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Originally posted by: ricarleite

OK before this goes on, let me remind everyone here, including yourself, that this is a political view discussion, and based on opinions. Opinions are like clocks, they can be a little bit foward or back, but no clock is entirely correct. Also, to discuss is not the same as to offend, and we are NOT letting this get personal. OK? I'm not competing with you, I'm not against you, we are just discussing points of view. No one is "right", there is no right answer. OK?

Reagan did have some part on it ("mr gorbatchov, tear down this wall"), but he was also not very sensitive on the subject, joking about the missles who were coming from ussr at that moment... Try to imagine how Regan and Maggie would act if Kruchev was on office... But I'll give you Reagan for an influencial man in the 20th, ok. He was influencial after all.

Iran-Contras: ok so let me get this straight, it is OK for a country to sell weapons to both Iraq AND Iran, so one can kill each other, and then get the profit from this and invest on killing civilians on suth american countries who had strong communist parties? Let me remind you, I'm from Brazil, who had a violent dictatorship for 20 years backed up by the CIA, the US secret service, and with actions authorized by Lyndonn Jonshon and Nixon. I've talked about it enough on another topic, but if you want me to go on I will.

Nixon: he got you out of Vietnan? OK correct me if I'm wrong - I'm not being sarcastic, I don't know, correct me! - but didn't the US withdraw from Vietnan in 1975, when Ford was on office? Now, imagine if the US had never invaded Vietnan, the north would win the same way as it did, right? And how is Vietnan today? Eh? There's a freaking McDonalds on Ho Shi Ming City (Saigon).

JFK: The missle crisis would have a very different ending if Kennedy was not on office. A mushroom cluded ending. But I don't know, maybe what've read on the subject and on the actions taken by the White House back then were wrong...

Mandella: What's wrong with him? OK you don't like him, let's have MLKJr and Steve Biko only...

Reagan: Reagan did many things to end the cold war, for example:
By escalating non-nuclear military buildups, he forced the USSR closer to bankrupcy trying to keep up.
He formed a strong friendship with Gorbechev.
SDI worried the Soviets, they had no way of knowing if he was serious about it.

Vietnam: My knowledge of the Vietnam war is spotty, but it seems to me that if you look throughout its history, democrat US presidents sent more people and generally escalated the war, while republicans tended to remove people. Nixon started the pull out and Ford finished it. Technically, had Nixon not resigned, it would have ended during his second term.

JFK: There is no way to adequately predict how things would have gone with someone else (Nixon or another) in office.

Mandela: Now, I believe its unfair to say "you don't like him". The problem is that everyone has been influenced in different ways. MLK jr was an extremely influencial man. You could also mention in the same breath as him such names as Fredrick Douglass, Harriet Tubman or Abraham Lincoln. Yet these names might mean far less to someone in brazil, or another part of S. America, or Europe or Asia or Africa.