Reagan the Peacemonger?

Consider this a preemptive strike against the inevitable hagiographies about Ronald Reagan that will predominate in the California Patriot this fall. Besides, unlike a lot of the BCR peanut gallery who will be assembled to cheer in Reagan's name, I can honestly say I actually met the man. (By the way, Reagan was as personable as his reputation suggested he was.) Before Reagan's trademark patriotic optimism gets exploited to justify the current military operations in Iraq, I wanted to cite antiwar libertarian Justin Raimondo's recent discussion of Reagan's contributions to nuclear disarmament:

It was Reagan ... who reached an accommodation with the Soviet Union on arms control, moving in the opposite direction from the hardline policies advocated by the warlike neocons – who, right up to 1990, were still warning that Gorbachev and the Commies were pulling off an elaborate trick to snare the West and crack down on Soviet dissidents. Far from functioning as loyal Reaganites, the neocons, in their characteristically factional and manipulative fashion, constantly criticized Reagan in terms that would normally be reserved for one's bitter enemies.

Raimondo also notes that Reagan wisely pulled out of Lebanon in 1983 in response to the bombing of an Army barracks that killed 241 Marines. Unlike George W. Bush, when facts on the ground showed that an aggressive foreign policy was not in the country's national interest, Ronald Reagan actually did the right thing and changed course, instead of invoking platitudes about "steady leadership." I disagreed with a lot of Reagan's foreign policy (e.g., Iran-Contra, the School of the Americas, funding jihad in Afghanistan), but at least he never displayed the same imperviousness to new information, the same unwillingness to learn, as George W. Bush does today.


- posted by Jon @ 11:00 PM |