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| Europe |
| Pontiff OKd Reagan's nuke plans, diplo says |
| 2005-04-12 |
| Not strictly news, just a reminder of the late John Paul II's legacy. By James Gordon Meer WASHINGTON - Pope John Paul II gave his blessing to the late President Ronald Reagan's plans to put nuclear missiles across Western Europe, a former U.S. representative at the Vatican said yesterday. Though European leaders were "weak-kneed" about confronting the Soviet nuclear empire, Reagan won the Pope's support for matching the Communists nuke for nuke along the Iron Curtain, said Jim Nicholson, who served until recently as President Bush's ambassador to the Holy See. The purpose of the pontiff's secret approval was to confront the Soviet Union's placement of its growing arsenal in Eastern Bloc states near free European nations, said Nicholson, now the Veterans Affairs secretary. Nicholson said Reagan "regularly" sent military emissaries to show the pontiff satellite imagery of Soviet missiles spreading across occupied Europe. "The Pope supported us in putting cruise missiles into Europe at that time, which few people know," Nicholson told "Fox News Sunday." A top U.S. general who spoke Polish would be dispatched to the Vatican "regularly and lay this out and tell the Pope what was going on militarily," Nicholson recalled. "And the Pope said to President Reagan, 'They are needed; you should do it,'" Nicholson said. Experts and former defense officials said they were unaware of the Pope's backing of America's nuclear buildup in Europe - but were hardly surprised, given his anti-Communist stance. "I think it's true," said Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress, who was a senior Pentagon official in the Reagan administration. "It does seem logical. That was a tough time to get the missiles in." John Pike, a defense analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, said John Paul II was "thick as thieves" with the CIA in trying to bring down communism in his native Poland, and he might have endorsed the confrontation. "I wouldn't put it past him" to support Reagan's missile plan, Pike said. But one group it might have surprised was the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, which denounced nuclear proliferation in the 1980s as immoral. © Copyright 2005, Daily News, L.P. |
| Posted by:Anonymous5089 |
| #12 The USCCB? - before JP-II it was heading toward becoming the limp Episcopalian shadow of what the Church should be - it was that version of the USCCB that started accepting gays tacitly, softneing the liturgy, and flirting with Communism in the guise of "Liberation Theology". That bunch started the whole ball rolling that would hit with the paedophile scandal 2 decades later. As for the assertions: Damn. I didnt know they had already declassified that kind of stuff. And I tend to disbelieve it. Reagan talked the talk, and damn sure walked the walk. I pretty much doubt the Gipper asked for the Pope's blessings. Probably treated the Pope pretty much the same way he treated the Euros and the Communists: said what he was going to do and then did it. Maybe with the pope he shared details and the "why", but not much else different; probably was a bit more courteous, but nonetheless straight up. I still remember some German bumper stickers from that time: "Better a Pershing in my yard than an SS-20 in my roof" - a sentiment I bet you never heard existed amongst Germans (Especially in Bayern and the border areas) due to the MSM's bias. My guess is that the Gipper probably told the Pope something like the following: "This is what I'm going to do, and why. What you do is up to you." Then he cobwoy'd the hell up and let 'em buck. Any response from JP-II was more or less unimportant. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2005-04-12 6:45:47 AM |
| #11 The USCCB? - before JP-II it was heading toward becoming the limp Episcopalian shadow of what the Church should be - it was that version of the USCCB that started accepting gays tacitly, softneing the liturgy, and flirting with Communism in the guise of "Liberation Theology". That bunch started the whole ball rolling that would hit with the paedophile scandal 2 decades later. As for the assertions: Damn. I didnt know they had already declassified that kind of stuff. And I tend to disbelieve it. Reagan talked the talk, and damn sure walked the walk. I pretty much doubt the Gipper asked for the Pope's blessings. Probably treated the Pope pretty much the same way he treated the Euros and the Communists: said what he was going to do and then did it. Maybe with the pope he shared details and the "why", but not much else different; probably was a bit more courteous, but nonetheless straight up. I still remember some German bumper stickers from that time: "Better a Pershing in my yard than an SS-20 in my roof" - a sentiment I bet you never heard existed amongst Germans (Especially in Bayern and the border areas) due to the MSM's bias. My guess is that the Gipper probably told the Pope something like the following: "This is what I'm going to do, and why. What you do is up to you." Then he cobwoy'd the hell up and let 'em buck. Any response from JP-II was more or less unimportant. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2005-04-12 6:45:47 AM |
