[Vision2020] Ronald Reagan at 103: Were He and Obama "Liars"?

[Scott Dredge]

I liked Reagan during the time of the Reagan years.  There's not too much in the examples given below that jump out to me as being overly egregious or a dereliction of duty.  More like 'business as usual'.  Regarding the so believed 'Reagan debt' and 'Clinton surplus', does Congress action or inaction play no role in military spending and the overall budget???  From my recollection, the 1993 / 1994 Clinton years with a Democratic Congress were God Awful.  Even with consolidated power, they were unable to pass Universal Health Care back then.  When the Democrats were annihilated in the 1994 mid-terms and Republicans swept into Congress for the first time in 40 years on a promise of the 'Contract with America', that's when everything stabilize.  Clinton signed most of the Contract with America legislation into law, smartly took credit for it, and easily won re-election.

My sense is that the most optimal configuration for our system is a Democrat in the White House and Republicans controlling both Houses of Congress.  Republicans will likely score big in the November mid-terms.  2015 & 2016 should be good years.

Back to Reagan - as much I liked him when he was in office, in retrospect, he demonstrated an appalling lack of leadership during the AIDs crisis which is something you've not mentioned below.  In my opinion, Reagan's inaction on that one issue in particular is unforgivable.

-Scott

Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2014 10:52:18 -0800
From: ngier006 at gmail.com
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Ronald Reagan at 103: Were He and Obama "Liars"?

Dear Visionaries:

Every year on Reagan's birth anniversary I intend to continue to tear down the wall that is the Reagan myth.  The resources and topics are nearly endless, so I will be busy for many years.  If you don't want to read the whole thing, I leave you with one conclusion: "Reagan was not a liar; rather, he was just terribly confused."

I appended the full version that just appeared in the Daily News Los Cabos (circualtion 10,000), the Daily News' totally unofficial sister newspaper, filled with leads from Bloomberg News, the Washington Post, and many others.  My columns appear alongside the columnists from these news outlets.

I'm glad that my tenants have set up a heater in front of my kitchen sink, as the wall to the outside is poorly insulated.  It's 80 degrees here in Cabo.  Just thought I would mention it.

Keep warm,

Nick

RONALD REAGAN AT 103:
WERE BOTH HE AND OBAMA “LIARS”? 
Make sure that I was telling you the truth.

—Ronald Reagan, February 25, 1983 
We licensed his beguiling forgeries.
—Gary Willis, Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home
 It would be more accurate to say that Reagan extended
or even reignited the Cold War at the cost of well
over $1 trillion in additional U.S. military spending,—Robert Parry


RR [is] totally lost, out of his depth, uncomfortable. . . . e did not listen attentively, looking away or staring at the papers in front of him. . . All
this—both the substance and human conflict—is above and beyond him.
—Richard Pipes, Reagan’s national security adviser 
Those who criticize President Obama, sometimes with a hatred much more intense than that directed toward George W. Bush (whom I pitied more than disliked), focus on his many alleged lies. In what follows I want to argue that, if Obama is a liar, then former President Reagan was a bigger, and arguably, more dangerous one.
 On Reagan’s 103st birth anniversary I want to examine his challenge to us all: “Make sure that I was telling you the truth.”  As my main references, I will use the thoroughly researched book There He Goes Again: Ronald Reagan’s Reign of Error by Mark Green and Gail MacColl; and Will Bunch’s Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy has Distorted our Politics and Haunts Our Future.  His deceptions and misstatements run the entire gamut, but I will focus on defense and foreign policy.

·         At a press conference Reagan declared that the Soviets were violating mutual agreements on nuclear submarines.  Three week earlier the White House released a statement that there were no such violations.

·         During the 1970-8os, Reagan kept repeating that the Soviet Union had attained military superiority.  With Reagan’s approval (“Let her fly” in a marginal note),Vice-President George W. H. Bush set up a special “Team B” intelligence group, because right-wingers had convinced them that the CIA (presumably the A Team) was “soft” on Communism.  Team B’s false reports led to the U. S. to initiate every major weapons system in the 1980s.  There were two major results: (1) the Soviet Union was bankrupted in trying to keep up; and (2) defense appropriations increased to $ 1 trillion, much of which was not necessary.  
·         In the presidential debate of October 28, 1980, Reagan claimed that President Jimmy Carter had shut down major defense programs. Among those weapons mentioned was the MX missile, which was actually under full production, and the Trident submarine.  The first Trident was launched on April 7, 1979, during Carter’s term.  
 ·         On March 3, 1981, Reagan maintained that the U.S. had unilaterally disarmed during the 1970s.  Of course Presidents Nixon and Carter did no such thing. Green and MacColl gives all sorts of evidence to the contrary, but here is a significant fact: “In 1970 the U.S. had 4,000 strategic warheads.  By the end of the decade it had 10,000.” This is obviously arming a nation, not disarming it.

