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Reagan: Good or Bad?
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| mndeg |
| Or something in between? I love how Republican presidential candidates all talked about how much they admired Reagan and how they were Reagan-like while democratic presidential candidates attacked one another if one said something positive about Reagan. |
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| George Smiley |
As ever, it's very very hard for somebody (like me) who isn't American to say whether or not a president was good or bad. Foreigners have a different perspective than Americans as we look at the effect a particular president has in the wider world, whereas I'm sure the vast majority of Americans (as other nationalities would with their own government) would base their opinions on domestic policy - eg how has this president made my life better/worse?
I can't comment on Reagan's domestic policies because like most other presidents, I have no or little knowledge of them (and even less interest in them!)
However, as far as his foreign policy is concerned, he played an extremely dangerous game with his confrontational approach to the USSR. The problem is, I don't think his approach caused the collapse of the USSR, but because it happened at the same time, those of that persuasion (ie neoconservatives) believe that, or try to convince that, their aggressive and confrontational approach to foreign policy is correct and produces results. I don't think this is true at all (as Iraq is proving)
I don't like American presidents that try and bully the rest of the world, whether that is militarily or economically or whatever, and neoconservatives are the biggest bullies of all (and Reagan was their first outlet in government) |
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| Capitalizt |
| I don't think Reagan was trying to "bully" the rest of the world as much as the current group of "conservatives". He certainly did bully the USSR however. They were expanding like crazy during the previous 50 years...taking over country after country...relentlessly expanding their territory under every US President. Reagan's was the first administration where that was stopped cold. He funded and trained virtually everyone that was trying to fight them...and urged the CIA to boost the resistance in many countries over there. In short, he did everything possible to hurt them EXCEPT fighting them directly, and this certainly contributed to them going bankrupt. You can call it too "confrontational", but I believe the USSR was a real threat just as the Nazis were...and Reagan definitely deserves some of the credit for taking them down. Whatever his other faults, he deserves a high five for that. |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
Giving Reagan any credit for the end of the Cold War is dubious at best. During the four years of his administration prior to the ascendancy of Gorbachev, nothing happened. His sabre-rattling solidified Soviet hatred of the West during those years, and only his willingness to talk about economic development corrected that.
That said, his economic development policies pursued elsewhere were horrible, and we're still paying that price.
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The terrible legacy of the Reagan years
* David Aaronovitch
In some crude forms of therapy the patient is confronted with a re-enactment of the trauma that caused his collapse. Even so, I don't think I'll be watching Ronald Reagan's state funeral as Margaret Thatcher's taped tribute is played. It'll be too painful. I'll go and sit on broken glass for a while instead.
That, for me, was a bad decade - a decade in which rightwing precepts were dominant and the left was in full and abject retreat. But perhaps, along with others, I should reassess the Reagan legacy. If Gerhard Schröder and Mikhail Gorbachev can say what a fabulous contribution the old actor made to freedom, it may be time to forget jokes like, "My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you that I have signed legislation to outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
Because Reagan didn't start bombing in five minutes. He didn't even actually build Star Wars. Following the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles, he then - quite unexpectedly - engaged in a process of arms limitation and tension reduction that made it safe for Gorbachev to pursue a reform programme in the Soviet Union. That's not enough to get him chiselled into Mount Rushmore, but it's a damn sight more than I gave him credit for at the time.
What isn't so easy to forgive is the Reagan Doctrine, sometimes known as Third World Rollback. Rollback was the American end of the proxy war fought between the two superpowers for power and influence in the developing world. The basis was childishly simple: my enemy's enemy is my friend.
To that end the Reagan administration insisted on recognising the deposed Khmer Rouge government in exile at the UN, mostly because it was the pro-Soviet Vietnamese that had done the deposing. This recognition helped maintain a civil war in which many Cambodians were killed and many thousands of landmines were laid.
In Central America the doctrine required supporting the "contra" rebels in Nicaragua, and backing for the Guatemalan government which - during the Reagan era - may have killed more than 100,000 Mayan Indians. Reagan described the contras as being like America's "founding fathers" and Guatemala's hard man, Rios Montt, as "a man of great personal integrity".
Over the Atlantic and down a bit, and we have Reagan welcoming Jonas Savimbi of the Unita organisation to the White House and speaking of his murderous outfit in Angola winning "a victory that electrifies the world and brings great sympathy and assistance from other nations to those struggling for freedom". Actually what Savimbi was doing was prolonging a civil war in which the UN estimates that 300,000 children died directly or indirectly during the Reagan years, and Angola was covered in landmines. Human Rights Watch reports that Unita's indiscriminate use of landmines, caused there to be more than 15,000 amputees in the country by 1988, ranking the country alongside Afghanistan and Cambodia in the league of blown-off limbs.
Speaking of Afghanistan, the administration responded to the Soviet presence by arming and organising religious zealots to harass and defeat them. When the Soviets withdrew, the Americans lost interest. The Afghans were left with the zealots and the landmines.
