Well, since we have chatted little, I could only go on your statements I have read.
My favorite president of the last 100 years is Reagan as well. And I consider him an icon, who pulled us out of economic malaise and foreign policy defeatism. That said, the ME was not one of his great success stories. He was too busy with the Soviet Bear, but nonetheless, his inattention (and pullout from Lebanon) only emboldened the islamofacists who were brewing their hatred long before slick Willie came into office. So Bush has been dealt the hand to stomp out the islamo scum. It is an ideology that will fight everybit as hard as the communists, maybe harder, to hold onto whatever power they have. And though I disagree with GWB on a host of issues, his handling of the ME is not one. It is ONLY because of him that Afghanistan and Iraq, two of the 6 major players in the terror-sponsoring state cadre, are toast. And Libya threw in the towel because it saw the writing on the wall.
He has a spine of steel, which only a handful of presidents before him have had.
I couldn't disagree more. Reagan was a leader in ME policies. He was the one who crossed Qaddafi's "Line of Death" and emasculated Libya's military force. He was the one who slyly outsmarted the Ayatollah and Saddam and kept them off balance killing each other in the Iraq-Iran war while sending the money he got from sales of arms to both to Nicaraguan freedom fighters to beat back communism. And he defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Your claim about Bush's ME policy has yet to materialize as we are in both Iraq and Afghanistan with our soldiers fighting terror everyday...In retrospect, Reagan, IMHO, would have conjured up some sort of scenario where Iraq was fighting Afghanistan over the rights to Iran's oil, with thousands of Islamists dying, and we were getting the war profits by selling all of them arms for oil!