Remembering Reagan and his legacy

I haven't joined in with the nervous Democrats who have been criticizing Kerry for not campaigning more forcefully up until now.  Bush and his team have been doing so much damage to the Republicans' electoral prospects all on their own, that Kerry's relatively low-key strategy this spring has made good sense.

This doesn't: Kerry taking the week off from campaign to honor Reagan AP (warning: Nedra Pickler article) 06/07/04.  Kerry announced a five-day suspension of campaign events to honor Reagan:

The events Kerry canceled include two star-studded fund-raisers that would have raised millions of dollars for his campaign and the Democratic National Committee -- in Los Angeles on Monday and in New York on Thursday. Performers who were participating included Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Bette Midler, Jon Bon Jovi, James Taylor and John Mellencamp.

Tickets cost as much as $1,000, and Democrats said they would reschedule the concerts soon. They must coordinate dates with the performers, and some of the stars may have conflicts that keep them from participating on the new date.

Democrats briefly considered continuing the concerts without Kerry present, but ultimately decided that it would be unthinkable even to have associates hobnobbing with Hollywood celebrities while the nation mourns a former president. [Remember, this is Nedra Pickler writing here.-BM]

Now, the US President is the head of state, so it's entirely appropriate to recognize some state of mourning.  (Most European democracies have either a monarch or a president as head of state and a prime minister as head of government.  Combining the two as we do in the US is looking increasingly problematic to me.  But that's a political-science-nerd discussion for some other time.)

But I see no reason to suspend fund-raisers and campaign events, except on the day of the funeral itself. 

Will the Republicans, from President Bush to the rightwing media echo chamber to the warbloggers refrain from using the publicity about Reagan's death to push their political agenda?  Of course not.  Today's Republican Party is hyper-partisan.  They're already doing after Kerry heavily, and the blitz in the late summer and fall will be far more intense that what we've seen so far.  I hope Kerry doesn't give them this kind of unnecessary five-day semi-free ride again.

Two looks at Reagan's Presidency

The journalist Lou Cannon, who I quoted in my previous post on Reagan, has written four books about the late President.  The only one I can recommend is based on having read it myself is President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.  Apparently the paperback edition was revised in 2000, but it was originally published soon after Reagan left the White House.  He gives a good overview of Reagan's Presidency in that book, with some helpful insights from an experienced Reagan-watcher.

In one section, he discusses why Reagan's background as an actor was such a benefit to him as a politician, because so much of a modern politician's job involves delivering messages through mass media, especially television.  Arnold Schwarzenegger recently proved again the usefulness of that background.  Cannon also engages in a bit of psychological speculation that probably has a sound basis.  He talks about how Reagan operated with more of a visual intectual process than an analytical one.  His critics often misconstrued his lack on analytical processing of subject with lack of intelligence.  Cannon also talks about how Reagan's optimism represented in some ways a positive adaptation to the experience of being the child of an alcoholic, which tends to get less attention than the less constructive varieties.

Another valuable look at the Reagan Presidency is Theodore Draper's A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affairs (1991).  The Iran-Contra scandal was a very important event.  But its toxic mix of secrecy and Executive Branch lawlessness were more of an exception than the rule in Reagan's operation of foreign policy.  Iran-Contra is more symptomatic of the Bush dynasty's approach to government.  In this Bush Administration, it may well be more the rule than the exception.  Eventually, probably sooner than later, we will know many more details of the Valerie Plame exposure, the Ahmed Chalabi espionage scandal and torture in the gulag.  And when we do, they will likely look an awful lot like Iran-Contra. 

Reagan and the jihadists

An important part of Reagan's foreign policy that will be largely ignored in the media adoration of him this week is the way he encouraged the international network that came together to support the mujahaddin "freedom fighters" in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.  That particular effort was not only the basis for creating Bin Laden's particular al-Qaeda network.  But it also gave rise to the brand of militant Islamic jihadists that are working to kill Americans today.

Understanding the jihadist threat means, in significant part, understanding those events, during which time the Reagan Administration was actively promoting the Afghan jihad.  (And actively backing Saddam Hussein's Iraq out of related considerations, also a subject for a different post.)

Juan Cole has discussed this part of Reagan's legacy: Reagan's Passing 06/06/04.

Although it would be an exaggeration to say that Ronald Reagan created al-Qaeda, it would not be a vast exaggeration. The Carter administration began the policy of supporting the radical Muslim holy warriors in Afghanistan who were waging an insurgency against the Soviets after their invasion of that country. But Carter only threw a few tens of millions of dollars at them. By the mid-1980s, Reagan was giving the holy warriors half a billion dollars a year. His officials strong-armed the Saudis into matching the US contribution, so that Saudi Intelligence chief Faisal al-Turki turned to Usamah Bin Laden to funnel the money to the Afghans. This sort of thing was certainly done in coordination with the Reagan administration. Even the Pakistanis thought that Reagan was a wild man, and balked at giving the holy warriors ever more powerful weapons. Reagan sent Orrin Hatch to Beijing to try to talk the Chinese into pressuring the Pakistanis to allow the holy warriors to receive stingers and other sophisticated ordnance. The Pakistanis ultimately relented, even though they knew there was a severe danger that the holy warriors would eventually morph into a security threat in their own right.

Billmon looks at the same issue: Ronald Reagan 06/06/04.

The legacy of Reagan's policies in the Middle East, meanwhile, are still being paid for - in blood. The cynical promotion of Islamic fundamentalism as a weapon against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the alliance of convenience with Saddam Hussein against Iran, the forging of a new "strategic relationship" with Israel, the corrupt dealings with the House of Saud, and (perhaps most ironic, given Reagan's tough guy image) the weakeness and indecision of his disastrous intervention in Beruit - all of these helped set the stage for what the neocons now like to call World War IV, and badly weakened the geopolitical ability of the United States to wage that war.

I'm not convinced on the point about the Lebanon withdrawal, but his basic point in correct.  Billmon talks about Reagan's Central American policies and observes:

Looking back, it's also easy to see the propaganda connections between Reagan's war in Central America and the current Orwellian nightmare in Iraq. There were the same moral oversimplications - pure goodness versus absolute evil - the same flowerly rhetoric about freedom and democracy (to be administred to impoverished campesinos with machine guns and torture chambers.) There was the same lurid hype about the dire danger to the homeland - as when Reagan famously warned that Nicaragua was just a "two-day drive from Harlington, Texas."

And of course, we're even looking at some of the same actors - Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte, Colin Powell. To a large degree, the Reagan administration's covert wars in both Central America and the Middle East formed the template for how the war in Iraq was packaged, sold and - unfortunately - fought.