Keep Reagan's Record in Balance.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Keep Reagan's Record in Balance.
67
Thu, 06-10-2004 - 9:57am

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29859-2004Jun9.html


The good that Ronald Reagan did is not being buried with his bones tomorrow, as Shakespeare's Mark Antony predicted of Caesar. Reagan's good is being disinterred and magnified. It is being raised to new and unrealistic heights that will live on, and hang heavily over his successors, in public expectations.


This is not to begrudge the 40th president the thunderous applause that has come from politicians, journalists, historians and citizens to mark Reagan's final bow. Ill should rarely be spoken of the dead. But it is puzzling how these assessments of Reagan's accomplishments have improved so dramatically and uniformly in the 16 years since he left office.


Perhaps this is how contemporary history is made or, in the electronic era, mismade and distorted. Reagan's growing reputation as the great victor in the Cold War who made Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the Berlin Wall depends on looking at Reagan and his times through the light cast by subsequent events.


The craving by Americans for uncluttered heroism -- for what is seen in retrospect as the order and clarity of the Cold War -- also powers this yearning for a near-mythical transformation of Reagan's death into a moment to sweep aside the dread and anguish of the wars in Iraq and against al Qaeda.


Yes, winners always write the history. But it is dangerously easy today to make the leap from that news footage of Reagan speaking at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to concluding that he came to office with a master plan to make victory in the Cold War inevitable. As one television executive said to me not long ago, "Today history is what we say it is."


To one who covered many of the key international events of that day, Reagan seemed in fact to come late to a realistic view of the Soviet Union and the world, and -- like most presidents -- to have improvised furiously and not always successfully in foreign affairs.


It is also easy in today's elegiac mood to forget how unpopular Reagan was abroad for most of his presidency, even among his peers. France's Francois Mitterrand once sputtered in rage at me when I asked about his ideological conflicts with Reagan over Soviet policies. Kremlin officials expressed private delight at Reagan's election because they would be able to "roll him."


That is no skin off Reagan's record. He was more right about the evil and the fate of Soviet imperialism than Mitterrand, Gorbachev and most other leaders of the day. He was far from the amiable dunce portrayed by his knee-jerk critics.


But the opposition that Reagan stirred should not be airbrushed out of the final photograph of his times. Nor can we ignore the fact that the analysis and policies that brought some breakthroughs with Moscow originated more with George Shultz at the State Department than at Reagan's White House.


The Wall collapsed a year after Reagan's successor had been chosen and had started to alter policies toward Moscow. That collapse was due more to the struggle in the 1980s of the citizens of Poland, Hungary, East Germany and other satellite nations than to new actions by Washington. Nor should we minimize the contribution that a half-century of common dedication by U.S. and West European citizens and their military forces made to the final collapse of the Soviet empire.


There were important costs that came with Reagan's undeniable successes. His confrontational style used in getting much-needed Pershing 2 missiles deployed in Europe helped prematurely end the career of West Germany's highly competent chancellor, Helmut Schmidt.


U.S. support extended to guerrillas to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan has blown back in the form of al Qaeda and extreme instability in Central Asia. U.S. help to Saddam Hussein in Iraq also boomeranged. Iran-contra was not as great an aberration at the Reagan White House as it is often painted today.


The commentariat has made many of the right points about Reagan's uplifting personality and all the good and the fascinating that will live after him. Even if he was not a great president, he lived a great life from which we can all learn.


But if we airbrush and prettify history for the small screen and the front page, and ultimately for the books to come, we will not learn the most important lessons about mistakes that can be avoided. Let Reagan be Reagan, warts and all, for all time now.


The Man, the Myths
Don't believe everything you hear about Ronald Reagan.


http://slate.msn.com/id/2102060/


Gorby had the lead role, not Gipper.


>"In the collapse of communism he deserves credit not as an instigator, but an abettor. Best Supporting Actor."<


Quote from.........


