[kroll]

And not a whole lot was done to stamp out the emerging jihad during his two terms.

Ah, the gift of hindsight. The Soviets were a bigger problem to us and the world in general than the Jihadists have ever been (till now). Its purely a matter of scale - the Russians could have destroyed us completely(ensuring their own destruction in the process, sure..) and the world in the process(nuclear holocaust blah blah blah). The Jihadists are vastly less capable so some perspective is required here. Incidentally the Jihadists were our "friends" then (and continue to be so, cue Saudi Arabia) almost everywhere except Iran. In particular, one could argue that the massive arms supply and training to the the Afghan Mujahaddin (primarily stingers and RPGs) was responsible for the eventual takeover by its more evolved counterpart, the Taliban. And that was during Reagan's term in office. Jihad as a threat is a relatively recent phenomenon. Its hardly Reagan's fault - its more of a constant meme in American foreign policy the past 50 years, shortsighted and based on a "enemy of the enemy is a friend" policy that has given rise to jihad.

[rabidralph]

I don’t dispute anything that you say. Of course, we had our hands full with the communists. But more of a smackdown should have been delivered after the Marine Barracks bombing and the murder of the CIA station chief. Certainly we could have multi-tasked on those efforts and still handled the Russians?