I voted for Reagan.
Give it up, Oak. They’re witnessing. Facts don’t matter.
They’ve had twenty five years to talk themselves out of seeing what happened. They’re good at that.
Regards,
Shodan
Of course there’s plenty of bias on both sides of the aisle in any debate here, and yes, this board skews left. The difference here is that the article which you cite in your support of Reagan’s greatness is himself part of that legacy.
So?
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That Rollins is biased - a fact Rollins admits - but not make what he says false.
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The stated purpose of the peice is to provide an inside view from someone who was in the administration. Rollins is not hiding that.
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Rollins’s general statements are, from what I can tell, objectively true. It is true that the military enjoyed a period of growth and restored pride under Reagan’s administration, at least partially due to Reagan’s policies. I suspect that stuff would have happened anyway, but Reagan accelerated it. He WAS personable and funny. He did do a surprisingly good job at working on a bipartisan level.
ElvisL1ves comments that people were fooled by Reagan. Well, people are fooled by all successful politicians so that’s both true and kind of tautological, but Reagan’s ability to lead the country is a real skill. If you’re electing a Head of State, that actually MATTERS. It matters domestically and abroad. Contrast Reagan with George W. Bush, who was elected against shitty opponents by the skin of his teeth by exploiting cheap ideological divides and who in eight years consistently gave the impression of being an inflexible moron who had Dick Cheney’s arm up his ass; don’t you think that impression had a negative impact of things? Do you think Bush’s polarizing nature helped or hurt the USA?
Of course, it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that the other aspects of the Reagan administration far outweigh the issue of the image he projected. But at least he had that. He can’t be the worst President of our lifetimes if we lived through Dubya.
Cite? I was in the US military under Reagan and I didn’t notice any change in pride. I guess what I’m asking for is a cite that the military lacked any pride before Reagan.
Did you notice any change in posturing, though, **Dio **? Were there any more incentives to swagger? Was the “how-to-salute” seminar bolstered?
Like that.
All that stuff was already there. We were cocky shits without Reagan’s help.
Sounds like the subject line of half the emails in my spam filter.
We’re still waiting for even a token bit of that “factual support” stuff from you, as you know. This sort of answer is what was, sadly, expected from you in its stead. Pity.
You might look into the recent Pit thread re that “usual suspects” line, btw.
You’re overlooking the part about facts, reality itself, not mattering to him or to his misty-eyed acolytes. A successful President, of the sort monuments get built for, can inspire followership, sure - but only in a cause they can believe in (1) because it’s derived from reality, and (2) appeals to our *higher *natures, not our lower ones. Reagan failed on both counts, miserably.
“Accident”? You might look into the tax increases / deficit reduction and his first budget bill (which every single Republican voted against but later took credit for, naturally) for some of that reality stuff. Consider also what aspects of the human spirit he was invoking - and you won’t find Reagan’s “welfare queen” fiction anywhere there.
Tee hee hee. 
Okay, what peacemaking efforts and successes do you ascribe to Reagan, and on what basis?
You really, REALLY need to research the history of his administration’s efforts to combat Al Qaeda, friend. You’ll find out that, not only do the Republicans not give him credit for preventing any attacks after the first WTC bombing (for which the perps were apprehended, tried, convicted, and imprisoned, btw), but they instead spent their time then complaining that he was trying to distract the nation from the Monica story. :rolleyes:
In case that still wasn’t clear, a great leader does *not *tell his people only what they *want *to hear, he tells them the truth. He acts according to it and to the highest human principles he can summon. He does that, and he doesn’t need Reagan’s soothing, avuncular one-liners and recited scripts.
Leadership is *not *merely an ability to lie convincingly, as several of you have just asserted. It says something about what we’ve come to expect from being failed by so many of our recent leaders that we know longer are even aware that it’s possible to do better. I’d say “shame on you” except that I don’t think all of you even know any better.
In a word, yes. I was not a member of the Reagan administration, and as far as I know, no one else here was, either. I have no personal stake in defending him; his failures or successes don’t reflect on me. I can read what he and others have said, and compare it to what has been revealed in the years since. I remember his time in office, and his policies, and can view for myself what the consequences have been. So, you tell me, am I biased?
I do have opinions, and I’ll share and discuss them. If you want to have a debate without that, go to the nursery at a maternity ward.
I have, and my conclusions were that Clinton’s foreign policy, such as it wasw, was unfocused, ineffectual, and utterly failed to address the clear threats that we are now dealing with. Instead of developing an international consensus and body to combat the growing threat of international terrorism, which was largely fed by the detritus of the Cold War and ready availability of surplus weapons, the United States became insular and tentative in pursuing even the most blatant threats lest someone critique us for being too forceful. Operation Gothic Serpent is a prime example of Clinton-era waffling which put American servicemen in harm’s way but did not give them the latitude to operate in a worthwhile fashion or even, in many cases, defense their own presence vigorously. That his successor was even more ineffectual–first in completely ignoring threats, and then spastically lashing out at shadows and perceived threats without focus or moral depth–does not mitigate the fact that the foreign policy of the Clinton Administration was grotesque in its miscalculations and oversights.
