Do you think he was a good US President?
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Do you think he was a good US President?
:balloon2:
Growing up, yes. Now? No. He had many qualities that I loathe.Quote:
Originally Posted by AntiKingWarmanCake88
Like what?
Someone posted a thoughtful writeup on Reagan in another thread. Let me see if I can find the link.
His best accomplishment, in my opinion, was communicating modern conservative ideology to the nation. He fundamentally changed the mindset of the country in the way we think about the nature of government, something that hadn't been done since The Great Society. He was the last transformative president we've had, which is why Bush and Obama have sought to emulate him.
He's probably the closest thing we've had to a Saturday morning cartoon villain as a president.
No, his presentation of "modern" conservative thought brought about a rise in anti-intellectualism in America (although it has always been around) and backwards policies that have been crippling the United States from greatness for decades now. He is more glorified then any other president today even though he would rank below average.
Are we talking about the real guy or the "deified" version the American right wing made up in following years?
When compared to his predecessor, Reagan was a superb president. ~;)
Bush 41 was better though, looking back I think he was probably the best one in my lifetime (Nixon to present).
What's wrong with Carter anyway?Quote:
Originally Posted by drone
He's history's greatest monster!Quote:
Originally Posted by Skullheadhq
All joking aside, Carter (the person) is fine. The Carter administration was less than successful.
Carter was more intellectual and had better ideas (still does) about where America should be investing for its future. Some of his speeches are brilliant. The problem of his administration was mismanagement, he was too hands off because he didn't want to be characterized as another Nixon controlling everything. Also he was voted as an outsider looking to change the way Washington operated from Nixon and before in secrecy so the establishment immediately had to make sure any of wishes were promptly printed out and then put in the shredder.Quote:
Originally Posted by drone
Reagan had no good policies, he committed borderline crimes but he had the best PR machine of any president ever to date. So everyone thinks he was great. He stood "strong" and was "defiant" against enemies. Carter tried but couldn't do ****. Reagan took us backwards and fed us lots of **** along the way.
Sound like Thracter and Reagan are despised in thier respective nations I seen over the years and now in this thread 'bout Ronny.
No, the majority of Americans still love Reagan.Quote:
Originally Posted by AntiKingWarmanCake88
Indeed. Which should come to no surprise considering how thoroughly he steamrolled Mondale in 1984. Reagan got "results", good things happened on his watch. How many of these good things can be attributed to his actions is up for debate.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
It bothers me when people link the end of the communism directly to Reagan and his military spending. They act like he USSR was performing excellent until Reagan came along and kicked some commie ***.Quote:
Originally Posted by drone
It also bothers me that his retreat from Lebanon and his sponsership of right wing death squads in Latin America is also overlooked. I could go on, but I'll stop here and agree that his PR machine was excellent while the actual man was far from it.
Edit:
While I disagree with a one or two, the rest I think are spot on:
https://img810.imageshack.us/img810/8344/reagan.jpg
This board skews highly toward the Left. I would be wary of making any judgments about the American consensus from the Backroom.Quote:
Originally Posted by AntiKingWarmanCake88
The very existence, not to mention the extent, organization, allegiance, and direct US knowledge/funding of the supposed ‘death squads of Nicaragua’ are all, of course, highly debatable and should be viewed in the context of the greater Cold War.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ice
I would like to point out every president commits "borderline crimes" you only happen to look the other way if it's your guy.
Reagan was what America needed at the time, someone to inspire enough confidence to push over the top and finally shake the Russkies. A great president? who knows. A man who surrounded himself with comptent people and played the game with the best of them? Sure.
