Dan,

>>I don't see a particular significant US role in this whole process.
>I'm amazed at that statement.

The US had no significant role in the fall of the warsaw pact as the main reason was the economic reasons from within. The US had little to do with the actuall fall AFAICS. It has to do with the beginning of it.

>You are dismissing everything that the US did from 1945 onwards.

Nope, I'm not. Not sure where you did read that.

>Do the words "Marshall Plan",

The marshall plan was the financial aid many western countries after WWII got from the US. It has little to do with the cold war, starting after that.

>"Berlin Airlift", "Operation Reforger", "NATO", or "arms race" mean anything to you? Do you have any idea of the billions of dollars and hundreds of lives spent by the US to help guard Western Europe from potential invasion?

Sure I do. But a question to you. What were the motives behind this? Do you have a full understanding of all the motives?

>The West won the Cold War, not solely due to the actions of the US, but in a large part because of it.

Again, I'm not sure what you are arguing here. Please read back, the argument I'm making here is that I don't agree with the statement that if the US did not help us, we would not have freedom up here because we would have been occupied by the russians. I find that a very strong statment because the cold war on the european continent was controlled by the allies, not US only. It is very unlikely that the other allied forces would have sit and waited to be overrun by the russians.

The US was part of the allied forces that kept the russians away from western europe. Suggesting that we would not have managed without the US during the cold war, one could consider and insult to the rest of the alied forces. The US got itself involved into european economic and military recovery, not primarily out of charity, but also for security and economic reasons.

The main reason the cold war did not emerge into actual war was the threat of nuclear weapons. At the time of the cold war, both the UK and France did have the technology to create nuclear weapons, but because of costs and the availability of US technology it was mainly the US nuclear threat that keeped us safe.

The cold war ended because of the fall of russian communism asa result of bankrupcy, not by the muscles showed by the west. The west did not beat comminism, but (russian)communism beat itself to death.

Walter,