[Vision2020] What Would Reagan Have Done in Iraq?

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings: 

This message, for some strange message, has not appeared in my in-box.  I apologize if it is did somehow appear in yours.
 
Bruce Bartlett worked in the Reagan White House and in the Treasury Department 
during the administration of President George H.W. Bush. 
 
To adapt a famous phrase: "I knew Ronald Reagan, and you, Georg W., are not 
Ronald Reagan!" 
 
NYTimes, Jan. 16, 2007 
 
I think Bush should have the courage to do what Ronald Reagan did in Lebanon. 
Reagan sent American troops into that country as part of a multinational 
peacekeeping force in 1982. But after the situation continued to deteriorate 
and, in October of 1983, 241 Marines were killed when a truck loaded with 
explosives blew up outside their barracks, Reagan pulled out. 
 
At the peak of the Cold War, this was a very hard thing for Reagan to do. He 
knew it would show weakness and undermine his position in dealing with the 
Soviet Union. But he realized, as Bush does not, that you cannot undo a mistake 
by continuing to make it. All you can do is stop making the mistake, cut your 
losses and move on. 
 
About a year ago, I was on Chris Matthews’s television show, and he asked 
whether I thought Reagan would have gone into Iraq. Not having thought about it 
ahead of time, I gave a poor answer. I said that I believed he would have if he 
thought Iraq had W.M.D.’s. 
 
I now realize that my answer was wrong. I don’t think Reagan would have invaded 
Iraq. I think he would have been far more careful than Bush was to make sure the 
intelligence was right. The debate among Reagan’s advisers would have been much 
more open, with those opposed to invasion getting a fairer hearing. Also, he 
would have been much more careful to make sure that we had in place a realistic 
plan for victory, sufficient forces to do the job, a detailed postwar blueprint, 
and a clear exit strategy, none of which we have had in Iraq. 
 
More important, I think Reagan would have gone much further than Bush did to 
exhaust all means of dealing with Hussein before even considering going to war. 
Reagan would have been far more aggressive about using diplomacy backed up by 
sanctions and air power. 
 
Rather than put American troops in harm’s way, Reagan would have opted for a 
surgical strike against Hussein, such as the one he attempted against Muammar 
el-Qaddafi of Libya in 1986. As he did in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, Reagan 
would have aided those Iraqis opposed to Hussein and allowed them to do the 
fighting on the ground. I don’t think there is any chance that Reagan would have 
supported a full-scale military invasion.