ICE your cartoon fails to mention that most of those slides were standing US policy since the late 40s
good summation, i'm with you on this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
You would be good to. With the old guard gone, the smartest people in the room are me and a slightly effeminate Parisian.Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
I'm still the biggest smart:daisy:, right?Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
Second on the great summation. A welcome bit of insight. :bow:
I beg to differ, but whatever. I will give you that every president does commit borderline crimes in some way and that many (not all) of Reagan's foreign policy had been implemented in some way since the 1940s. However, he was not what America needed. You are the best example of someone who has been force fed a big lie so many times you believe it. Now you are just regurgitating phrases from the PR machine. Reagan did nothing. Absolutely nothing. He talked big, but every single president from Truman to Bush Sr. talked big about beating the USSR. The man who ended the Cold War was Gorbachev plain and simple, the USSR was doomed anyway since the economy and their momentum were broken in Afghanistan and a centrally planned economy isn't feasible at all any way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
1. The USSR economic model was flawed from the beginning.
2. Charlie Wilson exacerbated it by funding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
3. Gorbachev took advantage of the now broken economy by implementing political and economic reforms which broke apart the Soviet Union.
No Reagan at all in that sequence. This is why I am saying he is not terrible but below average. He did not end the Cold War, and the US foreign policy under his administration was a continuation of decades past even up to today. However he still implemented a failed economic model (Reaganomics) and created the debt problem we find ourselves in by adding billions upon billions dollars to it with embarrassing "show off" programs like Star Wars.
EDIT: Like it or not, the President that contributed the most towards winning the Cold War was Nixon with his policy of detente and brilliant pitting of Communist China against Communist USSR, breaking up a powerful alliance.
I thought it was the flawed economic model, Richard Nixon, and Charlie Wilson. :shrug:Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
I can't believe I just witnessed apologetics for the torture and murder of a quarter-million people. I seriously have no idea how to respond to this.Quote:
Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger
"Talking big" is sometimes what a country needs. Morale is not a variable only suited for the battlefield. Of course every president touched on the USSR they were the proverbial elephant in the room but Reagan pushed them to a forefront that had not been seen since Kennedy.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
AgreedQuote:
1. The USSR economic model was flawed from the beginning.
While Wilson has become the figurehead, the funding is mainly the work of Pakistan and a small backwater group known as neo-conservatives in the USA. Without them Wilson still would've been doing lines of coke off of giant tits (A noble pursuit in itself)Quote:
2. Charlie Wilson exacerbated it by funding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
thats Fine.Quote:
3. Gorbachev took advantage of the now broken economy by implementing political and economic reforms which broke apart the Soviet Union.
I never gave Reagan credit for soley defeating the reds I merley give him credit for galvininzing the west, making sure the US came out as top dog when the dust settled and making sure everyone knew America had WON.Quote:
No Reagan at all in that sequence. This is why I am saying he is not terrible but below average. He did not end the Cold War, and the US foreign policy under his administration was a continuation of decades past even up to today. However he still implemented a failed economic model (Reaganomics) and created the debt problem we find ourselves in by adding billions upon billions dollars to it with embarrassing "show off" programs like Star Wars.
You miss the point. The point is not; Reagan did nothing to further America socially (he didn't) or that he stuck to conservative spending principles (God no). Neither of those things are what makes Reagan special. Reagan is special because he grabbed a faltering USSR held up its body and said "AMERICA DID THIS BECAUSE WE ARE AWESOME" and that is what this country needed. Ever since Nixon the country had been mired in a funk. Reagan reinspired people and that's all that matters. He doesn't need anything else.
You don't need to be able to gain a victory You need to be able to know how to use the victory. You need to see the forest from the trees.
Carter and Nixon could never do that. They were way to mired in being mere politicians.
Then the 90s happened and America went awesome.
Nixon was lucky with timing, Mao saw the writing on the wall and the internal damage he had caused the sino-soviet shift has more due with the Chineese worry that the USSR would gain to much of the upper hand in the relationship. Thus a more independent China needed.Quote:
EDIT: Like it or not, the President that contributed the most towards winning the Cold War was Nixon with his policy of detente and brilliant pitting of Communist China against Communist USSR, breaking up a powerful alliance.
I disagree ~;)Quote:
I can't believe I just witnessed apologetics for the torture and murder of a quarter-million people. I seriously have no idea how to respond to this.
That's what I've always admired about you. You always care about the context. Especially when it comes to the modern political history of Islam. :bow:Quote:
The very existence, not to mention the extent, organization, allegiance, and direct US knowledge/funding of the supposed ‘death squads of Nicaragua’ are all, of course, highly debatable and should be viewed in the context of the greater Cold War.
