http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EK11Ak01.html

It'd be easier to believe that Reagan was the greatest modern advocate of human freedom if he hadn't facilitated genocide in Guatemala.

Which is having elections this week--thereby refuting your point.

"To that extent, we can see that the one thing that Ronald Reagan knew, hedgehoglike, was that Man is Fallen and, therefore, inevitably prone to terrible actions. If he was our greatest modern advocate of human freedom--and that seems a fair assessment--it was because he knew that men will always be tempted to dismiss, dominate, even kill one another and that genuine freedom requires that we be secure from the threat we thereby pose each other."

All of which presumes that this was--and is--the intent of SDI. I am sure that there are those (and Reagan might well have been included among them) who believe that SDI is in fact just such a defensive initiative. I am equally sure that there are many others who realize that SDI can never be completely, or even primarily, defensive in nature, and that the "shield" aspects of SDI have always been exaggerated to obscure the fact that what it will accomplish is nothing less than the militarization of space. That this is in fact the primary goal of SDI. Realistically, at what point in the history of military technology have offensive capabilities failed to catch up to and surpass defensive ones?

I am certain that good arguments can be made for even this posture--that the best defense is a good offense, that the militarization of space is inevitable and we may as well get there first, being the scions of freedom that we are, etc.--but this idea that SDI will somehow free humanity from the threat of nuclear annihilation, especially in the face of the threat (blessedly unrealized, as yet) of suitcase nukes, is nothing more than cynical window dressing. Anyone with basic sense of history knows where SDI really leads, and it ain't "peace through strength."

M:

Yes, it may be entirely ludicrous to believe a shield could achieve anything. That has nothing though to do with why Reagan wanted one.

God, the left just can't stand the fact, or get it through their comparatively dense skulls, that SDI, whether Reagan honestly believed in its successful application or not was unimportant as long as the Soviets believed we could eventually deploy. That is all that mattered.

SDI was one decisine factor in ending the cold war by revealing the USSR as the weak but fraudulant and criminal enterprise that it was. The utopian dream will, of course, never die but the Soviet version found its place on history's ash heap. Ronald Reagan deserves much of the credit.

OJ: I fail to see how elections in Guatemala somehow refute the point that the Reagan administration's support for genocide in Central America is a problem for those who wish to put Reagan forward as the greatest modern advocate for human freedom. Are you saying that genocide eventually begat Guatemalan democracy (presumed at this point--Nicaragua had elections in the late 80's/early 90's as well, but they were hardly free)? Or are you saying that Guatemalan elections somehow negate the contention that genocide occurred in the 80's, or that the Reagan administration supported it?

I see where you're going with your reply to my first comment--i.e., assuming that Reagan genuinely felt that SDI was a road to freedom (and I have no conflicting evidence to present, although members of his administration had to know better), then he was guilty only of naivete and ignorance. Ergo he was a member of your beloved "stupid party." Consider the point conceded. He played Russian roulette with the world and got away with it; he deserves both the praise and the scorn for that gambit.

We are left with a little side issue, however: even if we concede that Reagan's support for SDI played a part in the collapse of Soviet communism, what is W's excuse?

Tom C.: Take a deep breath and calm down. I am not "the left." For that matter, I don't know anyone who is. When you meet "the left," let me know. You'll probably be able to recognize him by the thick skull--nearly as thick as the one on the shoulders of "the right."

Yes, "genocide" in Guatemala was perhaps not necessary but helpful to bringing democracy.

And you know what? The USA is not responsible for the actions of every other person(s) in the world.

Which is better? An relatively short, but immoral total civil war with unambiguous and positive results; or an immoral half-assed civil war with continuing negative results. Which is better, Guatemala or Colombia? I for one take full responsibility for supporting Ronald Reagan and his Cold War policies, in South America, and in Guatemala. And if the situation were the same I would do it again.

The Nicaraguan elections in the late 80s weren't free? That statement would only make sense if the Sandinista slate had won - but they didn't.

Even Jimmy Carter was perturbed at that, which proves the point further.

Yes, all those children are being brought back to life by elections.

As for SDI, it didn't work, and nobody ever came up with a plausible explanation about how it could work, even if the target recognition problem could be beaten, which was never in prospect. If Gorbachev was as smart as presented, he would have whooped Reagan up and countered with a Potemkin Village SDI of his own at one/one-thousandth of the cost.