Then there was Iraq. This time it was more complicated, because of the war with Iran. The Soviet Union had resumed arms shipments to Saddam Hussein in 1981, sending in 1,200 military advisers and planning to sell him SS12 missiles with a range of 800km, despite his persecution of Iraq's communists. Reagan responded by sending out Donald Rumsfeld, his special Middle East envoy, by taking Iraq off the list of states declared by the state department to be sponsoring terrorism - despite the presence in Baghdad of Abu Nidal - and by selling Saddam 60 Hughes helicopters that could be adapted for anti-tank use.
David Mack, a diplomat who went on the Baghdad mission, is quoted by the author Con Coughlin as recalling that, "We wanted to build a Cairo-Amman-Baghdad axis that would drive (the pro-Soviet) President Assad crazy". Saddam's foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, complained to the British ambassador that, "We get a far better hearing from the US than from the UK." That sits badly with this week's eulogies.
The Reagan years were the years, perhaps, in which the cold war was won, and that is obviously good. He wasn't the missile-mad cowboy of cartoons, and those of us who thought otherwise were wrong. But the Reagan presidency of 1981-89 was also when the dragon's teeth of the present were sown. Reagan's legacy to the world may be the fallen wall, but it is also the third-world landmine. |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jun/08/usa.comment |
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| Zild |
| Regan was an actor before he got into politics. I think that says quite enough. |
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| Krypton |
I have three fundamental problems with the Reagan administration...
1. Supported Islamic jihad in Afghanistan
2. Supported violent right-wing counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua with proceeds from secret weapons sales to Iran.
3. Supported the Saddamist regime of Iraq even though they had engaged in a unprovoked invasion of Iran.
Besides these strategic blunders, Reagan did good by deregulating the economy. I also don't believe Reagan won the Cold War. The Cold War just happened to end when he was in office. The Soviet Union collapsed because of internal mismanagement of the Soviet economy which resulted in a socio-economic collapse. The thought that Reagan somehow did something to defeat the Russians is stupid. The Russians defeated themselves! |
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| Fir3start3r |
| quote: | Originally posted by Krypton
I have three fundamental problems with the Reagan administration...
1. Supported Islamic jihad in Afghanistan
2. Supported violent right-wing counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua with proceeds from secret weapons sales to Iran.
3. Supported the Saddamist regime of Iraq even though they had engaged in a unprovoked invasion of Iran.
Besides these strategic blunders, Reagan did good by deregulating the economy. I also don't believe Reagan won the Cold War. The Cold War just happened to end when he was in office. The Soviet Union collapsed because of internal mismanagement of the Soviet economy which resulted in a socio-economic collapse. The thought that Reagan somehow did something to defeat the Russians is stupid. The Russians defeated themselves! |
We really can't use today's political mind-think to judge yesterday's when the mindset was so totally different - it's just wrong.
It's like saying that dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was wrong without realizing WHY it was done at the time. (i.e. saving a LOT of allied lives vs. a full on invasion of Japan).
Time has a way of warping yesterday's actions without putting it into the context of that time.
The Russians btw were simply out-spent so you're right in one way Krypton, they did do it do themselves in that they spent all their resources in a 'keeping up with the Jones's' arms race they could never afford to begin with, and to the detriment of everyone under their banner. |
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| tathi |
| he made a huge mess in Latin America |
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| Krypton |
| quote: | Originally posted by Fir3start3r
We really can't use today's political mind-think to judge yesterday's when the mindset was so totally different - it's just wrong.
It's like saying that dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was wrong without realizing WHY it was done at the time. (i.e. saving a LOT of allied lives vs. a full on invasion of Japan).
Time has a way of warping yesterday's actions without putting it into the context of that time. |
I don't think so. Supporting the unprovoked invasion of another country is wrong today, yesterday, and in the future. How can you justify support for the Iraqi invasion of Iran? We bombed Japan for a very good reason. What good reason do you have to justify supporting Saddam Hussein? What about when the Nicaraguans voted for the leftist Sandinistas only to have the US supported Contras launch a systematic and bloody insurgency throughout the country? See I can't justify such activities because I think they're just plain wrong. Not only wrong, but strategically blunderous. Because of these activities, we shoot ourselves in the foot. We're just now getting the blowback from support of the Afghan mujahiddin. My guess is, if we continue on our current war-like path, we'll receive even more blowbacks. The USA, like the Soviet Union can not be brought down by outside forces. Only from within can the USA fall. Strategic blunder after strategic blunder will result in catastrophe. From Kennedy to Reagan to Bush, the cycle must end. |
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| LazFX |
| quote: | Originally posted by tathi
he made a huge mess in Latin America |
+1 |
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| Renegade |
Not too sure about his legacy, but I do know that he was in the throes of senility during his latter years in office.
That dude was one crazy diamond. |
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| shaolin_Z |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
Not too sure about his legacy, but I do know that he was in the throes of senility during his latter years in office.
That dude was one crazy diamond. |
I don't think I'd call Regan a "diamond in the rough." :conf:
EDIT: Uhh, nevermind... I somehow managed to misread that. I made the same mistake with those damn NIST reports! |
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