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Post by Turk on Apr 17, 2015 9:20:01 GMT -5
If we learned anything from Viet Nam it was not evident in the thinking that led to the invasion of Iraq. I hope if we learned anything in Iraq we will apply it to our thinking about Syria and Yemen. Viet Nam has become a better place since we’ve left. Syria and Yemen will never be a better place no matter what the USA does. So stay the hell out.
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Post by Turk on Apr 17, 2015 10:21:12 GMT -5
Legacies might be in the heart of the beholder. I lived in Germany for a little more than a year during the Reagan presidency (pre-unification.) I found the German people felt Reagan put them in the middle of the US and the Soviet Union. The most discussed issue, the presences of US missile on or near German soil. I returned for a couple of months after the fall of the wall. Reagan was known as “The man who won a war without firing a shot.”
Regarding El Salvador, I think the connections between those dots have long eroded.
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Post by jdredd on Apr 17, 2015 13:08:49 GMT -5
Legacies might be in the heart of the beholder. I lived in Germany for a little more than a year during the Reagan presidency (pre-unification.) I found the German people felt Reagan put them in the middle of the US and the Soviet Union. The most discussed issue, the presences of US missile on or near German soil. I returned for a couple of months after the fall of the wall. Reagan was known as “The man who won a war without firing a shot.” Regarding El Salvador, I think the connections between those dots have long eroded. I agree. Legacies, like history, are in the eye of the beholder. So what is Washington's legacy? Or Lincoln's? Or FDR's? Does it matter? I don't know. And come to think of it, I think it was Carter who first provided El Salvador with A-37's to bomb the "rebels".
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Post by dj on Apr 17, 2015 18:23:49 GMT -5
...And come to think of it, I think it was Carter who first provided El Salvador with A-37's to bomb the "rebels". A-37's to El Salvador was 1983 to roughly 1990, Reagan & Bush41.
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Post by tpfkalarry on Apr 18, 2015 12:12:51 GMT -5
Legacies might be in the heart of the beholder. I lived in Germany for a little more than a year during the Reagan presidency (pre-unification.) I found the German people felt Reagan put them in the middle of the US and the Soviet Union. The most discussed issue, the presences of US missile on or near German soil. I returned for a couple of months after the fall of the wall. Reagan was known as “The man who won a war without firing a shot.” Regarding El Salvador, I think the connections between those dots have long eroded. Using a chess board as an analogy you make your next move from where you finished your last move. Viet Nam was nearly as destabilizing to that region as the Iraq war was to the Middle East. That the peoples of SE Asia may be more pragmatic and better able to move on has probably made their outcome different than what we expect to see in the Middle East was not my point. I just wonder about the inertia of the manipulations and ministrations. Reagan could no more predict every consequence of his administration than his Democratic counterparts. While I agree that Yemen is no place for us to be, we do not have to put troops on the ground to influence the way the dominoes fall. Regarding the Middle East you could make an argument that Hugh Hefner's impact on the sexual revolution in America influenced the way those countries view the US as much as any single policy decision (and not just because he had a larger harem). My real point is that you can look back and say the path of a region, country or people was influenced by different policy decisions and blame the results on the policy of any particular administration, but with so many moving parts you wonder if some of the results are not inevitable.
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Post by jdredd on May 6, 2015 10:48:27 GMT -5
america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/6/el-salvador-gangs-target-police-after-failed-truce.html"SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — Hundreds of police officers, some wearing masks to protect their identities, sat in the large white rch in Zacatecoluca, a short drive from the capital. They were joined by the country’s police chief, government ministers and the U.S. ambassador for what has become a familiar occasion: the funeral of a police officer murdered by gangs. In 2015 more than 20 police have been killed by the country’s powerful Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street gangs. At least six soldiers have also been killed this year. Violence is approaching the high levels seen before the criminal groups agreed to a truce three years ago." I know Turk says it's been too long, but I'm still putting anything that happens in Central America on his shoulders since he helped crush reform movements there in the 80's.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 27, 2015 1:14:28 GMT -5
Antonin Scalia. Just another of Reagan's legacies. Thanks, Gipper! A clown appointed by a clown.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 21, 2015 12:54:23 GMT -5
When I find evidence that I might be wrong about something, I will be the first to post it, because unlike conservatives, I like to learn. Just kidding! Kinda. I accused Reagan of being responsible for the current crime wave in Central America by crushing the reform movements (aka "commies") in the 80's. But I've read recently that Venezuela is also having an ugly crime wave, and it is a country I don't believe got the tender attentions of American-funded death squads. Like most things, I suspect the crime waves in Latin America have many sources. But hey, maybe President Ronald Trump can do something about it. Besides building a 700-foot ice wall along our border. Oh wait, that's Westeros.
