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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (421294)	10/1/2008 12:52:27 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1576086

I know Z has me on ignore and I haven't read this entire thread, but this remark is ridiculous: "Reagan was trying to make peace, at least by his second term. And that's a good thing. But it's not what conservatives credit him with. They say that he amazingly outspent them in weapons into bankruptcy, which also isn't true." It reflects a total lack of understanding of what Reagan's thinking was; we now know this [his thinking] due to competent analysis of his early speeches as well as internal documents from the early days of his presidency. Reagan, as early as the early 60s -- when he was traveling the country making speeches as a corporate spokesman -- began to veer off course from hawking products to political monologues. The company just said, "They love you, that's okay with us" and gave him a free reign to do so. As early as 1963 Reagan argued that the USSR's weak economy was a vulnerability that should be exploited via an arms race coupled with political and economic competition. AT NO TIME did Reagan ever back away from these precepts. He ALWAYS, from the 60s, believed that the way to defeat the soviets was through an arms race. He knew that our economy could stand it and theirs couldn't. And that is the policy he pursued the instant he took the White House. It is clear that he believed MAD was the most insane policy a nation could have, and from the first days of his presidency decided the policy needed to be replaced with one of not merely containment, but one of absolutely WINNING the Cold War. His realignment of this policy began in 1981, when the "zero-zero" proposal was set forth whereby the USSR would eliminate its SS20s and the US would cancel deployment of its intermediate range ballistic and cruise missiles. Reagan, well before being elected as governor, had clearly stated that containment was insufficient and that rollback should be the nation's policy. Documents now available from the Reagan presidency make it clear that the US should not seek merely to contain the spread, but to eliminate the nuclear threat altogether. But he understood you didn't do that through failed negotiates such as SALT and other bogus initiatives, unless you were negotiating from a position of strength. Z is shooting off his mouth about something he knows absolutely nothing about. Reagan thought the only way to peace was through ELIMINATION of the nuclear threat and it was, clearly, the most important position of his presidency and of course, the one that won the Cold War.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (421294)	10/2/2008 8:40:33 AM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1576086

>I'd say the arms buildup of his early years helped set the stage for the later peace talks. Except the facts don't really bear that out. The Soviets were actually reducing arms purchases during those years. The rise of Gorbachev and the weakening of the Soviet empire set the stage for the peace talks. >That along with the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union proves to me that Reagan had a winning strategy. Reagan wasn't trying to "win!" He was trying to make peace. Which was admirable, for sure. Except for some weird "good vs. evil" rhetoric that would creep in every now and then, he handled the Soviet Union well, but not in the way neocons give him credit for. >The only way your argument makes any sense whatsoever is if you think "winning" the Cold War meant using the weapons that was built up during the Reagan years. That's not what Brumar meant. Hence the straw man. No, he thinks, and you think, that "winning" the Cold War meant standing after the USSR fell. Right? -Z