Posted on 11/23/2002 10:36:40 AM PST by Dubya_gal
They called Ronald Reagan a cowboy, too. He was trigger-happy, bullheaded and, as the left would have it, quite dim. Just like George W. Bush.
President Reagan's obsession, of course, was the Soviet Union, the "most evil enemy mankind has known." Stop them now, he once declared, or we'll all descend into "the ant heap of totalitarianism."
Initially, he was cause for alarm. I remember seeing him at a campaign stop in Milwaukee where he lathered up his audience so much with Commie-hating banter that a man near him shouted, "Drop the Big One, Ronnie. Drop the Big One!" The Gipper nodded appreciatively.
In office, he jacked military spending through the roof. He concocted a Star Wars scheme many deemed hallucinatory. The Cold War intensified so much that Pierre Trudeau was prompted to launch his much-ridiculed world peace mission.
But over the course of a few years, a transformation occurred. The hawk of hawks decided to wage peace. When Mr. Reagan came to Moscow, where I was then stationed, dropping the Big One was the furthest thing from his mind. Instead, he could be found strolling through Red Square with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, almost arm in arm. Softened by a peace-driven Soviet leader, prodded by NATO, the old movie star dispensed with sabre-rattling, took the route of diplomacy, and helped engineer the great thaw.
Are there lessons for the new cowboy in this? Like the early Mr. Reagan, Mr. Bush sees the world in black and white. Like the early Mr. Reagan, he sounds like a man of war. His military spending is beyond the imaginable. His "evil empire" is an "axis of evil." He, too, wants to build a missile shield. He, too, has little regard for multilateralism.
But he, too, might be more changeable than we've come to expect. A few months back, a seething Mr. Bush sounded like he wanted to go it alone against Iraq. But pressure from the world community, including Canada's Jean Chrétien, led to his going through the United Nations. It was a considerable climbdown for this President -- and it now looks like war might be averted.
President Reagan was thought to be the last man in the world who would go the route of disarmament. A thunderbolt struck -- but only after a gigantic defence buildup. The Bush administration has just presided over an enormous $48-billion increase to bring its annual defence budget to almost $400-billion. The United States now outspends its biggest rivals by about $340-billion annually. It is all the more astonishing when one considers that the United States faces no big conventional enemy like a Soviet Union or a Germany, but rather pockets of terrorists who are best combatted not by tanks and standing armies, but by superior intelligence services.
With its annual defence spending exceeding the next 13 countries combined, the United States is an elephant among ants. Though Canada could certainly use an appreciable defence-spending hike, it is flat-out amusing when the United States tries to suggest it needs our military help.
U.S. militarism need not last. Mr. Bush may come to realize that war won't defeat terrorism, but likely only create more of it from the ranks of embittered victims. Unlike in the Reagan era, when there was a man in Mr. Gorbachev with whom he could do business, today's enemy is less tangible and visible. The President can hardly sit down at the bargaining table with Mr. bin Laden. His task is more difficult.
But Mr. Bush could try something. With all its unchecked power and riches, his country is presented with a historic opportunity to look beyond its avaricious self-interest. To test the theory that there may, indeed, be root causes behind many of the terror campaigns, he could become an altruist, as opposed to an Americanist. He could launch something Canada's government has hinted at -- a sustained all-out war on global poverty. What a signal that might send to America-haters -- and it wouldn't take much. Just a few slices from Mr. Bush's unconscionable military surfeit.
Instead, for example, of the massive budgetary increase this year, the President could divert half of it to the antipoverty campaign. It would leave Washington spending only about $320-billion more on defence than anyone else. The thought, therefore, probably hasn't even crossed his mind.
But if a man as hardheaded as Ronald Reagan could change, there may be hope for the new cowboy, too.
Lawrence Martin, who was a Globe and Mail correspondent in Washington and Moscow in the 1980s, is the author of Breaking with History: The Gorbachev Revolution.
That would require global implementation of free-market capitalism. The terrorists, meantime, seek to impose a sharia-based dictatorship. They could give a rat's a$$ about poverty.
Those were the good ol' days weren't they? When the commies were crapping their pants?
Makes me wonder if Osama now wears Depends...
He's a step behind. It is an accepted fact
that poverty had nothing to do with 9/11,
nor does it impel Saddam.
The same is true for W. A massive military buildup, which really isn't if you consider that Clinton/Gore gutted defense spending and R&D. So, we're just playing a decade old catch-up game with our adversaries.
In my opinion, our real nation-state enemies have yet to reveal themselves. I think you'll see that the war on terrorism is really a precursor to a war against the Muslim-China axis. That's why I think Russia is pushing for broader action against Muslims in their back door.
Goes back to why I was opposed to action in the Balkans. Clinton chose the wrong side. Instead of defending Muslims, he should have stood with the Christians and crushed their head.
Bravo Sierra. Amazing that after all these years they're still lying and making up up stories about Reagan.
This has nothing to do with curing poverty but rather has everything to do with satisfying the liberal's concept of "white man's burden". According to the left we should not solve poverty by teaching people how to be self sufficient but rather we should infantilize them to the point where they look to their "white fathers" for everything as the reservation-bound Native Americans must do.
Remember that these are the same people who have said that we should not put a democratic government in place in Iraq because Arabs are incapable of governing themselves.
Dubya_gal, this really did deserve a "BARF" alert... This author uses so many perjorative (sp?) terms intending to make either Reagan or Dubya to look like lunatics (Star Wars was just a stupid scheme? That never could have worked??? I recall Soviet KGB agents saying that Star Wars was the last straw: the Soviets couldn't keep up and Star Wars put the nail in their coffin... that is when Reagan made it clear he wasn't going to negotiate it away as the Demos would have urged), it even puts the journalism profession to shame.
Yeah, Gorbachev was the real reason the Soviets were brought to heel... Yeah, Reagan changed completely because of Gorby's persuasion and the jaw-boning by those NATO statesmen... Yeah, RIGHT! What a friggin' idiot!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.