In the '80's the whole world hated us and hundreds of thousands marched in the streets of Europe to denounce the President.
Ah the good old days, when the american president was burned in effigy on TV. When the american flag was burned everywhere in the world, even on american soil. If you check the details, even Carter was burned in effigy over this little thing called the Neutron Bomb (a device to kill maximum people with minimal property damage), as I recall Carter quickly backed off that one. It was tough to be an american in the Carter days, there was stagflation, the Iranians held your people hostage in the embassy, and there was nothing you could do. But above all, the world hated you, and you felt you deserved it, that was the worst one to handle.
Reagan went the opposite direction, challenging the Soviets every step of the way with the grand sleight of hand trick called SDI, some StarWars thing - eveyone mocked Reagan in those days --- turned out he had something else in mind, I doubt if he believed SDI would work, but he was sure the soviets would be afraid to believe it won't, and SDI drove them to economic collapse. Reagan gave his people the one thing that they needed more than anything --- hope, suddenly, americans realized, they were not evil, they were the good guys.
You see, the left never forgave Reagan for winning the cold war and doing away with their Utopia the marxist iron curtain, and while Kerry is no communist (even though the CP supported him - no really), you must remember that John Kerry not only opposed Reagan's strategy, he worked hard to undermine Reagan.
This is one of those crossroad moments in history for both Reagan and Kerry. Reagan went down the path of peace through strength and Kerry chose peace at all cost.
Two months before the Gorbachev Reagan summit, Kerry was a keynote speaker at anti-nuke summit in Geneva to oppose the euro-missiles.
There is a fundamental difference here - Reagan saw communism as an evil ideology and that the people who lived under communism had to taste freedom, many others, Kerry among them, disagreed and wanted to work closer with the european peace movement in the name of multilateralism.
Which was the better road?
Ok peace at all cost, love all your neighbors (especially the ones that want to kill you) This is fine and dandy, except history did speak --- and no event spoke louder than the fall of the Berlin Wall.
And then to hear that John Kerry pretend to assume Reagan's mantle after undermining every pillar of Reagan's foreign policy strategy, that takes a special form of courage.
If you're a pacifist at core, run as a pacifist. Kerry is an intelligent man, but why no principles? I respect people of ideals with courage to state their true beliefs. But if you're pacifist and you show up with hawk feathers and talk everyday about hunting and killing terrorists, there's another name for that --- Politician. |