ACIN:
Nixon's effort to "open" China was a brilliant move, but the break in Sino-Soviet relations went back to Kruschev. Kruschev's split with Mao was almost certainly a product of his need to distance himself from Daughasvili (sp?), with whom Mao had worked well. None of these events occur in isolation.
Reagan's efforts did indeed increase pressure on the USSR, mostly as a result of Russian paranoia -- "collective security," what a pipe-dream doctrine -- but the flaws in the Soviet system went back decades and Reagan was certainly not the only U.S. President trying to use that to win the Cold War. I suspect that both leaders at Rekjavik had more of an impact than anything else.
Reagan's handling of the Middle East was also far too "short-term" in its outlook. Actions that seemed just at the time have had ramifications decades later.
How about with some proof.Quote:
Originally Posted by jabarto
Charlie Wilson's war was going nowhere fast until someone personally approved sending hundreds of Stinger missiles to the Mujahideen. Guess who that was?Quote:
Originally Posted by ACIN
It takes a master in ideological gymnastics to try and separate Reagan from the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan.Quote:
Casey's visit was a prelude to a secret Reagan administration decision in March 1985, reflected in National Security Decision Directive 166, to sharply escalate U.S. covert action in Afghanistan, according to Western officials. Abandoning a policy of simple harassment of Soviet occupiers, the Reagan team decided secretly to let loose on the Afghan battlefield an array of U.S. high technology and military expertise in an effort to hit and demoralize Soviet commanders and soldiers. Casey saw it as a prime opportunity to strike at an overextended, potentially vulnerable Soviet empire.
Quote:
The problem, Cannistraro said, was that as the Soviets moved to escalate, the U.S. aid was "just enough to get a very brave people killed" because it encouraged the mujaheddin to fight but did not provide them with the means to win.
Conservatives in the Reagan administration and especially in Congress saw the CIA as part of the problem. Humphrey, the former senator and a leading conservative supporter of the mujaheddin, found the CIA "really, really reluctant" to increase the quality of support for the Afghan rebels to meet Soviet escalation. For their part, CIA officers felt the war was not going as badly as some skeptics thought, and they worried that it might not be possible to preserve secrecy in the midst of a major escalation. A sympathetic U.S. official said the agency's key decision-makers "did not question the wisdom" of the escalation, but were "simply careful."
In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166, and national security adviser Robert D. McFarlane signed an extensive annex, augmenting the original Carter intelligence finding that focused on "harassment" of Soviet occupying forces, according to several sources. Although it covered diplomatic and humanitarian objectives as well, the new, detailed Reagan directive used bold language to authorize stepped-up covert military aid to the mujaheddin, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal.
The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, according to Yousaf -- as well as what he called a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/?sum=3...e=70&k=66&p3=5Quote:
Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger
:mellow:
have fun deleted
Thank you! I figured I would have to dig that up at some point but I was dreading the googling I was going to have to engage in.Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
The findings, from the extremely unbiased(:laugh4:) ICJ no less, and with no US participation:
The 'Reagan supported Death Squads of Nicaragua' meme gets a lot of play in left wing circles, but has little basis in reality.Quote:
"The Court has to determine whether the relationship of the contras to the United States Government was such that it would be right to equate the contras, for legal purposes, with an organ of the United States Government, or as acting on behalf of that Government. The Court considers that the evidence available to it is insufficient to demonstrate the total dependence of the contras on United States aid. A partial dependency, the exact extent of which the Court cannot establish, may be inferred from the fact that the leaders were selected by the United States, and from other factors such as the organisation, training and equipping of the force, planning of operations, the choosing of targets and the operational support provided. There is no clear evidence that the United States actually exercised such a degree of control as to justify treating the contras as acting on its behalf." "Having reached the above conclusion, the Court takes the view that the contras remain responsible for their acts, in particular the alleged violations by them of humanitarian law. For the United States to be legally responsible, it would have to be proved that that State had effective control of the operations in the course of which the alleged violations were committed."