The Myth of Reagan

When I heard the first news reports that National Airport in Washington, D.C. would be renamed "Ronald Reagan National Airport" I immediately embarked on the five stages of grief. Denial and anger kicked in almost simultaneously. I think I skipped right over bargaining and eventually settled into depression. Although this happened in 1998, I'm still fighting with acceptance.

So what’s my problem?

My issues with Reagan began when he announced his second campaign for the Presidency. In 1980 he made a speech at the Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi. This is the place where three civil rights workers were killed in 1964. Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were buried in an earthen dam by the ku klux klan. Their murders would help to galvanize the nation in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Reagan went there and made a speech in support of "States Rights". He might as well have pissed on their graves. Any one from the South knows what "states’ rights" means. This was the Confederacy's politically correct excuse for starting the civil war. This was their rationale for slavery itself.

Reagan would also go on to tell an audience in Atlanta that "Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine", and describe the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as "humiliating to the South". If there remained any doubt about how Reagan felt about equality and human rights, he made his feelings clear in 1986.

The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act was passed by Congress in 1986. It imposed sanctions on the racist, minority South African government that was violently enforcing strict racial segregation. The law outlined five preconditions for lifting the sanctions that would essentially end the system of Apartheid. The law enjoyed the support of the entire civilized world.

Ronald Reagan vetoed it.

The US Congress overrode the veto and the Bill became law. The Senate voted 78 to 21, and the House voted 313 to 83. Apartheid came to an end in South Africa in 1991.

As quiet as it's kept, the Reagan administration was one of the most corrupt in American history. More than 100 members of the Reagan Administration were convicted, indicted, or resigned while under investigation during Reagan's eight years in office, including some of his most prominent aides. The list includes Edwin Meese III (Attorney General), Lyn Nofziger (Senior Aide), Michael Deaver (Senior Aide), Caspar Weinberger (Secretary of Defense), James Watt (Secretary of the Interior), Ray Donovan (Secretary of Labor), Elliot Abrams (State Department), Robert McFarlane (National Security Advisor), Oliver North (White House Staff), John Poindexter (National Security Advisor), Alan Fiers (CIA), Clair George (CIA), and Duane Clarridge (CIA).

On December 21, 1982 President Reagan signed an appropriations bill that included the Boland Amendment. The amendment made it illegal for the United States to provide assistance to the Contras, a group in Nicaragua that was trying to overthrow the Marxist Nicaraguan government.

In 1985 the Reagan administration agreed to secretly supply anti-tank and other weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran in exchange for Iran's help in obtaining the release of six Americans being held hostage in Lebanon. The administration then took the money generated from the sale of these arms and gave it to the Contras in Nicaragua, a clear violation of the law that Reagan himself signed just three years earlier. Subsequent investigations resulted in several indictments, convictions, resignations, and pardons of high ranking administration officials. Reagan himself was forced to testify under oath, and incredibly answered "I don't remember" 130 times.

Many Americans are familiar with the phrase "once a Marine, always a Marine". I was once a marine, and on a Sunday morning in October of 1983 I experienced a spasm of anger that I will never forget. On that day, 241 American servicemen, 220 of them marines, died when an Iranian suicide bomber crashed a truck filled with explosives into their barracks while most of them slept. They were in Beirut, Lebanon on a "peacekeeping" mission.

Reagan responded two days later by ordering an invasion of Grenada, a small island in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela. The US sent more than 7,000 troops to "rescue and protect" 61 American medical students on the island. The United Nations condemned the military action as "a flagrant violation of international law" by a vote of 108 to 9. A similar resolution failed in the Security Council as a result of a veto by the United States. Seven Democratic Congressmen introduced an unsuccessful resolution to impeach the President.

The entire Granada operation lasted less than three months. Reagan declared victory against the spread of communism. The United States suffered 19 killed and 116 wounded. More than 5000 medals and commendations were awarded to the participants. Meanwhile, the 241 servicemen that died in their bunks in Lebanon were out of the headlines.

The most baffling part of the revisionist history enveloping Reagan has to be his stewardship of the American economy. Has everybody forgotten what REALLY happened to the economy during those eight years??? How could they forget "Black Monday", October 19, 1987 when the stock market crashed by 508 points (22.61%)? Have we forgotten prime interest rates of 20%? Have we forgotten home loan interest rates of 16%?  That’s what was happening in the "Reagan Years". The Reagan years also saw unemployment rise to 10.8%, the highest rate since the Great Depression!

Reagan, today's patron saint of the conservative movement, increased federal spending by 80% during his eight years in the White House, doubled the federal deficit, MORE than doubled the national debt, and raised taxes seven of the eight years he was in office. Had he not, the deficits would have been much worse.

 Imagine what would have happened if this was the record that the Obama administration was leaving with us.

  Somehow, for some reason, the American people, the American press, and the American intelligentsia have allowed the Reagan loyalists to create and perpetuate a myth of historical proportions and sell it to America and the world.

Simon Hoggart, writing in "The Observer" said this about Reagan, "His errors glide by unchallenged. At one point....he alleged that almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American press is that yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is very acceptable this year."

 If we really need another hero, is this the best we can do?