But getting back to Reagan, it is true that many of Reagan’s foreign policy efforts–which were intended to combat both real and perceived Communist threats–have in no small measure resulted in a portion of the backlash we experience today. However, Reagan’s foreign policy, for good or bad, was at least coherent and generally well-considered for the conditions of the day; the moral equivocations of supporting supposedly “democratic” (or at least American friendly) dictators over the hammer-and-sickle waving variety were balanced against achieving the primary goal of limiting Soviet influence in South America and Africa. We can point at the result of these dictatorships with criticism, but quite frankly, many of the alternatives were not much better. It doesn’t excuse having the United States back tinpot dictators, but it does place those actions in context.
Stranger
Ahem. (1) The US military was sent into Somalia by GHWB, not Clinton. (2) If you’re resorting to using a single military operation as an example of a foreign policy strategy, you’ve surrendered the factual argument right from the start.
Now go read Richard Clarke’s book. It will do you some good. Or at least it could.
On that we agree, but you might add that it was more the foreign policy of the Cheney / Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz PNAC cabal, that resumed it under GWB, than of either of their puppet Presidents.
Horseshit. (1) Coherence is not central, values are. A number of totally abhorrent regimes have had coherence to them. (2) What conditions are you referring to? The house of mirrors called “anti-Communism”, in which we backed up all kinds of abhorrent (but coherent) regimes who simply labeled their democratic insurgents “communists”, perhaps? No administration ever did that more enthusiastically than Reagan’s.
Damn, that IS what you meant. Okay, add that to the list of Reagan lies that many people swallowed whole back then, and some still do.
So much for that “light of freedom, beacon of democracy, shining city on a hill” stuff that so many Americans have foolishly believed and died for, then.:rolleyes: Add that one to the parallel list of lies Reagan told that couldn’t be swallowed whole, so they instead had to be rationalized or dismissed.
That it does. In the context of a broader construct of fantasies about the world, and of people, that even their culmination in Iraq has not yet sent to its rightful place on the trashpile of history.
George the Elder sent in the military in Operation Restore Hope, but that was purely a peacekeeping mission until UNSC Resolution 837. Task Force Ranger was deployed on 22 August 1993 under the aegis of the Clinton Administration, which initiated Operation Gothic Serpent to arrest and present for prosecution of the loose association of warlords headed by Mohamed Farrah Aidid and the Habar Gidir militia. TFR was, however, hamstrung by the desire by the Administration (going all the way up to the head of the chain) to not be seen as being too aggressive in pursuing the warlords and those supporting them, which directly led to the undermanned, under-supported, and catastrophic Battle of Mogadishu. The film Black Hawk Down actually downplays just how gutted TFR was in pursuing their objectives and the resistance to even performing an effective rescue operation. Among the special operations community, there is a special place in Hell reserved for Bill Clinton. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin resigned specifically over this issue, falling on his sword for the overall failure of the administration. This pattern of micromanaging and undercutting field operators is but one indication of the ways that the Clinton Administration utterly failed in foreign activities and relations. Bill Clinton has since spoken on the multiple failures of his administration to deal effectively with mass human rights abuses in Somalia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as not effectively pursuing Osama bin Laden and other known supporters of global terrorism.
Either you don’t know enough about this issue to discuss it intelligibly, or you do know and you are deliberately skewing information to defend your premise. Either way, I’m not interested in further discussion on the point.
Stranger
I had this in the pool! WHooooo! I win $50!!!
He also sold the idea of “trickle down economics” in which nothing trickled down, dumping (he called it mainstreaming) and a total ignoring of the burgeoning AIDS situation. It was also a time of junk bond kings, corporate raiders, and money grabbing “corporate yuppies” gone wild. Gordon gecko nailed the sentiment of the times - Greed is good, and to hell with anything/anyone else.
As I said before, and you have now implicitly acknowledged, by using this as the sole support for your thesis about Clinton’s foreign policy incoherence, you’ve surrendered the factual argument right from the start. And you have no reply at all for any other point. No wonder you’re not interested in further discussion. I do hope you’re happy back in your Reagan Hollywood fantasy world.
Oakminster, how about you? Have *you *come up with anything yet?
Nixon? Nixon? You mean RICHARD Nixon? Tricky Dick?
Oh Jesus.
(Edit – it’s not that I’m trying to hijack this thread, but I can’t believe anyone would consider Nixon one of our BEST presidents)
Okay, back to Reagan. Carry on, peeps.
Are you seriously so lacking in reading comprehension that you think I’m an unabashed apologist for Reagan, or are you so terminally blinded by your own prejudices that you find it necessary to spastically lash out at anything that is contrary to your belief system?
Stranger