Ronald Reagan, Liar For Israel

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Registered: 06-01-2003
Ronald Reagan, Liar For Israel
Wed, 09-01-2004 - 6:47am
At least the US is not the only country to go to war on false pretenses.

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.