
The room fell silent, people remembering living through the same dark times then Reagan said it was as foolish to appease the communists as it was to appease Hitler.
After the Vietnam War a string of nations fell into the arms of the Soviet Union; running for President, Reagan said over and over that strength, not détente, was the way to stop the Soviet Union – that doesn’t sound shocking today but in 1980 only one man running for President believed it. Reagan won. Eleven years later the Soviet Union broke apart, collapsed.
Henry Kissinger just passed on. Obituaries praised his ‘realism,’ his brilliance, his power as a diplomat – hardly a soul remembered he was the father of détente.
Today, dictators are on the march again: Putin in Ukraine, Ayatollahs in the Middle East. And forgetting the past means repeating the same mistakes. And paying a price.