The reason I have to keep mentioning that Reagan was a puppet is because you keep forgetting it and acting as though he was an actual, real-life president, running a country. I wish you would stop doing that!
I will call him the Stepford President now, since you don't like "puppet." Who runs Stepford types? Handlers? Programmers? Maybe you will like that more than "puppeteers."
Michael! I'm the one who said it was an unappetizing menu to choose from! They're all crappy! I might lean toward Carter simply on the basis of his low body count in foreign misadventures and his evident personal decency, though he surely did have his limitations as a president. I do happen to have a particular distaste for war criminals, though; so focusing on that criterion, I would put RR way down on my personal list of faves.
You write:
<<<I fail to see how you can hold Reagan responsible for war crimes and at the same time claim he was out of touch with reality -- literally had no idea what was going on. Very curious.>>>
Hey, you take your choice! Was he, to you, a war criminal, or, was he non-culpable morally because he couldn't mentally grasp the constitutional restrictions he was violating in sponsoring the murderous contra exercise?
I think, though, that moral non-culpability due to simplemindedness would not be a legal defense before a war crimes tribunal, even though it has a certain feeling of fairness to it-- a child-like mind isn't "guilty" in the same way an adult mind would be. |
