And the wall came a-tumbling down.
Posted By Russ Emerson on November 9, 2009 at 4:28 pm
20 years ago, I was a year and a half into my stay in Korea, courtesy of the US Army. There, we noted with a degree of celebratory glee the falling of the Berlin Wall.
We also wondered how long it would be before the Soviet bear rolled over and died, and what it might mean to those of us dedicated to facing the North Koreans. Sure enough, not long later the Soviet Union did die, and with it — for a while, at least — Americans could forget about existential threats.
Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa, John Paul II, and many many others stood for freedom, and won it for Eastern Europe, ultimately defeating the greatest threat to civilization that has ever existed.
The lesson seems clear to me: freedom is a fragile thing; where it exists it must be jealously guarded, and where it does not it sometimes must be fought for. Freedom is never free.
Compared to the USSR, North Korea, Iran and others are small potatoes, albeit very dangerous ones. And yet some day, the people of Iran and of North Korea may be free. Who is standing up for them? Who is standing against those regimes?
We could use another Ronald Reagan today.
Three pieces of the Berlin Wall are now on display at my alma mater, the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. You might have seen that display in a recent Navy recruiting ad.
I cannot imagine finer trophies.