The Reagan Legacy

The Electoral College travesty in 2000 has proven tragic to the Legacy of Ronald Reagan. How much better for his memory had Al Gore assumed the Presidency after his victory at the Polls! President Gore would have erased the ill effects of President Reagan's most glaring errors, namely:

1) $1.7 TRILLION added to the national debt
2) arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, thus empowering the Taliban
3) the cut and run from Beirut
4) the arms for hostages policy

If Al Gore had taken office after his electoral victory (and continued President Clinton's conservative fiscal policy), we would now be on the verge of retiring the national debt. Instead, the Bush/Cheney junta drew the conclusion that "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." True to their word, they opened the floodgates, raising the debt limit to $9 TRILLION! What happens if the Russians and Iranians denominate petroleum sales in anything other than the dollar and all those unwanted reserve dollars fly back home?

If Al Gore had taken office after his electoral victory, our military energy would have remained focused on Afghanistan after 9/11. With the support of our European allies, we would be fully engaged in the useful work of nation building, following the successful Kosovo model. This would have wiped out the foul taste of the expedient Reagan/Bush policy of abandoning the women of Afghanistan to the tender mercies of the Taliban (after the Soviet withdrawal). Karzai would be secure in Kabul and his country, not secular Iraq, would be the Islamic laboratory for democracy. Imagine the impact of that success on the secular youth of Iran!

We should have selected Afghanistan for the neo-con experiment in democracy. Anchored there with our allies, we would be spared the extreme pressure to cut and run from Iraq. We could happily forget how Reagan invented the cut and run after the Marine barracks were blown up in Beirut in February 1983.

Iran/Contra, of course, would still tarnish the Reagan Legacy. He went a long way toward cleaning that up by apologizing to the American people. Al Gore could not - and should not - clean up that part of Reagan's statue. It was Reagan's own nonsense, and a healthy reminder of Republican wishful thinking in foreign affairs.