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040610/COMARTIN10/TPComment/TopStories


Op-ed: REAGAN'S SHAMEFUL LEGACY


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=127&ncid=742&e=7&u=/ucru/20040608/cm_ucru/reagansshamefullegacy

cl-Libraone~

 


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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Thu, 06-10-2004 - 1:34pm
Thanks for posting. I was not all that happy with Reagan, although I was very upset by the huge debt he left. A full week of eulogy is a bit much, where's the news? My TV has been turned off a good deal because I just can't take anymore. It was a lenghty few days of coverage for JFK, but the country was stunned. The Rep. are milking this for all its worth, hoping to excape more bad news for GWB.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Thu, 06-10-2004 - 1:47pm

IMHO, he was neither the best nor the worst President we've ever had.


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Thu, 06-10-2004 - 2:41pm

>"My TV has been turned off a good deal because I just can't take anymore."<


Mine too.


>"It was a lengthy few days of coverage for JFK, but the country was stunned."<


JFK's life was stolen from him. The Gipper's

 


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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Thu, 06-10-2004 - 2:47pm

>"Ronald Reagan is the reason my mother became a Democrat!

 


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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
Thu, 06-10-2004 - 4:13pm
Keep your televisions off. Read Ted Rall if it makes you feel better. Minimize his accomplishments and highlight his mistakes. "ROTFLOL" if it feels appropriate. Joke about his performance as governor. Make sarcastic remarks about "hitting the Pope of for sainthood."

I'd debate his political achievements and mistakes but it doesn't sound like anyone here would be interested in anything on such an intellectual level.

The Internet provides for some anonymity but I would think common decency and shame would keep these types of posts from appearing at least until the man is laid to rest.

How inappropriate the timing of these posts are.

Jim

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Thu, 06-10-2004 - 5:33pm

Inappropriate?


iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Thu, 06-10-2004 - 6:05pm
This article may help balance your perspective.

'Forgive Me, But...': A Nicaraguan Woman Reflects on Reagan's Death

Commentary, La Segua,

Pacific News Service, Jun 09, 2004

Editor's Note: President Reagan's death brings back painful memories of the anti-Sandinista war.

SAN FRANCISCO--In the 1980s, as a Nicaraguan child, I had dreams of Presidente Reagan dying of a heart attack in the middle of a speech. I thought his death would bring the war to an end. Then there would be no more low-flying "black birds" (spy planes) breaking the sound barrier several times a day during school hours.

One spring morning in 1981 I saw my mother and some neighbors digging a big hole in my beloved rose garden. "There's a new president in the United States," she said. "And he doesn't like the Revolution. Almost certainly, we're going to have a war. The hole is going to be our refugio (refuge) if their airplanes come looking for us. We'll hide in there."

Later, when the terrible war did come and the United States put up and armed the counterrevolutionary Contras, I dreamt that if Reagan died there would be no more bombed health clinics or hospitals. There would be no more empty shelves in the supermarket. And most important, the "Death Truck" wouldn't drive down my street every week.

The Death Truck was a big military truck, Russian-made, that delivered the corpses of young soldiers. My neighborhood was overwhelmingly Sandinista, hence, many of the youth in my barrio volunteered before they were old enough to get drafted. The truck would drive by slowly, staining the air with the stench of rotten humans wrapped in black plastic bags. Everyone froze while that damned truck drove by. Folks prayed it wouldn't stop in front of their house.

The most disgraceful assignment for anyone in the Ejercito Popular Sandinista (Sandinista armed forces) was to be the young man on the passenger seat of the Death Truck. His job was to notify the family he was delivering a corpse. Before the kid could hop off the truck, somebody's mother, wife, sister, uncle, brother, son or daughter was already on the sidewalk weeping.

"Oh! No not my husband!! God, tell me it isn't so!" I recall my 19-year-old neighbor, seven months pregnant, screaming so loud the sky was gonna crack.

