So Much Hatred and Disdain for Ronald Reagan - from MAGAs and the left.

@Burnley123
No, it does NOT exempt him from criticism.

But when the left criticizes Reagan it's generally for either the wealth inequality as you mentioned or for ramping up the arms race.

They rarely mention the freedom Eastern Europe now enjoys after decades behind the Iron Curtain. It's almost as if they were rooting for the Soviets to win the Cold War.

@beckyromero Or almost as if they are neutral on war!

@Burnley123

Afghanistan is great example.

You hear the left talk FAR MORE about the "occupation" than they do about how the Taliban treats women.

Same with Saudi Arabia. It's always "oil, oil, oil... bad, bad, bad." But hardly ever about the oppression women face there.

I could go on, but I think you get my point.

@beckyromero I get your point but don't agree.

The left doesn't think of wars as binary.

I can be against the Taliban's treatment of women and homosexuals but also think that invading the country is not a solution.

In arguing with liberal hawks, the left predicted that the invasions would make the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq worse because local populations tend to fall in behind the government when being invaded.

Sure, the Americans did genuinely improve the situation of women in Kabul during occupation. However, the fact that it was done under occupation meant that it was never sustainable. You can't socially engineer another culture with bombs and bullets.

@Burnley123
Ignoring tyranny doesn't make it go away.

@beckyromero Especially when it's your own countries tyranny.

None of the Bush era invasions solved these problems and they were never likely to.

Change has to come from within. Invading countries has only strengthened the appeal of radical islam.

@Burnley123
I would counter than we missed opportunities, such as after the Soviet withdrawl of Afghanistan.

We wouldn't have been an "occupier" but a "liberator" and a "friend."

For pennies on the dollar of what we eventually spent, we could have build schools, roads, hospitals, etc., and prevented Taliban rule as their sanctuary of Osama bin Laden.

Iraq is a bit more complicated but most of the country was not "radicalized" and again we missed opportunities to be a "liberator" rather than a "conquerer."

Iran is a whole different animal, given our history going back to Eisenhower. And with it sharing borders with both Iraq and Afghanistan, it is easier for Iran to forment radicalization in both countries.

@beckyromero In Afghanistan, America really never had control of the whole country. The locals were with the Taliban so an almost unwinnable political situation.


That may have been a different issue but we are talking about whether the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were ever likely to succeed. America did spend money in regions it controlled and people in the Kabul region (women especially) benefitted. The rest of the country: different matter.


It became more radicalised after the invasion, with Isis emerging in it's northern border. The reconstruction was handled abysmally but we might never know what might have happened.

Well over a million people have died as a direct result of these wars. America (and Britain) shouldn't be playing world policeman and should not be empire-building.

@Burnley123

WIth respect to Reagan's handling of Afghanistan, that is where we missed the opportunity after he left office.

George H. W. Bush and Congress wanted a "peace dividend" and had little foresight in why it would have been a good idea to aid Afghanistan.

As for the second invasion of Iraq, you know I agree with you on how we utterly mismanaged the post-war (i.e. Bremer, disbanding the Iraqi army, etc.), acknowledging that you were against going to war.

As for the first one, well, you know how I feel about that, too. 😉

And with the military action against Afghanistan after 9/11, that was Donald Rumsfeld idea. Cheap, cheap, cheap. We should have been able to stop Osama bin Laden from escaping with proper planning.

But, no! Rumsfeld wanted to use the Northern Alliance. That would have been like asking the banned Labour-Farmer Party to overthrow the Japanese government after the attack on Pearl Harbor.