Reagan's Legacy - How will he be remembered?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yet they pissed their pants about it. Gorby tried to get Reagan to stop SDI on numerous occasions, offering to cut nukes to miniscule levels if he'd just stop. What was Gorby doing? Trying to fake out Reagan?

[Alexander's Horse]

That's just BS Imran. The confrontation policy was ideologically driven, pure and simple. Noone foresaw the Soviet collapse.

[Ramo]

Trying to save his ass. Nuclear escalation would play into the hands of the hardliners.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The confrontation policy was ideologically driven, pure and simple. Noone foresaw the Soviet collapse.

Perhaps no one did, but Reagan said why this sitting around ****, why not take the fight to them? I never said it wasn't a gamble, but it worked, and big part of it was to try to get the Soviets to fold, but perhaps not completely.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
when america collapses in 100 years, everyone will look back at reagan as the starting point of this collapse.

american will not collapse on its own. We may be defeated by terrorists using nuclear weapons, but not of our own accord.

[Alexander's Horse]

The madness of star wars was this - nuclear deterence rested on mutually assured destruction (mad). If one side thought the other side had a shield like star wars then deterence collapsed and the risk of a first strike was very high. So star wars made a nuclear war more rather than less likely.

[Ted Striker]

Imran is right

Gorbachev was scared of SDI and asked for it to be put to a stop several times

[Alexander's Horse]

The Russians wanted Star Wars stopped for the reason that I gave - that it raised the threat of nuclear war.

Imran is never right - you should know that by now Ted.

[Ted Striker]

I am right 100% of the time

I said Imran is right

Therefore Imran is right 100% in this instance

[Alexander's Horse]

The idea the arms race led to the fall of the Soviet Union is also quite wrong.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Yet they pissed their pants about it. Gorby tried to get Reagan to stop SDI on numerous occasions, offering to cut nukes to miniscule levels if he'd just stop. What was Gorby doing? Trying to fake out Reagan?

That showed he was a sensible man. As opposed to Reagan, who was crazy.

[Alexander's Horse]

Actually it was Reagan who offered to cut nukes. At the Iceland Summit he offered to eliminate them altogether in a 4 eyes meeting - which shocked his own advisers as well as Gorbachev.

[Urban Ranger]

Thanks for the correction, grandpa

[Alexander's Horse]

which showed he was lost without a script

[MrFun]

Re: Reagan's Legacy - How will he be remembered?

Originally posted by Drogue
Taking Imran's idea, partly to stop people spoiling the moment of silence thread for Reagan's passing, and partly because I was wondering, in light of recent events and his death, how he'll be remembered.

Will he be remembered as a great president who caused an economic boom, showing capitalism working; or an evil mass murderer who precided over someone else's hard won growth? What will textbooks in 20 years time say about him?

I will remember Reagan for helping to create appalling living conditions in Central American countries (mass murdering, extreme poverty, plutocracy).

I will also remember Reagan for being one of the many individuals who was in a position of power and responsibility to take effective action against AIDS when people theorized as early as 1981 or 1982 that AIDS was a sexually transmitted disease. Yet he did too little too late, not because no one knew anything about this disease, but because people did know what this disease was, and he did not care.

I will also remember Reagan for widening the gap of wealth between the American upper class and working class Americans.

I will also remember Reagan for being finiancially irresponsible by increasing spending in national defense programs while cutting spending for other, important domestic areas such as health, education, welfare, and so on.

I will also remember Reagan for being involved in the Iranian Contra scandal.