 ·         On October 17, 1981, Reagan claimed that the Soviets, “unlike us,” believed that a nuclear war is winnable.  Green and MacColl quote a Defense Department manual, Reagan’s senior national security adviser, and Reagan’s own 1983 budget as evidence that the U.S. believed that a nuclear war was indeed winnable.

·         On May 13, 1982, Reagan falsely and ignorantly claimed that submarine launched nuclear missiles “can be recalled.” 

·         Further mischaracterizing Carter’s achievements, Reagan charged that he did not add anything to what Nixon had accomplished with regard to China.  The truth was, however, that Carter oversaw long and tough negotiations for the 1979 agreement to normalize relations between the two countries. 
·         In a radio address on December 6, 1986, Reagan said that the U.S. was dealing with “moderates” in Iran, but on July 29th of the same year he had said that they were “the most radical elements.” He authorized a deal to sell arms to enemy mullahs in return for the release of hostages in Lebanon. 
·         In an interview with Time magazine (12/8/86) Reagan stated that “another country was facilitating those sales of weapon systems to Iran.” Of course the truth was that his own government did that. Repeatedly, he said that he could not remember if Oliver North had told him about one of the most cynical moves in American diplomatic history: selling arms to our enemy Iran to finance the a war against the duly elected Nicaraguan government.
 ·         On April 14, 1983, Reagan falsely reassured Americans that “we are not trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.”
·         Early in 1987 Reagan declared that his administration would never negotiate with terrorists.  In an address to the nation on March 4, 1987, Reagan admitted that he had lied: “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages.  My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.”  Are we suppose to feel better when the leader of the Free World confesses that he is a heart-felt liar, who is still reluctant to face the facts?
Iran-Contra was arguably a far worse scandal than Watergate.  The Reagan administration devised an illegal plan, which circumvented the Boland Amendment, by which Congress prohibited funding the Nicaraguan Contras.   William Bunch states that Iran-Contra “made Nixon’s abuses seem more like the ‘third-rate burglary’ that Nixon’s aides famously claimed it was.”  Fourteen Reagan associates were prosecuted for Iran-Contra crimes.

As early as January 1987, Democratic Senate leaders met to discuss the possibility of impeaching Reagan.  According to Bunch’s sources, they agreed that that the president was “too old” and “did not have the mental ability to fully understand what had happened.”House speaker Jim Wright, who would later be forced to resign over a book deal, believed that impeaching Reagan would be “too divisive,” and he admitted that he “may have bent over backwards in error” in not finding an impeachable offense.  Republicans had no such qualms about dividing the nation when they impeached Clinton. Nixon and Clinton were impeached for far less substantial reasons, and now Obama haters want to try him for charges that are not impeachable offenses at all.           
With regard to his promise that those with their own health insurance could keep it, Obama should have qualified that statement with “only if it met the criteria of the Affordable Care Act.” Politifact made it the “Lie of the Year” only to balance out Mitt Romney's record number of “Pants on Fire” in 2012.
 Reagan’s First Motion Picture Unit edited some of the gruesome footage from the Nazi death camps. Later Reagan, who had never been in the military, said that he, in an army uniform, had taken the pictures on the spot. This man was not a liar; rather, he is just terribly confused.
 Under Reagan the national debt tripled, primarily because of unnecessary defense funding; and, after wiping out Clinton’s surplus, Bush nearly doubled it.  Under Obama the national debt has increased 63 percent, but much of that was due to the reduced revenues of the Great Recession and irrational spending cuts of the sequester.
 Reagan and Bush borrowed money at high interest rates to wage one cold  and two hot wars under false pretenses, but Obama saved the economy by borrowing money at near zero rates.  He has also reduced the annual deficit every year and now it is at $514 billion, its lowest since 2008.  And that’s no lie.
 Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.


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