Ronald Reagan, Liar For Israel
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| Wed, 09-01-2004 - 6:47am |
Ronald Reagan, Liar For Israel
FADING ILLUSIONS:
D-Day and Reagan: an interview by Kevin Strom with Mark Weber
MW: Ronald Reagan, throughout his presidency, was very pro-Israel
and very pro-Jewish. He's not alone, of course. Every American
president since Harry Truman has been committed to supporting the
state of Israel and its policies. Now fortunately for Reagan,
there was no great war in the Middle East as there was in 1967 or
1973. And, also fortunately for Reagan's legacy, there was no
conflict like the current situation in Iraq. Nevertheless, Ronald
Reagan was entirely subordinate to and supportive of Israel and
its policies, even though this meant supporting Israel in actions
which were violations not only of the principles that we as
Americans try to uphold, but even of American law.
Specifically, in 1982, when Reagan was President, Israel invaded
Lebanon. It invaded Lebanon on the deceitful basis of a pretext
that the Israeli ambassador in London had been shot by a member
of the PLO. In fact, the person who shot the Israeli ambassador
in London was not even with the PLO. But on the basis of that
pretext, Israel invaded Lebanon, costing thousands of lives and
creating hundreds of thousands of refugees. Enormous destruction
was the result. And Ronald Reagan supported Israel in this.
One of the speakers several years ago at an IHR conference was US
Congressman Pete McCloskey. And he spoke out at the time on the
floor of the House about Israel's violation even of American law
in that conflict. But Ronald Reagan put America's 'special
relationship' with Israel above even his oath as President to
uphold American law. This was pointed up in the case of that
conflict, in which America helped and cooperated with Israel in
this completely illegal, horrible, destructive invasion of Lebanon.
And this is a parallel with the present. In the aftermath of the
Lebanese fiasco, the United States sent military troops to
Lebanon. And Reagan made a big issue at the time about 'staying
the course' and how we were 'going to have troops there until
Lebanon was a free and democratic country,' and how this was part
of a big campaign to bring 'democracy' and 'stability' to that
part of the world -- pre-echoes of exactly the same kind of
rhetoric we've heard from the White House during the past year
with regard to the war in Iraq.
But in 1983, when a Marine barracks was blown up, and 240 some
American Marines were killed, Reagan cut his losses, abandoned
all his rhetoric, and just simply pulled the American troops out.
For all his rhetoric, Reagan was a very pragmatic man. He was not
one to let principles stand in the way of political expediency.
And he was willing to cut his losses when things went wrong or
things went bad. And if he was President, and had engaged in a
fiasco like the one we're dealing with now in Iraq, he would have
long ago cut his losses and pulled out, and saved face in the
best possible way -- whereas George W. Bush seems incapable
emotionally of admitting a mistake.
And that's part of the paradox or contradiction of the Reagan
legacy. He's remembered as a conservative -- but what did he
actually conserve?
KAS: Good question.
MW: What did he actually conserve? This morning on the radio, in
a tribute to Ronald Reagan, one commentator said "He was a
president who made us feel good about ourselves." Well, that's
true. But that's about all he did. He made us feel good.
But in terms of conserving or preserving anything of real
substance, Ronald Reagan presided over America's forward advance
-- or, should I say, backward advance -- in the same direction
she had been going since the 1940s and has been going ever since.
When Ronald Reagan was elected, many conservatives thought that
Reagan was going to make good on his rhetoric and dismantle, for
example, the unconstitutional portions of the federal government
such as the Department of Education, which had no constitutional
validity. There's nothing in the Constitution to permit the
federal government to be involved in education.
KAS: Yes, I can remember all of that. In 1980, Mark, it was
almost a sense of euphoria -- he was going to reclaim America, he
was going to remake America back into the Old America that people
felt had been betrayed and abandoned.
MW: Exactly. But, to the amazement of many of his conservative
followers, he did none of that. He didn't dismantle the federal
government; he expanded it. The irony is that his actual policies
were in contradiction to his supposed principles as a conservative
and to his rhetoric. But most Americans didn't really care. The hard
core of his supporters, those patriotic Americans, were satisfied
with the mere trappings and symbols and mythology of America rather
than the reality.
KAS: We've seen that in the celebrations of his life that we've
witnessed since he died. For many people, I think he still
embodies the Old America -- the America he helped destroy while
he was paying lip service to it. Do you think that, now that he's
gone, Americans are going to wake up from their illusion that
we've really had a continuity of government?
MW: Whatever the harmful effects of his policies, it's hard to
dislike Reagan, because he was such an affable guy. Apparently,
in his private life, he was kind, courteous to people, and wasn't
deceitful; that is, really, he believed the things that he said.
What Americans are mourning, I think, this week with the death of
Ronald Reagan is not merely a man, but an America that's past and
which he personified. The America that Ronald Reagan believed in,
that he came out of, is an America that's gone. It's an America
of Norman Rockwell paintings. It's an America of 'Leave it to
Beaver' television. It's an America of 'It's a Wonderful Life.'
It's an America that really existed to some degree before the
Second World War, up until the 1940s or 50s. But it's an America
that just doesn't exist any more. The Los Angeles that Ronald
Reagan lived in in the 1940s or 50s -- that Los Angeles is gone
forever. California itself is changing dramatically. And what
many Americans are mourning with his passing, I think, is that
America that's gone.
I saw Ronald Reagan speak in person only once, and that was at a
large gathering of 'Holocaust survivors,' of all places, in
Washington, DC. And, as he usually was, he was very eloquent on
that occasion. But what he did was give a tremendous boost during
his administration to Jewish power, a power that was working and
has been working feverishly to tear down and corrode the very
America that Ronald Reagan loved and represented. As you say: Was
he stupid? -- or just ignorant, or whatever?
No group -- no ethnic group, no religious group -- in America is so
determined to preserve and hold onto its identity and further the
interests of its own group as are Jews. No group is as self-aware, as
focused, as determined as are Jews in America. And that's not
surprising, because Jews have been focused, determined, and have had
a very high sense of purpose and identity for centuries. In fact, if
Jews didn't have such a very very strong sense of self -- of
peoplehood -- they would have long ago disappeared as a people, under
the pressures of assimilation and so forth. In America, as in
every other country where Jews have settled in large numbers,
they persist in -- and insist on -- furthering their own
interests, even as those interests clash and compete with the
interests of the people among whom they live, here in this country
and elsewhere.
KAS: Well, if Ronald Reagan understood that about his employers,
then he was a much more subtle person than I took him to be. I
tend to think that he was a man with a magnetic personality but a
nearly empty mind. That made him a perfect 'leader'-type for
those who surrounded him. After all, did he not take Jewish
direction in Hollywood, and in his radio network jobs; and all
through his career as a politician, was he not surrounded by
powerful Jews?
MW: Margaret Thatcher, who of course is going to be here in the
United States for the Reagan funeral, and who was an ally of
Ronald Reagan when she was Prime Minister of Britain, said
privately on one occasion that he was a great guy, but there was
very little between his ears. I don't think Reagan did understand
these larger things. But what drove him, what kept him going, was
a kind of mythology about America. And it's a kind of attractive
mythology. In life, I think that most people -- certainly most people
in any kind of electorate or collective -- prefer a pleasant lie to
an unpleasant truth. And Ronald Reagan was a master at telling people
the pleasant untruth that they wanted to hear.
