Liberal Journalists Will Never Give Reagan Credit For Ending Cold War

Yesterday on Hugh Hewitt's radio program http://hughhewitt.com, Hugh spoke with Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, a unrepentant liberal.
In a portion of the interview, when talking about the Cold War, Mr. Dionne gives a lot of credit to President Truman, and rightfully so, for beginning the policy of containment against the then Soviet Union. But, he gives no credit to President Reagan for instituting a then new paradigm of defeating the Soviet Union. It is that policy that led to the end of the Soviet Union and the communist iron curtain over eastern Europe. It is not as Mr. Dionne put it containment and President Nixon's horrible policy of detente that led to the expanse of the Soviet empire.
That is the way liberal America looks at how the Soviet Union fell. No credit to Ronald Reagan whatsoever. In fact, liberals will argue that Mr. Reagan did nothing to end Soviet communism.
Here are the facts.
Under Ronald Reagan, the Soviet Union did not gain access to one inch of land beyond what they already controlled. The invasion of Greneda in the Caribbean to stop communist Cuba from exerting further power as a client state to the Soviet Union. Under Ronald Reagan, there was support of freedom fighters everywhere in the world. Even to the extent of his near impeachment over the so-called Iran-Contra affair. The United States built up our military to counter the Soviet threat. The military build up showed that a free market economy, ours, could bankrupt a state-planned economy, the Soviet Union. And during the build up, the United States economy bloomed.
Do people like Mr. Dionne not see the facts or are they blinded by their ideology so much, they can not give at least some credit to Mr. Reagan for the true beginning of the end of Soviet communism?
Here is a clue. Mr. Dionne told Mr. Hewitt that the only Republican candidate for president he considered, note considered, voting for was Gerald Ford. Mr. Ford was a nice guy, became president at the right time and was the right man for the job at the time.
All this is in context to how the liberals-really socialists today-want to deal with the threat of radical Islamofacists that are not really interested in negotiating the demise of the West, Christianity and democracy.
People like Mr. Dionne, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the like think that we really can negotiate our way to peace with these groups. Mrs. Pelosi has said she would go to Iran ASAP if it would lead to "dialogue", what ever that means.
I think that Mr. Dionne is probably a nice fellow, but wrong about the Cold War and needs to give some credit to Ronald Reagan and the policy of defeating the Soviet Union rather than containment and detente.