Bush 41 gives Gorbachev the most credit for Berlin Wall’s tumble in 1989

November 3rd, 2009 at 12:08am Chuck Sweeny

It’s become an item of faith among conservative commentators that Ronald Reagan’s 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall — “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” — resulted in the actual wall coming down two years later, when he was out of office.

That  is not how former President George H. W. Bush (”41″) sees it. Indeed, he commits what the “right” sees as the ultimate sin, giving credit for the wall’s demise to former U.S.S.R Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev himself.

I’m not making this up — I saw and heard Bush say it on Greta Monday night on Fox.

Greta was in Berlin to cover ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the wall’s tumble, as was Bush 41. She interviewed him. Greta kept trying to get Bush to take credit for the Berlin Wall coming down, and he repeatedly refused to accept it, giving the lion’s share of credit to Gorbachev’s policies of perestroika and glasnost, the attempt to forge a kinder, gentler, form of communism in the East Bloc and Soviet Union.

What happened instead was that as soon as people tasted a little freedom, they wanted more, and within two years the East Bloc nations had shaken off communism, most peacefully, one (Romania) brutally.

Finally, on Christmas Day 1991, the mighty Soviet Union itself went out of business, to be replaced the next day by the Russian Federation, a whole slew of “independistans” and three, free Baltic states.

Bush also noted to Greta that the U.S.’s controversial decision to install Pershing missles in Europe in 1982 also hastened communism’s demise, because it signaled to Moscow that the western allies were not going to back down from strong opposition to the Soviets and their client states.

Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize, which Bush 41 also mentioned.

Entry Filed under: Berlin Wall