The delivery soldier was required to make a dreadful speech as the black plastic bag was laid on the sidewalk in front of the house. While a Nicaraguan flag was draped on the body bag he would recite: "In the name of the People's Sandinista Revolution, we sadly inform you that (rank and name of person being delivered) has fallen (circumstances of death, i.e. ambush, ground combat, land mine, air raid...) in defense of the freedom and dignity of the Nicaraguan people. In the name of the Ejercito Popular Sandinista, we express our deepest regret and condolences to your family."

The soldier would then salute the wailing mother, wife or whoever was there and hand them the dog tag, some paperwork, and any personal effects the soldier might have had.

Then everyone knew what to do -- collect coffee, sugar and bread among all the neighbors to pull together a wake. The neighborhood carpenter would improvise a coffin with wood that sometimes came off somebody's wall or chicken coop. A man once told me that he made over 700 coffins during the war for young men he had seen grow up.

My black mourning clothes turned gray from wearing them so much. By the time I turned 12, I had five dog tags hanging from my neck. The guys' moms or wives or sisters gave them to me in appreciation for help I might have given in organizing the funeral -- collecting the sugar, washing the coffee cups, or walking long distances to get bread from a relative in a different neighborhood.

There weren't many girls my age in my neighborhood, so I hung out mostly with the boys. After Hurricane Joan left Nicaragua flooded in 1988, all the boys in my neighborhood vowed to serve. My boys all got up on one of those military trucks, with their camouflage pants and green T-shirts, with red bandanas tied to their necks (worn by youth volunteers, ages 16 to 18), and their AK-47s. They waved good-bye and blew kisses. The truck disappeared, and all the women hugged each other and wept.

My boys came home one by one, most of them dead, one without legs, and another insane.

Information that has come out since Iran-Contra arms smuggling scandal has documented how the Reagan administration actively tried to overthrow the Sandinista government. Back then, I could only dream of Presidente Reagan's death. I dreamt his body would be inside those makeshift coffins.

Sixteen years later, he has finally died.

But Reagan would need to die 60,000 more times, to make up for the lives lost during his watch. God forgive me, but I hope hell has a VIP lounge for him to suffer the torture and terror he imposed on us. Our only sin was to be living in Nicaragua.

PNS contributor "La Segua," a 28-year-old Nicaraguan woman now living in the United States has written for YO! Youth Outlook, a magazine by and about Bay Area Youth and a project of Pacific News Service.

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=0f1a608f43668da63ed2b1d655ab9415

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-11-2004
Fri, 06-11-2004 - 6:00am
Jim,

I am glad to see that ther is some decency on this message board. I too find it inappropriate with what I am reading on here. It goes to show what level some are on, while the man is not even laid to rest.

I thought it a sad day, the day Reagan died. I found him to be a great President and a great man. Yes he made his mistakes, but he did have fantastic accomplishments. I dont think anyone of these people that posted these shameful and horrific posts would be singing the same song if it were them who had to stand in line for hours for rotten lettuce, or not be able to call anything their own. These liberties, i.e. freedom of speech that they so blantantly use to abuse others, is what Reagan fought for when he did help end the Cold War and fight against Communistic beliefs and government.

Yes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. And I will say this, Reagan is part of the reason I proudly chose to become a Republican.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Fri, 06-11-2004 - 8:44am

In parts of the world he's considered a war criminal.


Fr. Miguel D’Escoto : "Reagan Was The Butcher of My People"


Fr. Miguel D’Escoto Speaks From Nicaragua


Editors Note: Fr. Miguel D'Escoto is a Catholic priest in Managua, Nicaragua. He was Nicaragua's Foreign Minister under the Sandinista government of the 1980s, when the US was arming and supporting the Contra death squads. Ronald Reagan said of the Contras: "They are our brothers, these freedom fighters and we owe them our help. They are the moral equal of our founding fathers."


First of all, let me start out by saying that, of course, Reagan is now dead. And I, for one, would like to say only nice things about him. I'm not insensitive to the feelings of many U.S. people mourning President Reagan, but as I pray that God in his infinite mercy and goodness forgives him for having been the butcher of my people, for having been responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 Nicaraguans, we cannot, we should not, ever forget the crimes he committed in the name of what he falsely labeled "freedom and democracy."


