The Important ‘Tear Down This Wall’ Moment — Walking Again

When I heard President Biden say that Putin could no longer stay in power, I cheered. Then I wonder how long it will take for the White House or the State Department to respond to his comment. I didn’t set a stopwatch, but it didn’t last long. I’m not surprised – I know that politics and truth are not comfortable bed mates.

On June 12, 1987, my father Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate and said his now-famous quote: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. His voice dripped with anger. He then told Lou Cannon that his anger was really not at Gorbachev but at the East Berlin police, who, he discovered, had cornered everyone away from loudspeakers so they could did not hear what the President of the United States had to say. Only the West Berliners, on the side where he was speaking, could hear.

Before that day, the speech my father gave back and forth between Peter Robinson, who drafted it, my father, the State Department, and the National Security Council. The line “tear down this wall” continues to be cut; The reasons given were that it would be a direct challenge and would damage relations with the new leader of the Soviet Union. My father kept putting it back. I don’t know for sure, but I guess his objection eventually gave up, knowing that he had a hard time saying exactly that.

After the speech, Henry Kissinger dismissed the idea of ​​the wall falling as a fantasy. The US State Department, while not going against the line, has made relatively one-sided statements about the unification of East and West Germany, but has definitely not mentioned the idea of ​​tearing down the wall. Many media outlets have written my father’s words as stupid idealism. And the Soviet news agency Tass called it “an overt provocation” and a “war motive.”

On 9 November 1989, it was announced that people in East Berlin could travel freely in West Berlin. Thousands of Germans rushed into the wall with hammers and chisels. Over the next few weeks, the wall was demolished. After it fell, there was a reassessment of my father’s words. Time magazine said they were “the four most famous words of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.” Douglas Brinkley said it “boosted the spirit of the pro-democracy movement in East Germany.”

Biden is speaking to the world, but it seems pretty clear that he is speaking quite directly to the Russian people who may or may not hear his speech.

History is often defined by unique moments in time – an action, a line spoken with the courage of faith and an unflinching steadfastness to the truth. We all watched in horror as Vladimir Putin committed war crimes, massacred civilians. Of course he shouldn’t continue to be in power. Russia let that happen, but emotions are the important thing to have a say.

History is also defined by those who entered the moment given them and acted not out of political prudence, but out of moral certainty and justifiable outrage at inhumanity. religion they are witnessing.

President Biden’s words will live on. Walking back will fade.