I'm not sure Reagan would have disapproved of attacking terrorists with drones. He did not have such weapons in his day and anything he did have were much less accurate and would have caused a lot of civilian casualties.

It's still just a footnote to history, but it's worth repeating how the mess in Beirut actually happened. As the story was told to me at the time, Reagan had sent the Marines in as a buffer between the Israelis, Hezbollah, Maronites, the Druze and all the other factions in Lebanon, after the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla. He also sent Donald Rumsfeld, who was Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East. While Rumsfeld was in Beirut staying at the US Ambassador's residence, the nightly shelling from the Bekaa mountains started, so they all went down to the bomb shelter in the basement.

Rumsfeld asked the ambassador why this was going on -- firing on the United States. The Ambassador basically said -- because this country is fucked up, sir. What are you going to do about it, Mr. Ambassador? Nothing, sir -- it will stop in an hour or so, and after all, doing something about it is why YOU'RE here, isn't it?

Damn right, Rumseld said, and he asked for a secure line. He got Reagan on the phone, and 20 minutes later, the USS New Jersey opened up -- silencing the artillery that had been firing on the ambassador's residence.

And making the US military into just one more faction in Lebanon, which led directly to the slaughter of the US Marines in their barracks.

The fault Dear Steve

Why, Reagan, he doth bestride the modern world
Like a Colossus; and we petty teabaggers
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Steve, is not in our Democrats,
But in our republican torturers, that we are moral underlings.

hard to believe that if obama could hardly give a happy shit about drone-warfare collateral damage, then ronnie rayguns -- given his contra thugs and salvadoran surrogates torturing and killing nuns and all manner of people, esp. in el salvador and nicaragua, but all over latin america, really -- wouldn't of minded blowing people all over the world into little pieces from office buildings in alexandria va...

"Try to imagine the reaction if President Obama repeated Reagan's position now."

It would be great if Obama word-for-word repeated this. Then, about a couple hours later (plenty of time for plenty of Repubs to take their marching orders and get in front of cameras, denouncing Obama as a weakling), mention that that was what Regan said, word-for-word.

How many heads would explode?

Republicans just keep moving further and further to the right, so much so that even Ronaldus Magnus looks pretty liberal by comparison.

Unfortunately, this means their long-term strategy is working very well. Whenever Republicans are in power, they push the envelope absolutely as far to the right as they can get away with, on legislation, on executive power, on judicial appointments, on trashing regulations. (If they got more than 50%+1 in Congress, the legislation wasn't right-wing enough.) When Democrats are in power, since they aren't as ideologically driven and actually care about having a functioning government that promotes the general welfare, they enact moderate measures, appoint judges with broad appeal, etc.

As a result of this two steps backward, one forward, the "moderate" position has marched steadily to the right. It's true that they have to ignore anything in the past, even the facts about their heroes, to do this, but considering that they have no problem ignoring the fact that their statements about the present are frequently easily disproven, that's not even the smallest of speed bumps for them.

How many heads would explode?

None. They're all BS artists now, and don't give a damn whether what they're saying is true or not, only whether it works. How many of them have bothered to even respond to the criticism that the policies they're criticizing are ones they personally supported when Bush was president?

If it got any reaction at all, it would be the same as Michael Steele's reaction when it was pointed out that Reagan would have flunked the purity test proposed by wingnut activists that he supported -- they'll just deny it, reality be damned.

Republicans are in a race to the ideological bottom. The key they seem to have found to get people motivated is the ideological equivalent of pornography -- ideas that are crudely formed, crass in their expression and cruel in their impact. Short term people seem mesmerized by talk of death panels, torture, invading Iran and tea parties. We will see what consequences are in store long term.

It's ironic to ponder whether Reagan was this country's last unifying president. That is, for all his right-wing policies, he didn't divide this nation into virtual warring camps. He didn't demonize half this country as unpatriotic or treasonous. Reagan succeeded, in large part, because he was willing to allow moderate instincts to guide his usually right-wing policies. Bush 41 continued that tradition but couldn't embody its spirit. Clinton, of course, became the anti-Christ to a large minority of citizens.

Total political war means a divided nation. I suppose we can thank the ascent of right-wing media and their paranoid habits. But it also mean a cartoonish division between dark and light, good and evil. The tragedy for this nation is that once unleashed, the forces don't simply exhaust themselves. If this is a fight to the death, it literally means people must die.

What's so sad now is that I wish we could have a flaming Commie like Nixon as president. I hated him and cheered when he resigned. Yet now I wish we could have him back. It's scary when Reagan wouldn't stand a chance in a Republican primary now, and Nixon would be too liberal for a Democratic primary now. And Johnson would be waterboarded as an enemy combatant. I can't even imagine what someone like FDR would face. I'm guessing they'd just burn him at the stake.

Speaking of the canonization of 'Ronaldus Magnus', in the Catholic faith, saints are created when a certain number of miracles are attributed to the would-be saint.

By definition a 'miracle' is not explicable by natural or scientific laws, and must be accepted on faith alone.

So too, the elevation of Ronnie the Great to the pantheon of conservatism rests on the shibboleths of believers.

He raised taxes? Soft on terror? Sorry, does not compute. . .