| #10 Nice summation TGA. |
| Posted by: Kellog Briand 2005-04-12 6:58:19 PM |
| #9 I'd rather think they decided to kill him instead. |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2005-04-12 5:28:41 PM |
| #8 It seems extremely implausible to me that Brezhnev and the politburo would have altered their reading of the "correleation of forces" based on a "stern letter" from the pope.... |
| Posted by: thibaud (aka lex) 2005-04-12 5:25:23 PM |
| #7 OK, the dates are confusing here. Brzezinski was serving in the Carter administration, that would indeed be 1980. I don't think that account is correct |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2005-04-12 4:38:13 PM |
| #6 Yes I misread that one, but the events (troop movements) happened in late 1981, not 1980. |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2005-04-12 4:21:58 PM |
| #5 I still remember a classic Steve Kelley oped cartoon: showed Jaruzelski playing a pinball machine called "Martial Law", showing Game Over, and turning to his daddy Brezhnev and demanding "more quarters!" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-04-12 4:15:42 PM |
| #4 TGA.. late 1980.. not late 1980S.. Gorbachev didn't take over for another 4 years. Check your dates. |
| Posted by: Dishman 2005-04-12 4:13:58 PM |
| #3 It can't have been "in the late 1980", that's the Gorbachev rule already. I guess the article refers to the days when Jaruzelski took over in Poland and declared martial law on December 13 1981. It was common knowledge that Jaruzelski spared his country an occupation by Warsaw Treaty troops. Today that has been put in doubt. It's very well possible that the Soviets did actually REFUSE to come to Jaruzelskis help. Jaruzelski claims otherwise. With all respects to JPII, I don't think the Russian blinked because the Pope wrote a "stern letter". If that letter was written on Dec. 16th, that would have been after the declaration of Martial Law. The Pope did have an important influence on Solidarnosc. He urged the movement to stay peaceful, and they did. It is very well possible that in that respect the Pope and Breshnev came to an agreement. We know that there were troop movements but it's unclear whether an invasion was imminent or not. |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2005-04-12 3:59:31 PM |
| #2 OS, TGA - is this account of the Pope's response to Brezhnev in late 1980 correct? From the Weekly Standard: "How many divisions has the pope?" Stalin famously sneered. As it happens, with John Paul II, we have an answer. At the end of 1980, worried by the Polish government's inability to control the independent labor union Solidarity, the Russians prepared an invasion "to save socialist Poland." Fifteen divisions--twelve Soviet, two Czech, and one East German--were to cross the border in an initial attack, with nine more Soviet divisions following the next day. On December 7, Brzezinski called from the White House to tell John Paul II what American satellite photos showed about troop movements along the Polish border, and on December 16 the pope wrote Leonid Brezhnev a stern letter, invoking against the Soviets the guarantees of sovereignty that the Soviets themselves had inserted in the Helsinki Final Act (as a way, they thought, of ensuring the Communists' permanent domination of Eastern Europe). Already caught in the Afghanistan debacle and fearing an even greater loss of international prestige and good will, Brezhnev ordered the troops home. Twenty-four divisions, and John Paul II faced them down. |
| Posted by: thibaud (aka lex) 2005-04-12 9:48:00 AM |
| #1 The USCCB? - before JP-II it was heading toward becoming the limp Episcopalian shadow of what the Church should be - it was that version of the USCCB that started accepting gays tacitly, softneing the liturgy, and flirting with Communism in the guise of "Liberation Theology". That bunch started the whole ball rolling that would hit with the paedophile scandal 2 decades later. As for the assertions: Damn. I didnt know they had already declassified that kind of stuff. And I tend to disbelieve it. Reagan talked the talk, and damn sure walked the walk. I pretty much doubt the Gipper asked for the Pope's blessings. Probably treated the Pope pretty much the same way he treated the Euros and the Communists: said what he was going to do and then did it. Maybe with the pope he shared details and the "why", but not much else different; probably was a bit more courteous, but nonetheless straight up. I still remember some German bumper stickers from that time: "Better a Pershing in my yard than an SS-20 in my roof" - a sentiment I bet you never heard existed amongst Germans (Especially in Bayern and the border areas) due to the MSM's bias. My guess is that the Gipper probably told the Pope something like the following: "This is what I'm going to do, and why. What you do is up to you." Then he cobwoy'd the hell up and let 'em buck. Any response from JP-II was more or less unimportant. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2005-04-12 6:45:47 AM |