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Long before Ronald Reagan's death on June 5, his hagiographers were busy telling lies to enhance his reputation, as though his actual accomplishments were not sufficient.
Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speechwriter, wrote
Done
in an paean about Reagan's 1980 promise to
reduce the national debt. In fact, the debt stood at $789.4
billion in 1981, and at $2,191 billion in 1989.
False adoration also came from Ann Coulter, who wrote
that the ripe old fellow single-handedly won the cold
war.
That dismisses millions of us who got drafted to help fight that cold war. If Reagan was going to come along and win it all by himself, what did they need us for? And even at the presidential level, what about Harry Truman, who in 1946 began the resistance to Soviet advances in post-war Europe by aiding Greece and Turkey? And every president after him?
For the past week, we've been reading about the success of Reagan's foreign policy. Presumably, our increase in military spending in the 1980s forced the Soviets to try to match it. They couldn't, and the Soviet Union collapsed.
That may be true, although we may never know for sure. After all, historians still argue about why the Confederacy lost our Civil War.
Certain elements of Reagan's foreign policy have come back to bite us, though. On the day he took office in 1981, Iran released American hostages it had held since 1979. Iranian militants had seized them because we had given refuge to the Shah they had overthrown.
So, Iran was our enemy. In 1980, Iran and Iraq went to
war. Because the enemy of my enemy is my friend,
the
Reagan Administration favored Saddam Hussein and Iraq,
which received weapons, intelligence and on Dec. 19, 1983,
a friendly visit from U.S. special envoy Donald Rumsfeld
aimed at restoring diplomatic relations.
This may have helped Saddam and his Ba'athist thugs stay in power so they could invade Kuwait in 1990. Or perhaps it didn't. But certainly it does not represent a bright moment in U.S. diplomatic history.
That's only one current problem that began in the Reagan days. In 1978, a Soviet-backed faction seized control of Afghanistan. Muslim fundamentalists rebelled, which inspired the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan in late 1979. That surprised U.S. President Jimmy Carter and doubtless contributed to his defeat by Reagan 1980.
Fundamentalist Muslims resisted the Soviet invasion of their country. Under Reagan, they got help from our CIA, which provided ammunition and arms -- such as shoulder-held Stinger missiles that could bring down Soviet helicopters.
In 1989, the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan, which appeared to be a victory for our side. However, one Afghan resistance leader was Osama bin Laden, who thereby gained an immense following. After the Soviets left, the Talliban took over in Afghanistan; we went to war with them after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which were likely masterminded by bin Laden.
So it may be that the Reagan victory in Afghanistan just
led to bigger American problems down the road. After all,
no president has ever been able to repeal the law of
unintended consequences.
Unintended consequences aren't always bad, though. We should give Reagan credit for saving much of the scenery of the Mountain West, even though his first interior secretary, James Watt, had other ideas.
When Reagan took office, gold was selling for $500 an ounce, silver was at $10 and the uranium market was booming. All around here there were claim stakes, and one big local mine was hiring 100 men a week. Sawmills were humming and lumberjacks roamed our national forests. The Monarch Quarry loaded 28 rail cars of limestone every day for the steel mill in Pueblo. Exxon was spending $1 million a day on the Western Slope to develop oil shale.
In less than three years of Reaganomics, all those sources of pollution and environmental damage were gone. Mines, sawmills and quarries closed, and the projects planned or underway were canceled. Our mountains and plateaus were spared.
And yet, just as Reagan gets credit for things he did not do, he probably won't get credit for this stunning environmental accomplishment.
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