Nice to see that at least some Republicans realize that terrorists are criminals, NOT an opposing army. Al-Qaeda is more like the Mafia than the Russian army. We don't try to defeat the Mafia by shooting missiles into buildings where they might be hiding. We defeat them by infiltration and by marginalizing them.

Since it's obvious that the MSM info-tainment industry will never ask any Republican about this sort of thing, it will be up to us to spread the word. In conversations, letters to the editor, wherever and whenever we see an example of present-day Republican misinformation; ok, lying. No need to be rude, but simply set the record straight.
The Republicans can't win national elections without the support of a lot of independents. Our job is to ensure that those independents have ALL the facts, not just the Republican version.

...that's only because he was president before 9/11.

But he was president during the Cold War, and had no inkling that events shortly after he left office would prevent the Road Warrior scenarios that seemed inevitable in the 1980s.

And Democrats just keep following them further and further to the right.

Obama needs to propose adding Reagan's face to Mount Rushmore and then watch the Republicans go into contortions trying to figure out whey they're against it.

Fostert - yes, I agree. I was horrified to realize after a couple of years of Bush the Lesser that if I had a choice between Bush and Nixon, I'd take Nixon in a heartbeat. This doesn't mean that Nixon is any more acceptable than he ever was, but just that Reagan, Bush, Bush, and all the Republicans from Newt on have lowered standards to such abyssal depths that Nixon now looks good by comparison.

However, I disagree wholeheartedly with Walt's comment about Reagan. Reagan was not a unifying president, and even though he was our first teflon president (a shield since bestowed by the media on nearly every republiscum politician) and was not personally corrupt, his administration was exceedingly corrupt, incompetent, and polarizing. For corruption see Wedtech, the lead-in to the Savings & Loan, Iran-Contra, the HUD scandals, particularly Deaver, Donovan, Nofziger, and Watt. He had a personable and genial persona, but he lied with impunity and was hand-in-glove with lots of henchmen who were more than willing to impugn and demonize opponents on his behalf. Go check out public debates over Ollie North, his voodoo economics, his "not remembering" to Congress, his made-up stories about welfare queens and WWII, and what people like Newt Gingrich, James Watt, and Roger Ailes were willing to say and do on his behalf.

I have to burst your bubble but Uncle Ron did murder civilians. His terrorists the Contras killed 140,000. Nicaraguans during 1980's. Also, his attack against our new best friend Quadaffi killed his daughter, a civilian.

I think you should study American History.

Try to imagine the reaction if President Obama repeated Reagan's position now.

Hmm. Let me imagine....

I imagine the wingnuts/neocons/teabaggers complaining just as much as they do now.

But I imagine that the rest of America and the world would praise Obama for standing up for principle and taking the best approach on prosecuting and delegitimizing terrorists.

Oh, well.

To echo the same comment posted upthread:

"Republicans just keep moving further and further to the right..".

And what party keeps pace with every rightward lunge? Mr Benen, like Adalai Stevenson I will await your response until hell freezes over.

What party keeps moving farther to the right, Mr Benen?

Rep. Conyers calls for hearings:

"For years, those who approved torture and abuse of detainees have hidden behind legal memos issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel," Conyers stated. "The materials released today make plain that those memos were legally flawed and fundamentally unsound, and may have been improperly influenced by a desire to tell the Bush White House and the CIA what it wanted to hear."

"The Office of Legal Counsel has a proud tradition of providing independent, high quality legal advice to the executive branch," Conyers' statement continues. "The materials released today make clear that the lawyers who wrote the torture memos did not live up to that tradition. ... Given the serious nature of the issues raised in this report, the Committee intends to hold hearings on these matters in the very near future."

You want soft on terror? I'll give you soft on terror. Actual AP headline (please AP don't sue me)

"Attack on IRS part of long line of tax protesters"

Wonder why this post from Steve didn't get a link from the brain-starved geniuses at Real Clear Politics?

Probably because it's a flat out indefensible attack on their messaging...as opposed to opinions to HCR which crouch safely in the realm of subjectivity, from which they can bray endlessly about polls and things being "shoved down their throats."

Before we get too misty eyed about Ronnie, let's not forget that he bombed Tripoli to try to assassinate Khaddafi, missed him, but killed an 18 month old child.

Regan also tried to appease nations that sponsored terrorists with weapons to get hostages freed.

Hell, at least Carter authorized a rescue mission during the Iran hostage crisis. Reagan didn't even try that.

Sounds kind of wussy.

Today's Republican Senators, with Lieberman, are even opposed to any more nuclear weapons cuts. We can't have enough weapons that are basically unuseable.

Regarding Reagan-era tax increases, including gasoline tax: They were called "revenue enhancements." The euphemism lived to serve another day. It helped the Peggy Noonans in all their revisionist gushing before and after Reagan's death six years ago.

Reagan didn't need terrorism, he had the Red Scare. For political purposes the Russkies were much better anyway. But then they had to go all wussy on us, and the GOP needed a new bogeyman. Luckily for them, Osama bin Laden was all to happy to oblige.

To the current-day GOP (I hesitate to flatter it w/the term 'Modern'), Barry Goldwater qualifies as a flaming pinko.

-Z

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