More perhaps than any other U.S. President, Reagan convinced many around the world that the U.S. is a fraud, a big lie. Not only was it not democratic, but, in fact, the greatest enemy of the right of self- determination of peoples. Reagan was known as the "great communicator" and I believe that that is true only if one believes that to be a great communicator means to be a good liar. That he was for sure. He could proclaim the biggest lies without even as much as blinking an eyelash. Hearing him talk about how we were supposedly persecuting Jews and burning down non- existent synagogues, I was led to believe really, that Reagan was possessed by demons. Frankly, I do believe Reagan at that time as much as Bush today was indeed possessed by the demons of manifest destiny.


Of course, as I say this, I'm quite aware that to the people of the Project for a New American Century, that is counted as a big loss. Because of Reagan and his spiritual heir George W. Bush, the world today is far less safe and secure than it has ever been. Reagan in fact was an international outlaw. He came to the Presidency of the United States shortly after Somoza, a Dictator that the U.S. had imposed over Nicaragua for practically half a century; had been deposed by Nicaraguan Nationalists under the leadership of the Sandinista Liberation Front. To Reagan, Nicaragua had to be re-conquered. He blamed Carter for having lost Nicaragua, as if Nicaragua ever belonged to anyone else other than the Nicaraguan people. That was then the beginning of this war that Reagan invented, and mounted and financed and directed: the Contra War. About which he continually lied to the People, helping the United States people to be the most ignorant people around the world. I said ignorant, I don't say not intelligent. But the most ignorant people around the world about what the United States does abroad.


More....................


http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=1305

cl-Libraone~

 


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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Fri, 06-11-2004 - 9:22am
For critics, death resurrects controversies, bitterness

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/8897152.htm?1c



Ronald Reagan's death has unleashed a wave of adoring nostalgia and led to state and federal holidays for his funeral today. But among Reagan's many skeptics in the liberal Bay Area, the sentimental treatment he has received in death obscures the controversy he evoked in life.


For many minorities, AIDS activists and others sidelined by his political success, the conservative icon's passing is as much an occasion to remember how angry he made them as it is to pay their respects.


Along with his gentlemanly demeanor, Reagan's critics also remember how he cut aid to the poor, was slow to pay attention to the AIDS epidemic and turned Central America into a pawn of the Cold War.


``Even though he was a nice guy, I feel that Reagan, for most minorities, for education and for the environment, was terrible,'' said Sidney Glass, 57, a criminal attorney from Oakland. ``In this week of celebration, one shouldn't forget that his legacy is mixed.''


Others were more blunt.


``Did God die or something?'' asked Denise Misiph of Oakland, who was selling her jewelry near the San Francisco Ferry Building. She said the state and federal holidays are ``way out of line, especially for someone who didn't care much for people with social needs.''


Reagan has been the bane of liberals from the start. He began his career in elective office with a campaign for California governor in which he promised to ``clean up the mess at Berkeley,'' a reference to the burgeoning Free Speech Movement and anti-Vietnam War protests on campus.


Berkeley turbulence


``He didn't start out as governor with a friendly or compromising attitude at all,'' said Ray Colvig, 73, the campus's chief public-affairs officer in the 1960s. ``He was very tough in his rhetoric. He proceeded to try to cut the university's budget any way he could, and at one point suggested we should sell off the rare books in the library.''


Colvig, who retired in 1991, said Reagan played a critical role in the board of regents' decision to fire Chancellor Clark Kerr, despite his public profession that he knew nothing about it. Kerr lost his job three weeks after Reagan took office.


Reagan used the demonstrators as a foil for his conservatism. ``He had me expelled from Berkeley,'' said Peter Miguel Camejo, the Green Party candidate for president who was active in the Free Speech Movement. Camejo said he sympathized with Nancy Reagan for the pain she suffered through her husband's Alzheimer's disease. ``But I have a different view of Ronald Reagan politically. He was totally for the Vietnam War.''


