Brief History of Communism (and the work of Ronaldus Maximus regarding)
Each president has reacted to the threat of communism differently. Differently than Ronald Reagan, that is. Otherwise, the record of appeasement to a regime that make the Nazis look like pikers is mostly the same sad story of appeasment and denial.
Ronald Reagan was the first to take a different approach to the Cold War--namely, winning--and by some strange coincidence, the Soviet Union collapsed immediately thereafter.
Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)--The October Revolution brought the Communists to power in Russia. Russia immediately siezed Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, conglomerating into the Soviet Union, and delberately starved about 5,000,000 people to death.
Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)--The Soviet empire expanded, adding Mongolia, Turkmenia, Uzekistan, Tajikistan, and Kirgizia.
Herbert Hoover (1923-1933)--No new countries, but they did starbe between 5,000,000 and 15,000,000 (Lady Astor in 1931 asked Stalin, "When are you going to stop killing people?")
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945)--His first dipolatic act of office was to officially recognize the USSR as a nation. He referred to Stalin as "Uncle Joe", and helped him gain a prominent position in the UN. The USSR took over eastern Poland, Moldavia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estnia, and Albania, murdered another 12,000,000 to 20,000,000 people, and forced at least another 10,000,000 into slave labor.
Harry Truman (1945-1953)--We lost China, the most populous nation on earth, when Truman cut off support to Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Nationalist (White) army while Mao Te-Tsung, leader of the Communist (Red) army still had plenty of support from Russia. Among China's policies in the years after would be forced abortion, jailing and murder of Christians, and of course the invasion of Tibet. The communist Chinese government murdered between 34,000,000 and 64,000,000 of its own citizens, and another 1,000,000 or so Tibetans. Truman's government was riddled with Soviet spies, and in many cases, including the Alger Hiss affair, he eagerly helped defend them against the charges. The FBI identified other Communist agents, and Truman refused to remove them--including Harry Dexter White, who Truman appointed top US representative of the IMF. He also sold out the US after WWII, helping to cover Soviet mass-murders and downplay the Hitler-Stalin pact. He started the Korean war when he instructed one of his aides to note that if South Korea were attacked the US wouldn't defend it (North Korea attacked a few months later) and almost lost it through his micromanagement, prompting Gen. McArthur to claim that Truman "wouldn't let [him] win." Ho Chi Minh announced Communism in North Vietnam. On top of that, the Soviets took the other half of poland, a chunk of Germany, North Korea down to the 38th parallel, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)--The Korean War ended in a truce--we won no territory back but we did hold the reds at the 38th. Cuba fell to Communism under Fidel Castro--the first Soviet-backed Communist regime int he Western Hemispher. The Communist Vietcong instigated a violent insurrection in an attempt to conquer South Vietnam. John Foster Dulles proposed a "rollback policy" to "roll back" Soviet power in Eastern Europe, but it was proven to be hot air when the Red Army crushed a popular uprising in Hungary in 1956 and the US stood aside. The Soviet Union stole the Nuclear bomb (via the Rosenbergs) and exploded their first thermonuclear weapon, and successfully tested the first ICBM (InterContinental Ballistic Missile) almost a year ahead of the US. To add insult to injury, they launched Sputnik i a ways ahead of our space exploration.
John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)--Humilated us in the Bay of Pigs incident, and lost the Cuban Missile Crisis; promising to pull our missiles out of Turkey and allow the Cuban communism to remain in place. The USSR detonated a 58-megaton thermonuclear devise--largest man-made explostion in history--and sent the first man into orbit. East Germany erected the Berlin Wall.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969)--Communist regimes established in South Yemen and Congo-Brazzaville China exploded its first Hydrogen bomb. In addition, LBJ horridly mismanaged the Vietnam War, pulling troops back from victory more than once, micromanaging the war, and choosing targets out of political expediency rather than strategic necessity. As an extra insult, he started federal programs that have since spent trillions of dollars for a "war on poverty"--a war which, apparently, the poor lost.
Richard Nixon (1969-1974) A Marxist regime was established in Benin. Nixon provided the first serious resistance to Communism of any American president, however, by negotiating a truce between South Vietnam and North Vietnam in the Treaty of Paris; fixing the border and extracting a promise from North Vietnam not to attack. 20,000 troops remained in South Vietnam, who wouldn't see any combat unless North Vietnam did attack.
Gerald Ford (1974-1977) The Democrat-controlled Congress forced through the Eagleton Amendment, which declared that no funds could be spent in Indochina--not only could we not send troops to help defend our allies, we couldn't send them ammo, weapons--even food and medical supplies. A few months later, North Vietnam attacked, backed by the Red Chinese. Outnumbered, out-supplied, out-gunned, and abandoned by their allies (us), the South Vietnamese still held off the Vietcong for almost a year. Once Communism took over all of Vietnam, thousands of Vietnamese "boat people" fled the regime. After Vietnam, Communists took over Cambodia and Laos in exactly the kind of "domino effect" that conservatives were laughed at (and, despite the obvious, are still mocked) for holding. In Cambodia, the Kmer Rouge leader Pol Pot murdered between 1,000,000 and 4,000,000 people--out of a population of 7,000,000. Communist regimes were also installed in Guniea-Bissau, Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique.
Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)--Carter is so well known for being stupid, it's hard to remember he was also sneaky, petty, malicious, and vengeful. Soviet-backed Marxists came to power in Nicaragua, the Seychelles, and Grenada. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) Rather than free countries becoming communist, communist countries began to become free--for the first time since the Russian Revolution. Three Soviet-backed regimes began to crumble and one (Grenada) was taken back outright. By the end of Reagan's presidency, the Soviet Union was negotiating the terms of its surrender. He openly supported anti-Communist forces around the world, and allied with the Pope to provide aid to Solidarity, the anti-Communist union outlawed in Poland. He deregulated oil and slashed the Carter-ear inflation rate, and imposed a trade embargo on Russian goods--Russia's economy was a basket-case, and Reagan felled it. The finishing blow? Star Wars. Reagan even offered to share it with Russia, but they knew as well as we did that without the threat of thermonuclear strike, the USSR was just another third-world country.
In November of 1989, the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. On July 6, 1990, NATO announced that the Soviet Union was no longer an adversary, and on December 26, 1991, the USSR was formally dissolved.
Originally Posted by Skogs
