Tom Clancy is dead

[Patroklos]

He was only 66

[Elok]

I wasn't referring to the political situation, necessarily. All the "good" characters all have roughly the same ideology and perspective, even characters from radically different backgrounds. The kind of perspective that replies, to every question, "well, shucks, I don't know about that, but I reckon it's only fair and square to [etc]"

[Imran Siddiqui]

He never acted like the Soviet people themselves were inhuman *******s, just that their country and government and ideology was shit, which it was.

Thankfully Reagan never thought in this way (there were tons of conservatives who called him the new Chamberlain for meeting & negotiating with Gorby)

[Hauldren Collider]

Wait, what? Reagan did think that way. It's exactly what he thought. He called them the ****ing evil empire, dude.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Oh, ye of silly youth.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/24/what-ronald-reagan-can-teach-barack-obama-about-dealing-with-iran.html

Reagan had decided that America’s international position was strong enough for serious talks. Breaking with his earlier bellicose rhetoric, Reagan in January 1984 told Americans that “nuclear arsenals are far too high” and that Moscow and Washington should join together “to stop arms races around the world.” That September, before a meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Reagan declared that “the United States respects the Soviet Union’s status as a superpower ... and we have no wish to change its social system.”

Within hours of Gorbachev’s selection, long before he had begun his radical reforms, Reagan invited the new Soviet leader to meet without preconditions. He dispatched Vice President George H.W. Bush to meet Gorbachev at the funeral of his predecessor, Chernenko, with talking points urging that “we should strive to eliminate nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. We should seek to rid the world of the threat or use of force in international relations.” Later that year, Reagan overruled administration hardliners and quietly scrapped some older submarines so that America would not exceed the limits of the never-ratified SALT II agreement and thus anger the Kremlin. When Soviet troops in East Germany killed a U.S. soldier, giving Reagan an excuse to cancel his first summit with Gorbachev, Reagan instead told journalists that incidents like these just made him want to meet his Russian counterpart more. That November, when the two leaders finally met, a one-on-one meeting scheduled for 15 minutes ended up lasting five hours. At one point, Reagan leaned over to Gorbachev and whispered, “I bet the hardliners in both our countries are bleeding when we shake hands.”

By his final years in office, Reagan’s rhetoric toward the Soviet Union had changed utterly. “Do you still think you’re in an evil empire, Mr. President?” asked a reporter while Reagan strolled with Gorbachev through Red Square in March 1987. “No,” replied Reagan. “I was talking about another time and another era.” That December, in the most ambitious arms-reduction deal of the Cold War, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

[Sava]

[Dinner]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Storm_Rising_%28video_game%29

BTW the original C64 game Red Storm Rising was actually co-written and co-programed by Sid Meier so there is a poly connection!

[Dinner]

Ahh, this really brings back memories of many hours playing this game trying to win WW3 from a submarine (and some how everything always hinged on your next mission). Check out those state of the art 1988 graphics and sound on the C64.