Well i mean really… you are talking about nukes here, not many people are stupid enough to launch them for any reason. Because they only devistate they have no ability to be profitable.
One man won’t make much diffrence ever.
reagan sucked. enough said.
I find it vastly amusing how some people can say “Reagan can’t take credit for THIS!” and then say “Reagan’s completely to blame for THAT!” It’s counter-arguing.
And, apparently, opponents of initiatives like SDI would much prefer that hundreds of millions of people get obliterated underneath a mushroom cloud rather than spend a few bucks…
“I’ve just outlawed Russia. The missiles will be there in five minutes.”
elucidator, if you want to complain about Grenada, and want Carter back, you should relearn the example of the attempt to rescue the hostages in Tehran. That was perhaps the most badly concieved military action I have ever heard about. Grenada went badly. Tehran was an incredibly dumb plan from the very beginning, and its failure should have been obvious to anyone who saw the plans.
Thanks dhanson for providing a better analysis of SDI than anyone else here. I find it interesting that normally rational people are turned into mindless zombies by their dislike for Reagan. These people usually wouldn’t let the sort of distorted statements they make about SDI go without comment.
As I said before, intelligence is not a factor in someone’s greatness as a President. Reagan was not an exceptionally intelligent person, but neither was he as stupid as you people would like to believe. He certainly didn’t champion stupidity, and allowed his administration to be largely run by very competent people.
Some people here have also discussed what the CIA did and didn’t know at any given point. The CIA is in the business of knowing more than you about these things, and has a vested interest in not letting you know what it actually does and does not know. When Reagan was selling SDI to the American people, he was being advised by a number of experts at the politics of MAD, who were basing their decisions on the best information available.
Trickle-down economics was not about giving money to rich people. It was about taking less money away from them. It wasn’t dependant on the rich being charitable with the money, the idea was that they would be able to put the money back into the economy by buying things with it. This is not exactly an unreasonable assumption.
bille: Bite me. I’m upset to see the sort of revisionist thinking represented by some posters here of “Ronald Reagan was a Mighty Intellect! You just didn’t UNDERSTAND his intricate thought processes, because you were too busy listening to Johnny Carson jokes!”
If I want to hear this sort of nonsense, I’ll read Bill Safire’s columns arguing that NIXON was the greatest President of the century.
Most of the posts claiming ascribing any greatness to Reagan are somewhat more rational than most of the ones on the other side. As I’ve mentioned, people like you are in general very rational, but when talking about Reagan tend more towards being verbally abusive. Many of the truly rabid Reagan fanatics are at least consistent. There is nothing about Reagan that makes rational discussion of the effects of his presidency impossible. Just because some of those on the other side of the debate are idiots doesn’t mean you have to attack Reagan supporters with broad generalizations.
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Well, what is, for crying out loud? Sorry, but “loveable doofus” is not on my list for qualifications.
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Words fail me. “Put your trust in the CIA, and all will be well” Malform follows malfunction. These are the same guys who couldn’t locate the Chinese embassy when it was ** on every single goddam city map!!!**
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Well, that certainly clarifies that!! Thank you for your patience with my obtuseness.
Your description of how Star Wars was supposed to work is illuminating except for a few problems:
Your description does not match either Reagan’s description or the descriptions that Reagan’s aides provided to congress. He asked for the funds to get an inviolable shield.
Reagan lost the first three (conservative, militarily oriented) head honchos of star wars when they quit in disgust after seeing how much money was being spent on flashy feel-good “demonstrations” with no practical application, while genuine science and engineering was being denied funds within star wars because it wouldn’t give the PR bang-for-the-buck.
Although you attempt to make SDI look like a big flop, and derisively refer to it as “Star Wars”, it had the desired effect, that of breaking the back of the Soviet Union, ending the Cold War and the arms race. As a result, you are much more secure in your comfortable home today.
For a more comprehensive explanation, look here:
http://www.reagan.dk/newsdi.htm
I really have nothing to contribute to this thread, which has to be one of the funniest I’ve ever read. Thank you for all the laughs!
Ike…
And… ah… who, exactly, said THAT?
What do you mean, “He picked”? Reagan was a complete puppet of all the reactionary forces in our society. They picked, he didn’t. Reagan was an actor who believed in a storybook version of what this country is about. He was able to recite his lines very convincingly and induce a warm glow into people who would otherwise reject his policies and thus get elected. He was able to get away with it because the media is owned by forces which supported him.
Reaganism was the greatest setback for working people since the 1920’s.
SDI broke the USSR because they, for some reason, believed Reagan as much as most people did. They thought it would be an inviolable defense. They began weapon production in a panic. And collapsed.
Balderdash, Sir! Balderdash and tommyrot!
On the one hand, you claim that the Russian did not have the technical capacity to produce an SDI. Hardly surprising, since that technology did not exist and does not exist now. But then it is claimed that the Russian economy faltered attempting to manufacture the aforesaid vaporware.
How does an economy falter producing something that does not exist? Will you run out of raw materials for your phaser/tricorder factory? Not enough dilithium crystals?
To steal a quote from PJ O’Rourke, the apostate hippy, the entire stucture of Socialist economics came crashing down because nobody wanted to buy Bulgarian shoes. Oversimplified. sure, but essentially correct. If Walter Mondale had been President, it would have happened anyway. Then you guys would have been scrambling to assign the credit to Strom Thurmond!!
That is just sooooooo AOL!!
Why does everyone seems to assume that the Soviet economy was doing soooooo well prior to REagan? Seems to me it was destined to crash sooner or later, and just happened to do so on Reagan’s watch (although I do acknowledge accelerating the arms race…if THAT can be called an achievement…played a role). However, much as we would like to think, the US only played one part out of many which brought down the Soviet Union. Other players including Thatcher, Pope John Paul II (?), Lech Walesa, a bunch of pissed off Afganistanian Mujaheeden, a group of coup-minded Soviet polititians, Boris Yeltsin and even Gorbachev himself played as big a role. I suspect the Soviet Union could have kept churning out missiles and starving their people if they had wanted to, had it not been for Gorbachev’s policies of Glastnost. I suspect he (unwittingly or not) had more to do with breaking up the Soviet Union, than REagan.
That’s approximately equivalent to saying you suspect Adolf Hitler had more to do with starting World War Two than Errol Flynn did. The collapse of the Soviet Union was 95% internal politics. Reagan’s SDI initiative had about as much causative effect on it as Carter’s Olympic boycott.
And the regeneration of American self-esteem was basically a matter of time healing the wounds of Vietnam. If Ted Kennedy had won the election in 1980, we’d be debating how much credit he deserved for the “Camelot Reborn” era of 1980-1988.
I’m a Reagan fan, but this doesn’t hold up. US missles didn’t need any moreprotection, at least not the ones hundreds of feet underwater. US Subs are almost undetectable as well. The Soviets could have taken out every land and air based weapon the US had and still been nuked into oblivion.
Reagan was the most charmed president ever, until the advent of Clinton. He was very lucky that the main positive events came to pass during his time. His policies were risky, and heavily criticized, but they panned out. Reagan was lucky when we needed luck so bad.