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Post by jdredd on Apr 1, 2016 18:33:14 GMT -5
Once again, it is so sad how far the GOP has fallen since it's glory days of the 80's. Republicans always like to portray themselves as the "smart" party, but they are looking pretty dimwitted at the moment. I'm certain they will make a comeback, especially if Hillary is our next President. But where will they find the voters? They aren't making enough white evangelicals anymore. I believe Hispanics would be a fertile ground for conservatism, as lots of them are traditional and entrepreneurial, if the GOP could get over it's anti-Mexican bigotry. A big wall won't help them.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2016 9:15:35 GMT -5
, if the GOP could get over it's anti-Mexican bigotry. A big wall won't help them. Again that is full of Crap. Try Again! Did GOP offend me?? No!! This Mexican said so! Your liberal Media Lie Factory once again fed you BS! Only thing GOP offend me is They are same as Democrap! No Real Regular Americans Conservatives in GOP maybe less than 5%, but they been silenced by the Elites Fake Conservatives! once again liberals play the Race card! Regular Americans and my fellow non liberal Mexicans don't like Illegals We like our borders secured! The Mexican govt and their partners drug lords caused the mess in Mexico! The wall will work! The liberal commie Pukes wont let BP do their jobs Repukes they don't want to secure the borders as I said both are same side of coin!
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Post by jdredd on May 1, 2016 21:50:01 GMT -5
I changed the title of this thread...again. The idolization of Reagan keeps getting more intense every year IMHO, as we get farther and farther from his time in office. I guess that's OK. Why not? History is all spin anyway.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 12, 2018 4:04:52 GMT -5
As a student of the 20th Century (Since the 21st is SO DULL), I was contemplating the rise of Reagan in the penultimate decade of that century. It pretty much was, IMHO, the counter-Counterculture backlash by the Greatest Generation, who mostly comprised the "Reagan Democrats". And a lot of Boomers went over to the dark side during his reign as their ideological foundations were too weak to stand up to the "Morning in America" BS. And now they are the majority of Trump's dupes.
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Post by jdredd on Jan 24, 2019 13:32:44 GMT -5
As I said elsewhere, It's creepy how many daughters in "Gen Z" have been named "Reagan". I feel so sorry for them.
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Post by jdredd on Apr 20, 2019 1:42:21 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/obituaries/sally-oneill-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Obituaries"In 1982, she and Michael D. Higgins, then a member of the Irish Parliament and now president of Ireland, were among the first outsiders to visit the village of El Mozote and investigate reports of a massacre there. They found evidence of the systematic torture, rape and slaughter of civilians, who were subsequently confirmed to have been killed by death squads and by Salvadoran Army soldiers trained and supplied by the United States.The New York Times and The Washington Post published prominent articles about the killings. “It is clear that a massacre of major proportions occurred here last month,” The Times reported in January 1982. The Reagan administration, which was backing the Salvadoran government with military and economic aid in an effort to counter a leftist insurgency, dismissed reports of the massacre, calling them Communist propaganda.It was not until 1993, long after Ronald Reagan had left office, that a United Nations truth commission report, relying on classified documents from the United States government, concluded that groups of men, women and children had been tortured and “deliberately and systematically executed.” Mr. Higgins said in a statement after Ms. O’Neill’s death that “when I visited Central America as president of Ireland in October 2013, she was present to hear the massacre — long denied — recognized as genocide.” And now El Salvador is a gang-infested hellhole. You reap what you sow.
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Post by jdredd on May 4, 2019 12:04:11 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/04/world/americas/honduras-gang-violence.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=World"The violence is all the more striking because the civil wars and military dictatorships that once seized Latin America have almost all ended — decades ago, in many cases. Most of the region has trudged, often very successfully, along the prescribed path to democracy. Yet the killings continue at a staggering rate. They come in many forms: state-sanctioned deaths by overzealous armed forces; the murder of women in domestic disputes, a consequence of pervasive gender inequality; the ceaseless exchange of drugs and guns with the United States. Underpinning nearly every killing is a climate of impunity that, in some countries, leaves more than 95 percent of homicides unsolved. And the state is a guarantor of the phenomenon — governments hollowed out by corruption are either incapable or unwilling to apply the rule of law, enabling criminal networks to dictate the lives of millions." How is Cuba's gang problem?
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