Obama's Gorbachev Moment

James Carroll comments in the Boston Globe: "TWENTY YEARS AGO this month, Mikhail Gorbachev stood before the UN General Assembly and said, "The compelling necessity of freedom of choice is also clear to us. The failure to recognize this . . . is fraught with very dire consequences, consequences for world peace."... The "decisive year" for which Gorbachev called two decades ago may now be here - for our side. Americans stand today, as the last Soviet dictator put it then, "on the threshold of a year from which all of us expect so much...Is it too much to expect Barack Obama to change history? Make peace? Transform an economic system? Rescue the Earth? Build a political program around the truth? Restore a great nation's decency? Are we kidding ourselves to place such hopes in him?... just such a transformation took place once before...it is not too late to match the greatness with which Gorbachev acted 20 years ago, an overdue acceptance of his historic invitation."