Mike's Blog

I like Ron Reagan (no, not the one you're thinking)

The modern Conservative movement is obsessed with Ronald Reagan. The guy is not even dead yet and the far-right lionizes him as if he were Washington or Lincoln. The Bush II team would like to think of themselves as Reagan's heirs. Apparently Ronald Reagan Jr. strongly disagrees.

"The Bush people have no right to speak for my father, particularly because of the positionhe's in now," he said during a recent interview with Salon. "Yes, some of the current policies are an extension of the '80s. But the overall thrust of this administration is not my father's -- these people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive, and just plain corrupt. I don't trust these people."

Hmmm...there's an image problem when Ronald Reagan's son is calling "these people," "just plain corrupt." The criticism doesn't stop there though.

Reagan took a swipe at Bush during the 2000 GOP convention in Philadelphia, which featured a tribute to his father, telling the Washington Post's Lloyd Grove, "The big elephant sitting in the corner is that George W. Bush is simply unqualified for the job... What's his accomplishment? That he's no longer an obnoxious drunk?"

Yeah that pretty much sums up my thoughts on that matter too. Except that I think that Bush still drinks. (Think what goes well with pretzyls that cause you to choke and smack your head on a coffee table. The guy also looks like he's been tranqaulized during his press conferences.) After an explaination that he has nothing personal against Bush, we get this:

But Reagan has strong feelings about Bush's policies, including the war in Iraq, which he ardently opposes. "Nine-11 gave the Bush people carte blanche to carry out their extreme agenda -- and they didn't hesitate for a moment to use it. I mean, by 9/12 Rumsfeld was saying, 'Let's hit Iraq.' They've used the war on terror to justify everything from tax cuts to Alaska oil drilling."

This I can remember clearly. The fucking day after the attack there's already a group of Republican assholes drafting a bill to reduce the capital gains tax. Whether you think reducing the tax is right or wrong, the timing could not have been more devious or more callous. On his father's military buildup:

Of course, Reagan's father was also known for his military buildup and aggressive foreign policy. "Yes," he concedes, "there are some holdovers from my dad's years, like Elliott Abrams and, my God, Admiral Poindexter, who's now keeping watch over us all. But that observation doesn't hold up. My father gave a speech a couple years after he left the White House calling for 'an international army of conscience' to deal with failed states where atrocities are taking place. He had no thought that America should be the world's policeman. I know that for a fact from conversations I had with him. He believed there must be an international force to intervene where great human tragedy was occurring. Rwanda would have been a prime example, where a strike force capable of acting quickly could have gone in to stop the slaughter.

Pay attention to that last part. It's an idea that I've brought up before. There is a great need for some sort of Rapid Expedionary Force to stop atrocities like Rwanda. The whole reason the U.S. stood back and did nothing there was because of all the heat Clinton took (for a Bush I initiated mission) over the Marine deaths in Somalia. Bush I got it right: the U.S. should have intervened in Somalia to prevent the masssive humanitarian catastrophe there. But after those Marine deaths, the public would have been whipped into a frenzy by Tom Delay and the right if Clinton had stepped in and done something. Clinton was wrong not to have moved anyway and he has since stated that he thinks not acting in Rwanda was the biggest mistake of his Presidency. Whenever I hear this "never again" sloganeering regarding the Holocaust, I want to scream because it has happened again in several places at different times (Rwanda, Burundi, Cambodia, Ukraine, Kosovo, Nigeria.)

Set up this force and I'll be the first to join. I mean that.

Another point:

"There were, and will be, a lot of people killed over there. And if you don't care about the Iraqi casualties, what about the American? We stand to lose more people in the next months of occupation than we lost in the weeks of war. One of the reasons we escaped largely unscathed so far was because our military moved so fast. But now we're sitting targets -- we have to establish bases, patrol the streets, guard checkpoints. We're sitting targets for suicide bombers and other terrorists."

The Israelis have learned that lesson the hard way. I fear the U.S. will too. Last thing:

Reagan, who says the label "progressive" would fit him, does not belong to a political party. "I'm certainly not a Republican; I couldn't belong to any party that had leaders like Tom DeLay. And the Democrats are too busy trying to out-Republican the Republicans."

Tom Delay pretty much sums up what's wrong with the GOP. There's a lot of other real good stuff in this article. There's also some defense of Pres. Reagan's policies. I don't like the legacy the elder Reagan left behind, but I'd take the Gipper to this fucker we currently have in office.

I'll link this up, but getting into Salon can be tricky. You may have to watch an ad first, then you get a one day pass, no charge. Maybe the link will just go right through though.

Reagan Blasts Bush

Posted by mike at April 14, 2003 07:10 PM