Reagan's most infamous moment with Berkeley was in May 1969, when students and activists were trying to transform a plot of vacant University-owned land into a ``People's Park.'' Their rally devolved into a riot, and Reagan sent in 2,200 National Guard soldiers.


As governor, Reagan also battled regularly with the United Farm Workers, which began organizing immigrant farmworkers throughout the San Joaquin Valley in 1965.


``Reagan was very much opposed to collective bargaining,'' said Dolores Huerta, 74, who co-founded the UFW with Cesar Chavez. She said Reagan never met with the farmworkers face to face and once told an interviewer that the union's five-year boycott on grapes was immoral.


``He actually was eating grapes during the grape boycott,'' she said.


Huerta recalls that for years unemployment insurance for farmworkers would pass the Legislature, only to be vetoed by Reagan. ``Reagan did very harsh things for poor people.''


In the early years of his presidency, the AIDS epidemic began. But some leading AIDS researchers at the time said the Reagan administration took several years to grasp the urgency of how fast the disease was spreading.


``His silence was deafening,'' said Dr. Mervyn F. Silverman, who was director of the San Francisco Department of Health when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared AIDS an epidemic in 1981.


Reagan disappointed AIDS researchers at a meeting Silverman hosted in 1987 by calling for mandatory testing of ill gay men, a move Silverman and others called discriminatory.


``He is portrayed as a compassionate and caring individual, a leader who brought people out of the doldrums, but his silence on AIDS was tragic,'' Silverman said.


Later in his presidency, Reagan was engulfed by the Iran-Contra scandal, which resulted in a prolonged congressional inquiry and caused his popularity to plummet.


Reagan finally apologized for secretly approving the sale of weapons to Iran, in the hopes of winning the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon. But he denied knowledge of the other half of the scandal, a scheme run by Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, to divert profits from the arms sales to the Contra rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua.


At the time, the United States was involved in civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. Critics say the Reagan administration funded ``death squads'' that committed human rights abuses.


Central America


Today, as Reagan is buried, activists in San Francisco will hold a mock funeral of their own in honor of what they say are Reagan's Central American victims.


``Reagan's policies brought a lot of misery to Central American people,'' said Carlos Mauricio, 52, a science professor who was kidnapped from his university classroom in El Salvador by the Salvadoran army in 1983 and will speak at today's demonstration.


For other Reagan critics, the emotion surrounding his death is understandable, even if it's not something they share.


``When people die, we tend to glorify them,'' said Richard Ajluni, 45, a member of the San Jose Arts Commission. ``But the deficit exploded during Reagan's tenure, and that's something that people are not remembering as we lay him to rest. Then there's El Salvador, Nicaragua -- take your pick. Not everyone is a fan. It's sad that he died, but he wasn't so great. I'm much more saddened by the loss of Ray Charles, to tell you the truth.''


***********************************************************


>"On May 15, 1969, Reagan blurted out "If its a blood bath, then let it be now" during a news conference he held about clearing the University of California campuses of antiwar protesters."<


>"Once Reagan received the nomination for the presidency, the Reagan-Bush team insured their victory in the 1980 election by making a deal with the Ayatollah not to release the American hostages in Iran until after the election. Nobody should ever forget the surreal images of the hostages boarding a plane in Tehran on one side of the screen and the inauguration ceremony on the other side of the screen."<


>"His administration was scandal ridden from the first day to its last day with over 170 top officials indicted or forced to resign because of criminal behavior. However, if they wrapped themselves in the flag and praised the Lord their crimes were swept under the rug."<


>"During the Iran-Iraq war Reagan provided support for Saddam. When Saddam used nerve gas the Reagan Bush administration was complacent. Throughout the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan the Reagan administration equipped and trained not only the Taliban but also bin Laden. In fact, Reagan was the godfather of much of the present trouble in the Middle East."<


Quotes from........


http://canarias.indymedia.org/es_ES/mozwin.css/newswire/display/6657/index.php


cl-Libraone~



Edited 6/11/2004 9:29 am ET ET by cl-libraone

 


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