A Century of Reagan

12 Comments

1. 

   Brendan Skwire on February 4, 2011 at 2:32 pm

   I have had bouts of diarrhea that were better for the US than Ronald Reagan. I hope he’s burning in Hell, boiling in a cauldron stirred by all the children he had murdered in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

2. 

   Brendan Skwire on February 4, 2011 at 2:36 pm

   when I was a kid, the hardcore band MDC put out this album .

   Inside were liner notes and graphic photographs of what the US was doing in Central America: dead nuns, dead children, that kind of thing. I think I was 14 or 15, although the record was released in 1983.

   Imagine how my parents, who already disliked Reagan, explained THAT one.

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     utried on February 4, 2011 at 2:56 pm

     I have nothing to add to your comments, Brendan. I’m glad you said something because I can’t handle a celebration of Reagan.

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       Brendan Skwire on February 4, 2011 at 4:13 pm

       I’m glad he’s dead. My only regret about Reagan was that he didn’t die in the street, homeless, forgotten, and cold.

3. 

   seabe on February 4, 2011 at 3:01 pm

   It’s why I continue to believe he was the worst president in history. I despise him.

4. 

   MassCommons on February 4, 2011 at 3:05 pm

   Yes, and it’s always worth mentioning that he displayed active signs of Alzheimer’s eating away at his brain for over half his presidency.

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     seabe on February 4, 2011 at 3:08 pm

     Have you read Ron’s new book? I’ve heard it more or less confirms what everyone basically knew:  that Reagan lost it much during the presidency–lost it literally and figuratively.

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       BillE on February 4, 2011 at 3:33 pm

       This is why they wanted shrub.  Reagan didn’t run things, Poppy Bush and the spooks did.  Ronny didn’t even know it, they just used him.   This laid the groundwork for electing Jr and letting a guy who shoots old men in the face run things.  I guess that’s why the Dick bought a place to live essentially on the Langley grounds.

5. 

   Davis X Machina on February 4, 2011 at 4:01 pm

   I’ve had to defend my formulation of Nixon’s Law (Ceteris paribus, the GOP nominates the best hater) on the basis of Reagan’s ‘characteriological sweetness’.

   I always maintain, and Gary Wills’ Reagan’s America put me on to this, that Reagan was a walking bundle of insecurities waiting to compensate on anybody’s ass who got in the way just as much as Nixon was — maybe more so, because of the movies, and watching that slip away. Nixon may have gotten beat by Jerry Brown’s dad, but he came back in politics. It wasn’t compensatory.

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     on February 4, 2011 at 6:21 pm

     That’s an interesting take via Wills (who sometimes is right, sometimes well off the mark in analyzing political leaders), which I’d like to see fleshed out a bit, though I don’t find it convincing so far.

     I don’t think Reagan had much more than garden variety personal insecurities — something w/n the range of normal — and wasn’t remotely in Nixon’s (or LBJ’s) league in terms of insecurities, feeling unfairly victimized, the inner beseiged subconscious always seeking a way to compensate and doing so in rough-hewn, often destructive ways.  Nixon (and Johnson) were inner-driven mostly by negative forces of ambition which were relentless; both were determined that nothing or no one would get in their way to the top.  

     Reagan was mostly a passive type and a useful vehicle for others to drive, economic and conservative forces who saw a great prospect for political office who could be their front man; they found their horse, trained him, and rode him hard for years.  And as it turned out RR was hugely lucky in terms of the political timing of each major move:  1966, 1976 and 1980 all were either greatly favorable for Repubs or involved going up against a fairly weak incumbent.

     And Reagan’s movie career?  Royalty in terms of the B-pictures, maybe, but never in the A-class leading man roles, so relatively speaking he lost less when his career went dry because he had less to lose.  He partly compensated with activity as SAG prez for a couple of stints.

     Then, after a stint speaking for GE and hosting their tv show, he found something — jumping into the political arena — where he could again do some acting, read scripts written by others, show up before the cameras well-coiffed and made up, and get handsomely paid for doing some fairly light lifting.  Sure beats sitting around the house year after year half-depressed, no longer in youthful prime, waiting for the phone to ring with some lousy B- or C-class movie or made-for-tv offering.

6. 

   Oui on February 4, 2011 at 4:19 pm

   .

   The Reagan Doctrine: Terrorism and Assassinations

   Although the American people and Congress supported the Grenada invasion, Democrats led by House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill, questioned the wisdom and morality of U.S. involvement in El Salvador, and, especially, Nicaragua. In 1982, Congress passed the Boland Amendment, prohibiting direct Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) efforts to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. The amendment, however, imposed no penalties for violation, which encouraged the administration to ignore it. Two years later, revelations that the CIA had aided in the mining of Nicaraguan ports and provided the Contras with an instructional manual that condoned terrorism and assassination caused an uproar on Capitol Hill. The Senate passed a resolution 84-12 condemning the mining. After much debate, Congress prohibited White House-supported funding for the Contras in the fall of 1984.

   Lebanon Involvement

   Reagan’s relations with Israeli leader Menachim Begin were less than harmonious and worsened considerably early in the President’s first term when Reagan watched in horror on White House television as Israeli bombers leveled Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon, killing many civilians. Reagan became so angry that on August 12, 1982, he telephoned Begin and told him the bombing had gone too far. “You must stop it,” Reagan said. Begin did, but the United States had moved a step closer toward involvement in Lebanon.

   Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, influenced by the legacy of Vietnam, were reluctant to put U.S. troops in harm’s way. Reagan followed a middle course and in August 1982 sent 800 U.S. Marines to Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping force that also included French and Italian contingents. Their mission was to maintain a cease fire during which PLO fighters in Lebanon would be allowed passage to neighboring Syria. Once the PLO had departed, Israel would withdraw from Lebanon.

   After the PLO fighters left, Weinberger withdrew the U.S. troops. But with the international force withdrawn, violence broke out again. Lebanese militia with ties to Israel massacred 700 refugees at two camps in mid-September 1982, including at least three dozen women and children. President Reagan, appalled by the massacre, ordered the U.S. forces back ashore.

   The Americans found themselves in the midst of a full-fledged civil war, one in which they unwittingly became targets as Israeli troops withdrew. In April 1983, Lebanese terrorists from a group called Hezbollah–which received financial and logistical support from Iran and Syria–detonated a truck bomb in front of the American Embassy in Beirut; seventeen Americans died, including eight employees of the CIA. American forces continued to come under attack sporadically throughout the summer of 1983. In response to the deaths of six soldiers, Reagan ordered U.S. warships to shell the camps of anti-American militias.

   The most deadly attack against the United States occurred on October 23, 1983, when terrorists blew up the Marines’ barracks at the Beirut airport, killing 241 U.S. servicemen, most of them Marines. More than 100 others were wounded in the attack, many of whom suffered permanent injuries. Reagan subsequently called it, “the saddest day of my presidency…the saddest day of my life.”  

   Due to diary limit of 2 .. tomorrow a follow-up:   U.S. CIA Terror Bombing in Lebanon

   • Arming Afghan Islamists as Unintended Prelude to 9/11

   "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

7. 

   wilderness wench on February 4, 2011 at 6:56 pm

   The beatification was apparent when they dragged his stinking corpse through the streets for a week before the burial — an actor to the very end. Damn his ass to hell.