lol. this should drive repukes nuts: Howard Dean Says Reagan Didn't End Cold War

[cali]

By Paul Bedard

Posted: January 5, 2011


Outspoken former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean apparently isn't planning to celebrate Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday February 6, around which there are coast-to-coast events planned. Instead, the former Vermont governor is shrugging his shoulders, asking what all the fuss is about?

At a media roundtable today, Dean suggested that Reagan had little impact other than stopping the social progression begun under FDR and seemed to dismiss the Gipper's efforts to crush communism, giving the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev credit for ending the Cold War, a statement sure to draw sneers from Reagan fans and even historians.


While Reagan is considered in polls and by historians to be one of the five greatest American presidents, Dean took the view that the Republican really wasn't consequential. "I think it's hard to point to particular singular accomplishments that are for the ages, I mean there was no civil rights bill or Medicare or Medicaid established. I attribute the collapse of the Soviet Union much more to Gorbachev than I do to Reagan."

Dean, a social progressive and doctor who is a champion of healthcare reform, even suggested that Reagan might have turned the country backward. "I think Reagan was a great leader, had leadership attributes," Dean allowed. "I do think that he put a roadblock in terms of the Roosevelt revolution. I don't think he reversed it, but I think he put a roadblock in it," he said at the roundtable sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. Dean added: "The thing in retrospect that you look to with Reagan was he did represent, I mean the Republicans are right to revere him, in the sense that he did kind of represent the end of the progress in terms of where Roosevelt was taking the country and a reassessment that we have been fighting ever sense. I think we've sort of fought to a stand still but he put a stake in the ground and stopped the progression to a more humanitarian country."

<snip>

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/01/05/howard-dean-says-reagan-didnt-end-cold-war

[muntrv]

1. All Raygun did was run up a $3 trillion debt.

[bemildred]

2. The main thing Reagan destroyed is US global leadership.

It mean it's all his policies that are making the empire crumble as we speak.

[cali]

4. and that's more or less what dean says in the article.

[Drale]

3. The reason communism or what they called communism

failed in the Soviet Union was because they gave everything to the high class and everyone else was poor as hell. They gave ALL THEIR MONEY to the higher class. Sound familiar?

[underpants]

7. Unsustainable economy like ours

other simularities

"Natural" disaster
Chernobyl - Katrina


Afghanistan - Afghanistan (+Iraq)

Outside influences
blue jeans, rock n roll, the Poles (Pope and Walesa) - Walmart/China Goldman Sachs

Someone willing to start the change
Gorbachov - Obama (okay just sort of)

[bbinacan]

5. I disagree

Reagan didn't single handedly end the cold war. He was one President in a long line going back to Truman. His SDI spending, and the need for the Soviets to match it, may have brought Gorbachev around.

[trotsky]

6. You are correct that it was a long line of presidents and a long line of events...

that led up to it. Some have argued that the grain embargo under Carter was what really struck the fatal blow for the Soviet Union. SDI and sabre rattling under Reagan just finished off a dying monster.

[bbinacan]

9. Grain embargo

yes, I think that helped. When we decided to make the battle economic, we made more progress than when it was only militarily. Though both complimented each other.

[ooglymoogly]

11. Wow, the leapfrogging here is astounding... You are both wrong on the most important count.

The war in Afghanistan was what brought the Soviet Union down. With a great deal of input from the US over several presidencies and administrations.

Afghanistan has, at one time or another and more than once, brought England to its knees, Russia to obliteration and will now do the same to the U.S. Afghanistan is a black hole and is in the war business and anyone it can suck in with a well placed action, whether working with the CeyeA or any other "intelligence" agency, is fair game. It chortles in its fist while playing one faction off against the other, till the outside forces are worn out and their treasuries depleted and the war lords walk off with the booty. Afghanistan is every country with dreams of empire's generic Waterloo.

[GrannyK]

17. Hear, Hear. You've got it. n/t

[DCKit]

8. Attacking St. Ronnie... they'll either ignore it, or go all out.

I'm thinking Dr. Dean will have an answer to all their arguments... if he's ever invited to debate the subject on the Sunday talk shows.

[wakemewhenitsover]

10. Since when have historians considered Reagan one of the five greatest?

A quick look at the chart on Wikipedia doesn't even place Reagan in the top five in popular polls. His performance in polls of historians hovers around average.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States

Nice try, Bedard.:thumbsdown:

[Lord Magus]

19. On the other hand, historians tend to rank Andrew "Native American Genocide" Jackson highly.

So their rankings aren't that important to me anyway.

[madrchsod]

12. it was the green movement that collapsed eastern block communism

gorbachev knew the collapse of eastern europe was the end of the soviet union

[Dawson Leery]

13. Reagan's unfortunate tenure was the start of the demise of middle class America.

As for the USSR, extreme economies in either directions are bound to fail. Moderation is what is needed.

[madrchsod]

14. let`s not forget mr wilson`s war ....

[ooglymoogly]

15. Name the polls that witness RR as one of the five greatest presidents.

And I'll show you many, many more that differ. I have never seen a respectable poll with RR in the top 5. That is a corporate MSM's wet dream and a fraud on reality.

[Major Hogwash]

16. Not only that, but Reagan wound up getting more Marines killed in one day since WWII at Iwo Jima.

On October 23rd, 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon, where Marine sentries were not allowed to carry loaded rifles because Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger didn't want to "intimidate" the terrorists in Lebanon.
Weinberger changed the rules of engagement 3 times in less than 1 year before that happened because they didn't know what the fuck they were doing over there.
A total of 237 US Marines and US sailors were sacrificed . . for nothing.

If the Republicans want to celebrate Ronnie Raygun's accomplishments, why don't they choose that day to celebrate it?

[coalition_unwilling]

18. Reagan friggin presided over a constitutional coup d'etat (Iran Contra) and

he's considered one of the 5 greatest presidents by historians??? Really? Which historians??? I would really like to know. Maybe historians with fellowships at the Hoover Insitution at Stanford.

[fishwax]

20. historians consider Reagan among the five greatest presidents? Since when?

:shrug:

[calimary]

21. Dr. Dean speaks for me yet again.

reagan couldn't have done squat about the then-Soviet Union if there'd been no open-minded risk-taker like Gorbachev at the other end of the proverbial "Red Phone."

[newtothegame]

22. Which Republicans are listening to Howard Dean?

Are you listening to Rush Limbaugh? :shrug:

[CTyankee]

24. He's on MOrning Joe a lot...

I loved it when he essentially said "Oh, not you DINT" when Joe claimed the pukes in "his" congress forced Clinton to balance the budget...Joe had to let it go cuz it was troo...

[oldlib]

23. Reagan happened to be president

at the time that the Soviet Union collapsed. The Cold War was won by the members of the US military who served during that period. The war was virtually a standoff until the collapse.