The USSR economy was going to fail even if Carter had been reelected. Reagan had nothing to do with that.

Harry -

The USSR was forced to get into a military spending race by the sheer will of Reagan's ideas. Whether the USSR would have eventually imploded of their own weight or not, it happened by 1991 due to Reagan. Your position requires the assertion that this extra spending either didn't impact the USSR economy, or would have happened anyway, without the military buildup. Both positions are, I think, fantasies.

Besides, you make no mention of the power of Reagan's ideas fueling the intense hunger for freedom behind the Iron Curtain. Solzhenitsyn has a message for you - "Warning to the West".

Harry:

The point is that Reagan recognized it, when you and yours still thought the USSR a serious alternative and a threat, just like Nazism or as some now perceive Islamicism. Everyone pays liberal democracy lip service but few can process the fact that the "isms" are so inherently flawed as to be self-destructive.

I tend to agress with Michael Kinsley on Reagan's military build-up: http://slate.msn.com/id/100979

When you get past the inspiring rhetoric of the "Evil Empire" speech, his actual policy was containment as far as the eye can see. Reagan didn't expect the build-up to destroy the Russian economy, though that might have been an unanticipated side effect.

And SDI showed Reagan's true understanding of human nature? Someone with such knowledge would know that Man would try to deviously circumvent his enemy's defenses. This doesn't mean that SDI is necessarily a bad idea, but that Reagan had an exaggerated faith in its potential.

Suppose we had had a functional defense in Reagan's day, and that the Russian had actually shot some missiles at us that were all successfully destroyed by the missile defense. Would Reagan have trusted SDI to totally defeat the next wave of missiles, or would he have felt compelled to strike back?

Peter:

You couldn't miss the point any more completely.

Reagan was certain that he or his successors would willing destroy the entire planet if push came to shove. But he loved America and wanted it to endure.

Conservatives are wrong when they portray him as primarily motivated by the dream of global freedom--he wanted freedom here and nuclear war was imagined to be a threat to us (though I've always thought the threat was delusional). It is not at all hard to imagine that if he'd been convinced that a first strike would successfully destroy the Soviet Union he would have launched it.

Similarly, George W. Bush may genuinely want democracy in the Middle East, but even more he wants security here.

The key insight to take away is that even an idealistic foreign policy is fundamentally selfish--we want our security more than their freedom.

Harry:

"The USSR economy was going to fail even if Carter had been reelected. Reagan had nothing to do with that."

Try going into a university in Eastern Europe with that line.

It had already collapsed.

Of course, Orrin does not believe that American agriculture -- then occupying 40% of the population -- had collapsed in the 1920s.

So naturally, he does not accept that Russian agriculture -- also occupying about 40% of the USSR's population -- had collapsed in 1972.

He's too young to remember Nixon's wheat deals.

The Russian economy collapsed in 1919.

Harry:

How simple it is to believe in the easy things. If Carter had been re-elected, the Soviets may have collapsed just as soon. But they would have done quite a bit of mischief, perhaps even attacking NATO in some foolish scheme to survive. Isn't survival big in your thinking?

Don't results count? Reagan's results were impressive, more so than any other President in dealing with the Soviets, eh?

Fun fact that no one seems to remember: the military buildup for which Reagan is routinely credited began under Carter (and a Democratic Congress) in 1978. All Reagan did was continue it and better publicize it.

Speculations as to whether Russian communism would or would not have fallen if Carter had somehow defeated Reagan in 1980 (and I doubt Carter could have managed this even if the Republicans hadn't persuaded Iran to delay the release of the hostages until after the election) are pointless. One's belief in the degree to which Reagan's "tough-guy" stance contributed seems entirely dependent upon where one falls on the political spectrum. I have yet to see a persuasive, dispassionate case made one way or the other.

