Rock > It's really not a mistake or a policy blunder that causes huge budget deficits under Republican presidents
It seems so, but there is definitely a big difference between the foreign policies of the various Republican administrations. From what I read, Ronald Reagan must be given full credit for bringing peace to the world in the way he did and despite the advice he was given.
nytimes.com
>>The difference between Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush's militant brain staff is that he believed in negotiation and they in escalation. They wanted to win the cold war; he sought to end it. To do so, it was necessary not to strike fear in the Soviet Union but to win the confidence of its leaders. Once the Soviet Union could count on Mr. Reagan, Mr. Gorbachev not only was free to embark on his domestic reforms, to convince his military to go along with budget cuts, to reassure his people that they no longer needed to worry about the old bogey of "capitalist encirclement," but, most important, he was also ready to announce to the Soviet Union's satellite countries that henceforth they were on their own, that no longer would tanks of the Red Army be sent to put down uprisings. The cold war ended in an act of faith and trust, not fear and trembling.
But many neocons came to hate Mr. Reagan, saying he lost the cold war since he left office with communism still in place. Some even believed that the cold war would soon be resumed. Dick Cheney, as President George H. W. Bush's defense secretary, dismissed perestroika ("restructuring") as a sham and glasnost ("opening") as a ruse, he insisted that Mr. Gorbachev would be replaced by a belligerent militarist; and warned America to prepare for the re-emergence of an aggressive communist state.
Mr. Reagan gave us an enlightened foreign policy that achieved most of its diplomatic objectives peacefully and succeeded in firmly uniting our allies. Today those who claim to be Mr. Reagan's heirs give us "shock and awe" and a "muscular" foreign policy that has lost its way and undermined valued friendships throughout the world.<<
Indeed, it would seem that Reagan's great, and unique, personal contribution was not even widely recognized.
larouchepub.com
>>Those 1989-2004 failures of U.S. and European policies on this latter account, do not detract from the indelible achievement of President Reagan's most stunning intervention in history, as first announced on March 23, 1983. Such is his enduring personal landmark in all truthful future accounts of U.S.A. and world history. Ironically, the U.S. Democratic Party's leadership never understood any of this, to the present day; that makes it all the more important that President Reagan's achievement on this account be commonly acknowledged by his survivors, Republican, Democratic, and others, today.
Such is the nature of the institution of the U.S. Presidency. That is not past history. It is a lesson in statecraft which the new generations of this world must still learn today.<< |
