[Vision2020] Ronald Reagan at 103: Were He and Obama "Liars"?

[Nicholas Gier]

Dear Visionaries:

Every year on Reagan's birth anniversary I intend to continue to tear down
the wall that is the Reagan myth.  The resources and topics are nearly
endless, so I will be busy for many years.  If you don't want to read the
whole thing, I leave you with one conclusion: "Reagan was not a liar;
rather, he was just terribly confused."

I appended the full version that just appeared in the Daily News Los Cabos
(circualtion 10,000), the Daily News' totally unofficial sister newspaper,
filled with leads from Bloomberg News, the Washington Post, and many
others.  My columns appear alongside the columnists from these news outlets.

I'm glad that my tenants have set up a heater in front of my kitchen sink,
as the wall to the outside is poorly insulated.  It's 80 degrees here in
Cabo.  Just thought I would mention it.

Keep warm,

Nick

*RONALD REAGAN AT 103:*

*WERE BOTH HE AND OBAMA "LIARS"?*



*Make sure that I was telling you the truth.*

--Ronald Reagan, February 25, 1983



*We licensed his beguiling forgeries*.

--Gary Willis, *Reagan's America: Innocents at Home*



It would be more accurate to say that Reagan extended

or even reignited the Cold War at the cost of well

over $1 trillion in additional U.S. military spending,

--Robert Parry


RR [is] totally lost, out of his depth, uncomfortable. . . .

e did not listen attentively, looking away or staring at the papers in
front of him. . . All

this--both the substance and human conflict--is above and beyond him.

--Richard Pipes, Reagan's national security adviser



Those who criticize President Obama, sometimes with a hatred much more
intense than that directed toward George W. Bush (whom I pitied more than
disliked), focus on his many alleged lies. In what follows I want to argue
that, if Obama is a liar, then former President Reagan was a bigger, and
arguably, more dangerous one.



On Reagan's 103st birth anniversary I want to examine his challenge to us
all: "Make sure that I was telling you the truth."  As my main references,
I will use the thoroughly researched book *There He Goes Again: Ronald
Reagan's Reign of Error* by Mark Green and Gail MacColl; and Will Bunch's *Tear
Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy has Distorted our Politics and Haunts
Our Future*.  His deceptions and misstatements run the entire gamut, but I
will focus on defense and foreign policy.


·         At a press conference Reagan declared that the Soviets were
violating mutual agreements on nuclear submarines.  Three week earlier the
White House released a statement that there were no such violations.

·         During the 1970-8os, Reagan kept repeating that the Soviet Union
had attained military superiority.  With Reagan's approval ("Let her fly"
in a marginal note),Vice-President George W. H. Bush set up a special "Team
B" intelligence group, because right-wingers had convinced them that the
CIA (presumably the A Team) was "soft" on Communism.  Team B's false
reports led to the U. S. to initiate every major weapons system in the
1980s.  There were two major results: (1) the Soviet Union was bankrupted
in trying to keep up; and (2) defense appropriations increased to $ 1
trillion, much of which was not necessary.

·         In the presidential debate of October 28, 1980, Reagan claimed
that President Jimmy Carter had shut down major defense programs. Among
those weapons mentioned was the MX missile, which was actually under full
production, and the Trident submarine.  The first Trident was launched on
April 7, 1979, during Carter's term.

 ·         On March 3, 1981, Reagan maintained that the U.S. had
unilaterally disarmed during the 1970s.  Of course Presidents Nixon and
Carter did no such thing. Green and MacColl gives all sorts of evidence to
the contrary, but here is a significant fact: "In 1970 the U.S. had 4,000
strategic warheads.  By the end of the decade it had 10,000." This is
obviously arming a nation, not disarming it.

 ·         On October 17, 1981, Reagan claimed that the Soviets, "unlike
us," believed that a nuclear war is winnable.  Green and MacColl quote a
Defense Department manual, Reagan's senior national security adviser, and
Reagan's own 1983 budget as evidence that the U.S. believed that a nuclear
war was indeed winnable.

·         On May 13, 1982, Reagan falsely and ignorantly claimed that
submarine launched nuclear missiles "can be recalled."

·         Further mischaracterizing Carter's achievements, Reagan charged
that he did not add anything to what Nixon had accomplished with regard to
China.  The truth was, however, that Carter oversaw long and tough
negotiations for the 1979 agreement to normalize relations between the two
countries.

·         In a radio address on December 6, 1986, Reagan said that the U.S.
was dealing with "moderates" in Iran, but on July 29th of the same year he
had said that they were "the most radical elements." He authorized a deal
to sell arms to enemy mullahs in return for the release of hostages in
Lebanon.

·         In an interview with *Time* magazine (12/8/86) Reagan stated that
"another country was facilitating those sales of weapon systems to Iran."
Of course the truth was that his own government did that. Repeatedly, he
said that he could not remember if Oliver North had told him about one of
the most cynical moves in American diplomatic history: selling arms to our
enemy Iran to finance the a war against the duly elected Nicaraguan
government.

 ·         On April 14, 1983, Reagan falsely reassured Americans that "we
are not trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government."

·         Early in 1987 Reagan declared that his administration would never
negotiate with terrorists.  In an address to the nation on March 4, 1987,
Reagan admitted that he had lied: "A few months ago I told the American
people I did not trade arms for hostages.  My heart and my best intentions
still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is
not."  Are we suppose to feel better when the leader of the Free World
confesses that he is a heart-felt liar, who is still reluctant to face the
facts?

Iran-Contra was arguably a far worse scandal than Watergate.  The Reagan
administration devised an illegal plan, which circumvented the Boland
Amendment, by which Congress prohibited funding the Nicaraguan
Contras.   William
Bunch states that Iran-Contra "made Nixon's abuses seem more like the
'third-rate burglary' that Nixon's aides famously claimed it was."  Fourteen
Reagan associates were prosecuted for Iran-Contra crimes.

As early as January 1987, Democratic Senate leaders met to discuss the
possibility of impeaching Reagan.  According to Bunch's sources, they
agreed that that the president was "too old" and "did not have the mental
ability to fully understand what had happened."House speaker Jim Wright,
who would later be forced to resign over a book deal, believed that
impeaching Reagan would be "too divisive," and he admitted that he "may
have bent over backwards in error" in not finding an impeachable
offense.  Republicans
had no such qualms about dividing the nation when they impeached Clinton.
Nixon and Clinton were impeached for far less substantial reasons, and now
Obama haters want to try him for charges that are not impeachable offenses
at all.

With regard to his promise that those with their own health insurance could
keep it, Obama should have qualified that statement with "only if it met
the criteria of the Affordable Care Act." Politifact made it the "Lie of
the Year" only to balance out Mitt Romney's record number of "Pants on
Fire" in 2012.

 Reagan's First Motion Picture Unit edited some of the gruesome footage
from the Nazi death camps. Later Reagan, who had never been in the
military, said that he, in an army uniform, had taken the pictures on the
spot. This man was not a liar; rather, he is just terribly confused.



Under Reagan the national debt tripled, primarily because of unnecessary
defense funding; and, after wiping out Clinton's surplus, Bush nearly
doubled it.  Under Obama the national debt has increased 63 percent, but
much of that was due to the reduced revenues of the Great Recession and
irrational spending cuts of the sequester.



Reagan and Bush borrowed money at high interest rates to wage one cold  and
two hot wars under false pretenses, but Obama saved the economy by
borrowing money at near zero rates.  He has also reduced the annual deficit
every year and now it is at $514 billion, its lowest since 2008.  And
that's no lie.



Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.
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