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.
The author simply wishes away the process by which our victory in the Cold War came about.
Jean Chrétien = cheese eating surrender monkey.
Oh yeah, and a MORON too.
Canadians that I have met are very nice folks.
Unfortunately, their present government sucks Brie.
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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 if past altruism has contributed to the mindset which created the terror campaigns?
This guy is a coward, and has to be from Berkley or Amhearst. We've sent trillions of dollars to these third world sh!t-hole countries. The thanks we get is 9/11, embassy bombings, WTC in 1993, the USS Cole...
I'd bomb Hussein's palaces into the ground, and then say, "Who's Next!"
Libs only understand winning elections (fraudulently if necessary); but not wars. Most libs are foolish, naive, peace-niks.
President Reagan also let disinformation out about the cost of SDI. We did not, or were budgeted to spend, the numbers on SDI. He wanted the Soviets to sh!t their pants thinking of the money were spending. It worked.
Great flick.
I wonder if he is really a closet conservative. C'mon out Larry. It's not as dark and oppressive as you have been lead to believe.
Back in 1980, Ronald Reagan campaigned on a pledge to build up Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (read Pershing II and GLCM) so that he could then negotiate from a position for strength to get the Soveiets to dismantle their INF forces (read SS-20 missiles). In 1980, there was no NATO equivalent to the SS-20.
Reagan fought the Left here and in Europe to get our own INF forces funded and deployed. And then in 1986, Ronny and Gorby sign the first nucleaar arms treaty that actually dismantled weapons instead of limiting future builds. The INF Treaty led to the disbanding of all SS-20 units in Europe (they remained in Asia). The INF Treaty was the fulfillment of a campaign promise, not a volte face. The problem is that Libs didn't take Ronaldus Maximus seriously.
How about..."Stupid git!" and..."It's people like you that causes all the unrest in the world...isn't it?"
Let's not forget..."You empty headed animal food trough wiper!".
Effective diplomacy requires strength to back it up - and the understanding in your opponent's mind that you are not afraid to use that strength. Reagan understood this. Setting the stage for his diplomacy required him to demonstrate his strength. Once his opponent realized he wasn't going to back down, and that bluffs would be called, serious diplomacy could begin. Going about it the leftist way would have been an endless series of the West backing down to Soviet demands in the name of "peace," while the Soviets ignored the West's demands entirely. There is ample evidence of this in the records of the Soviets that have been made available since it fell.
President Bush is definitely cut from the same mold, and the left STILL proves it doesn't understand it. They see America's foes tremble and assume that is a TERRIBLE way to begin diplomacy. In fact it is the BEST way.
Good diplomats understand that you never trust your opponent's word alone. You must work from positions where your opponent's positions are driven by their own self interest. The, to the extent you control the foundations of their self-interest, you can reach an honest agreement with your opponent.
Reagan and Bush understood this and did it very well. The left LOVED Clinton and Carter's hollow diplomacy, in which treaties were ignored and broken almost before the ink had dried. How they reconcile this with reality is beyond me.
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