What are your views on Ronald Reagan, since his image is posted abovve next to Ron Paul's? He sure as hell was no isolationist.
This would be a good time for you to start calling Reagan a "Cut and Run Coward" for leaving Beirut in 1984.
I'd like to see that in really big red text, if you could.
I loved Reagan...No...he wasn't an isolationist...but I think he was much more restrained in his foreign policy than some members of the Bush Administration would like the US to be. I don't believe he would have used the US military to create democracies around the world...especially in the middle east. He battled the Soviets on the battleground of ideas...where he knew we couldn't lose. Yes...he aided resistance movements in Afghanistan, Angola and Nicaragua...yes he toppled the Communist government in Grenada...but he always avoided direct confrontation with the Soviets...preferring to aid native nationalist movements...and, in the case of Grenada, it was tiny country in the US geographical sphere of influence.
When Libya bombed the disco in Germany...Reagan bombed Libya...a limited response
Reagan was prudent...direct American invasions of middle eastern countries is anything but prudent. About hios decision to "cut and run" from Lebanon after the bombing there, Reagan later wrote:
Perhaps we didn’t appreciate fully enough the depth of the hatred and the complexity of the problems that made the Middle East such a jungle. Perhaps the idea of a suicide car bomber committing mass murder to gain instant entry to Paradise was so foreign to our own values and consciousness that it did not create in us the concern for the Marines’ safety that it should have. In the weeks immediately after the bombing, I believed the last thing that we should do was turn tail and leave. Yet the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics forced us to rethink our policy there. If there would be some rethinking of policy before our men die, we would be a lot better off. If that policy had changed towards more of a neutral position and neutrality, those 241 Marines would be alive today.
--Ronald Reagan