Dana Rohrabacher: “The Soviet dictatorship collapsed over two decades ago. Being someone who spent a considerable time of my life opposing…”

“The Soviet dictatorship collapsed over two decades ago. Being someone who spent a considerable time of my life opposing Soviet communism, I have been disappointed to see that many of my own colleagues, on both sides of the aisle, have never gotten the Cold War out of their mind. So many of us in this body have been treating democratic Russia as if it is still the Soviet Union. Over the years, we should have established this level of cooperation, especially the economic cooperation that we're codifying today. This should have been established long ago. Instead, what happened was the people stuck in the Cold War kept vilifying the Soviet Union and exaggerating every shortcoming while at the same time ignoring similar flaws, for example, in China. The human rights abuses in China are outrageous, but yet we have moved forward time and again to expand their ability to make money on us, even to steal our technologies with a one-way free trade policy with China. We need to make sure that the people of Russia know what we're saying today: that the Cold War is over, that we need to march forward together to meet the challenges of both of our countries, and that we will open up our economy in economic cooperation with you so that we can stand together and prosper and so that we can also deal with the challenges of an ever more powerful and aggressive China and radical Islam, which is as great a threat and kills as many Russians as they do Americans.…”