Rating Reagan: A Bogus Legacy

[trof]

I'm not a Reagan hater. I felt pity for him. I don't believe he was entirely compos mentis during the entire eight years of his "reign".
IMHO, he was a "feel good" figurehead, while others pulled the strings and ran the country. Please read the entire article.
trof

By Robert Parry
June 7, 2004

The U.S. news media’s reaction to Ronald Reagan’s death is putting on display what has happened to American public debate in the years since Reagan’s political rise in the late 1970s: a near-total collapse of serious analytical thinking at the national level.

Across the U.S. television dial and in major American newspapers, the commentary is fawning almost in a Pravda-like way, far beyond the normal reticence against speaking ill of the dead. Left-of-center commentators compete with conservatives to hail Reagan’s supposedly genial style and his alleged role in “winning the Cold War.” The Washington Post’s front-page headline – “Ronald Reagan Dies” – was in giant type more fitting the Moon Landing.

Yet absent from the media commentary was the one fundamental debate that must be held before any reasonable assessment can be made of Ronald Reagan and his Presidency: How, why and when was the Cold War “won”? If, for instance, the United States was already on the verge of victory over a foundering Soviet Union in the early-to-mid-1970s, as some analysts believe, then Reagan’s true historic role may not have been “winning” the Cold War, but helping to extend it.

If the Soviet Union was already in rapid decline, rather than in the ascendancy that Reagan believed, then the massive U.S. military build-up in the 1980s was not decisive; it was excessive. The terrible bloodshed in Central America and Africa, including death squad activities by U.S. clients, was not some necessary evil; it was a war crime aided and abetted by the Reagan administration.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2004/060704.html

[chelsea0011]

1. When the love-fest-respect-to-a--past-pres ends, I wonder

if the media and historians will come clean that he wasn't all there his final years of President and whether people in his administration should be taken to task for not disclosing his true condition? It will never happen. This ain't Clinton we are talking about here.

[trof]

4. Forgive and old man.

Memory fails, but I just saw a historian whom I respect state on CNN that it was more than a little simplistic to credit Reagan with "ending the cold war".

[question everything]

7. Of course it is. The Chernobyl disaster was a major factor

There, as here, it was "the economy, stupid."

[mopinko]

12. love to see it

everybody knew. scary

[bluestateguy]

2. Well

While I agree with much of what the author said, I don't think holding back on this for a week or two would irreparably damage a fair accounting of Reagan's legacy.

This fellow is probably already getting hate mail and death threats from "compassionate" conservatives.

[muchacho]

3. dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=55068&mesg_id=55068

[kaitykaity]

8. NOT a dupe.

We're allowed to post an article in two forums, say in
Editorials and in General Discussion.

[trof]

9. Well THANK YOU kk.

I've had discussions with mods before about posting "dupes" in different forums. GD is more for discussions and opinions than the op/ed board.
:hi:

[kaitykaity]

10. You're welcome.

When I was a mod, it was one major forum and one minor
forum, and I confirmed that not too long ago also.

:hi:

[neoteric lefty]

5. great quote from Chalmers Johnson

"The US did not win the Cold War, it is just that the Soviets lost it more badly"

(not an exact quote but close if my recollection is correct)

[trof]

6. Like that.

Thanks.

[MrPrax]

11. Score one for Parry...

Reagan 'winning' the Cold War is perhaps one of the more offensive legacies of Reagan Machine for sure...

But we all know that only Great Men can produce history and social transformations...

The Western media in particular is NEVER going to highlight the fact that at first tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands and then MILLIONS of people in the Soviet Union as well as the East Bloc simply shut their idiot system down ...

Now that's a novel thought...

[Ferretherder]

13. The worst part of all this Reagan worship is....

...that a LOT of Americans will NEVER get it.

They don't want to be bothered with details. They don't want to be 'overloaded' with 'useless' factoids. 'The man is dead', they'll say. Let him rest in peace.

you know it's true! Just look at the Soviet Union, just after Stalin's death. For Christ's sake, the man BRAGGED to Churchill about killing more than TEN MILLION of his own people. Yet, when he died, he was revered as a near-saint by a staggering portion of the populace.

Humankind is far from inquisitive when confronted with facts running contrary to their cherished perceptions.