UPDATE: Gorbachev credits Bush with helping to "end" the Cold War:
On Saturday, the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, honored late U.S. president George H.W. Bush, citing specifically his efforts to end the Cold War and the arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
America led the effort to win the Cold War. It didn't passively "end" in some nice mutually agreed way.
Bush's achievement was quietly accepting the Soviet surrender rather than spiking the football in the end zone and rubbing the Russians' noses in their defeat. Which was a big deal when you consider the possibilities for nuclear spasms in a faltering empire armed with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.
And in the end, Bush led the 1991 Persian Gulf War that I believe effectively signaled our Cold War victory by trouncing a proxy of the Soviet Union, Saddam's Iraq, on the battlefield:
The Persian Gulf War was more than the liberation of Kuwait. We learned we beat a second-rate military power, but by smashing a scaled down replica of the Red Army, America really beat the USSR by proxy. The Gulf War was the military victory that confirmed the end of the Cold War as a decisive Western victory. With the obvious domination of American ground and air power culminating in the 100-hour ground war, no revivalist Russian nationalist can argue that the West did not really beat the Soviet Union.
Victory also reassured Americans that we won the Cold War--we did not merely falter last in an exhausting struggle between two teetering systems. Victory made America a "hyper power" feared or envied. Without the military victory of the Persian Gulf War, we may have viewed ourselves as lucky survivors of that struggle rather than the victors who dominate the globe. Remember that the fall of the Berlin Wall took place scant years after the argument was made by Professor Paul Kennedy that America was a declining power burdened by "imperial overstretch."
So many thanks to Bush 41, who was treated far more poorly than he deserved by political opponents and allies alike.
UPDATE: I didn't watch the funeral. The whole thing kind of vaguely bothered me even though I have a lot of respect for Bush 41. This put it into words. Tip to the PJM live blog.
It really is a bit much for the people of a free republic.