As for OJ's comment: "Yes, "genocide" in Guatemala was perhaps not necessary but helpful to bringing democracy." A more perverse statement would be difficult to imagine. In Guatemala, as nearly everywhere else in Central America in the 1980s (and before), the U.S. was guilty of supporting the most brutal, dictatorial and (yes) genocidal thugs. As described by Eric Alterman only yesterday:

"The violence in Guatemala reached a gruesome climax in the early ’80s under the dictatorship of the born-again evangelical, Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt. Nine hundred thousand people were forcibly relocated and entire villages leveled. As army helicopters strafed a caravan of 40,000 unarmed refugees seeking to escape to Mexico, Reagan chose that moment to congratulate Ríos Montt for his dedication to democracy, adding that he had been getting “a bum rap” from liberals in Congress and the media. His administration soon provided as much aid to the killers as Congress would allow."

[And yes, Ray, we are not responsible for the actions of every tinpot dictator in the world, but when our leaders excuse their actions, or worse, actively support them, we _are_ responsible.]

From your ostensibly moral, Christian perspective, OJ, you need to explain why the mass murder of unarmed civilian refugees qualifies only as "unnecessary" to, and why in any sense it could be helpful for, the establishment of democracy.

And finally, Jim Hamlen claims "The Nicaraguan elections in the late 80s weren't free?" At the time, the Nicaraguan people knew very clearly that if the wrong (i.e. Sandinista) party won, legitimately or not, the U.S. would supply still more money and arms to the Contras, and engender still more violence against the civilian population. The elections were "free" technically, in that civilians would not be immediately executed if they voted the wrong way. They knew they could count on years of more violence if the failed to do the U.S. government's bidding.

M:

In wars between Left and Right people die. When the Right wins democracy follows--Spain, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, etc.--when the Left wins it doesn't--Vietnam, N. Korea, China, Cuba, etc. Freedom is worth some dead fellow citizens. What should be explained is why we're content to allow those communist regimes, which are of course far more murderous than the Right which opposed them.

M. Bulger:

Your comments make no sense: with the Sandinista machine-guns right in their faces, the Nicaraguans voted them out. And you say this was due to the fear of more Contra violence? That is akin to saying that the South now votes for black candidates because it fears Bull Connor will come back and turn his dogs loose.

Also, your swipe at legitimacy is untoward - Chiamorro may not have been the ideal Presidente, but she won fair and square (get over it - it's been, what, 14 years?).

The Russian economy, such as it was, collapsed in 1892. Again in 1916.

The remedy proposed in 1919 didn't work either.

How Reagan gets credit for any of that is a mystery to me.

The Russian economy worked well enough in 1945, 1953, 1956, 1968, and 1981 - just ask the victims.

And we aren't even talking about Ukranian peasants yet.

Reagan recognized that it had collapsed on creation. Others believed communism, like the New Deal, was a viable alternative to Capitalist democracy.

That was Reagan's problem all the time. He kept recognizing things that were not so.

The Russian economy was dead when taken over by the Communists. Their plan to revive it failed. However, their redirection of resources was successful in the sense that it allowed the nation to maintain its existence in 1941-45, which it would not otherwise have done.

That meant borrowing against the future, and the future did not deliver.

But how does Reagan get credit for this?

Because people like you and FDR and the steel advisor didn't figure that out until 1989?

No, we had it figured out long before that.

The steel adviser likes to tell a story about visiting Leningrad back before Reagan.

They were in the city's swankest hotel restaurant. You cannot drink the water there (giaridia) and some in the group were Mormons, so they preferred not to have tea (caffeine). They asked for juice.

The waiter brought each about a thimbleful of orange juice. The Americanos drank but, still thirsty, asked for more. Very reluctantly, the waiter eventually brought a pitcher of orange juice.

Later, a group of apparatchiks occupied the next table, and they asked for juice, too. Although the Russians didn't know it, the steel adviser and his friends spoke Russian, so they overheard the following explanation: "Sorry. Those Americans over there drank our entire week's allocation."

Reagan had nothing to do with it. To say that he recognized it is overstating his mental capacity. He believed it to be the case, and as it happened, it was the case. He would have believed it equally if it hadn't been, too.

He was, as he admitted, a lucky man. Luckier than he ever knew.

Too bad for Eastern Europe that FDR & Truman were so unlucky.

Too bad for Harry and many others that they thought the Soviets capable of producing nearly as much as the US, and thought so for many, many years. Reagan was no wizard, as Harry implies, but a man who saw the hollowness when others saw plenty, and he was a man who was not afraid to call evil exactly what it was.