Absolutely.
The thing that’s hard to explain to people 35 and under, tho, is how accepted and “conventional wisdom” the idea was that we were “just going to have to live with communism” among government leaders, so-called “intellectuals” and foreign leaders.
There was this assumption (without any evidence) that, unless we were going to get into a nuke/nuke exchange with the Russians, communism was simply always going to be there.
Reagan was the first leader to come along and ask “Really? And you base this assumption on... what, exactly?”
People made fun of Reagan at the time. Called him an intellectual lightweight, President Nap Time, etc.
When Reagan’s letters were published, oh, what, seven years ago? We got to see the stuff Reagan wrote to individuals that wasn’t reported on because it was personal correspondance. And what we saw in those letters was a man who had a very clear philosophical foundation that communism was not only evil, it was the antithesis of the net sum of human experience, and was doomed to fail of it’s own stupidity and mendacity.
This, IMO, revealed a man who we singular in his time.
It’s a shame that Republicans keep wanting to reincarnate Reagan, because he was a man of and for his time. If he were alive today, he might not know what to do with Islamic radicals and the nature of the threat we now face - witness his mis-steps in Lebanon. But he was absolutely the right man for the era of the 80’s, when communism was coming off a 15-year winning streak around the world.
Reagan was the first and only man of his time to say “You commies believe you’re destined to take over the world. I think you’re sadly mistaken.”
We should be eternally thankful for his being the right man at the right time, and instead of trying to replicate him, we need to find the right man (or woman) for this time, and these circumstances.
Something little known about Lebanon, is that the Grenada invasion was already taking place at full speed, when the bomb went off in Lebanon.
In fact, only 47 hours after the bomb went off, the US Army was engaged in full combat and taking Pt. Salinas Airport.
I always thought that Reagan swallowed a big pill on Lebanon, that a lessor man may have been too weak to let it go.