Reagan was trading arms while still a private citizen in 1980? Wow, he was even more powerful than I thought!
Had either one of them sent a strong message by kicking some ass, none of this crap would be happening today. We may have lost some American lives, but nothing like was lost on 9/11.
Had Reagan never taken on the Soviet Union, we wouldn't be dealing with Islamist terrorists today because they'd all be too busy dealing with the proxy wars between the US and USSR that would be going on in that region to this day. Personally, I'd rather have a bunch of ragtag terrorists to deal with than the daily potential for worldwide nuclear annihilation.
There are always unseeable consequences to everything. Twenty years from now people on FR will be playing armchair general, talking about how we wouldn't have to be dealing with problem X in 2022 if only Dubya had had the guts to Do Something About Them back in 2002, even though in 2002 nobody had ever even heard of the problem or the people responsible for it.