Why did Reagan sell weapons to Iran?

Reagan didn't just arm the Taliban. There were 5-6 different tribes that put their dislike for each other aside to fight the Soviets. The Taliban was just one of them.

 

Well he did it. My problem is being over there in the first place! I say leave them alone. We have no business in their politics/religion. Next time they start (*)(*)(*)(*) with us just flatten the place.

 

As for the Contras. The CIA put that group together to fight the Soviet backed government of Nicaragua. Reagan saw how the Soviets were trying to make inroads in Central America, close to our back door. Congress had already been funding them for two years but got afraid that they might blow up a Soviet ship in Nicaragua harbor, after they blew up another ship there delivering weapons to the country. So they cut off funding to the group. Reagan knew they couldn't go back to their families and he still wanted to get rid of this new Communist government, so he found a way to still fund them by making the weapons deal with Iran.

 

Damn right he did it and it drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan and cost them dearly in lost men and weapons. . We left after the Soviets left. Some say we should have stayed and helped the different tribes put together a lasting government, but we didn't.

 

the strategy was to contain the Soviet Union, it was also known as the Truman Doctrine, Reagan excused a massive amount of the pork he showered on his supporters as being for defense, like the B-1 bomber. It was pork, pure and simple, that airplane was obsolete 5 years before the first one was built.

 

Not only to contain the Soviets, which he did. He fought them where ever they tried to expand. But he also knew the Soviets were hurting, trying to out weaponize us, while holding their union together. He felt he could bring them down by building up our forces more and cutting the biggest means of cash the Soviets had, in oil and gas and he did that too. He was very smart.

 

If the Soviet Union was contained it would fall from it's own internal contradictions, that is the strategy that was developed based on an analysis done by George F. Kennan done in 1946. Truman put the strategy in place, and every president, including Reagan followed it. By the time Reagan was in office, the Soviets were already collapsing from within, they had whole divisions with wooden rifles, great for marching in parades, not much else, they had armored divisions where they towed the tanks into formations at night, so satellites would see formations of shiny freshly painted tanks, which could not function mechanically, the soviet society was falling apart, and when Gorbachev tried to reform it, he exposed so much decay that the Soviet Union was scrapped, and the countries we have there now were created.
None of this had very much to do with Reagan, it had to do with long standing US policy.
What Reagan did do was restructure tax rates, creating large deficits that continue to this day, and weakening the economy by promoting the concentration of wealth.

 

The Nicaraguan government was elected into power. Why does their electorate not matter? Why should their families have to die from CIA-backed death squads because the US didn't like their government?

 

First, state clearly what he did that you think is illegal. Is there a specific law you think was violated, or do you just feel like there must be one he violated?

Second, take poli-sci 101. W/e you find for a law, he wasn't sent to jail (if it was in fact illegal) for the reason that Clinton wasn't sent to jail for perjury and obstruction of justice: he wasn't found guilty of anything. Reagan wasn't even impeached.

 

Funny, Jimmy Carter was the first to start arming Afghanis, Reagan just ramped it up. Next, the Taliban didn't come about until 1994. Next, If you wanna blame anyone for arming and supporting the Taliban, blame the Pakistanis and Saudis. But hey, don't let facts get in your way.

 

The Soviets were nowhere near as weak defensively as you state. They were already putting 22% in their GDP into their military.

 

Ronald Reagan’s determination to destroy communism and the Soviet Union was a hallmark of his eight-year presidency, carried out through a harsh nuclear policy toward Moscow that softened only slightly when Gorbachev came to office.

He is vividly remembered in Russia today as the force that precipitated the Soviet collapse.

“Reagan bolstered the U.S. military might to ruin the Soviet economy, and he achieved his goal,” said Gennady Gerasimov, who served as top spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry during the 1980s.

 

The Soviet Union was collapsing of it's own internal contradictions, Reagan will be regarded as the one of the worst presidents by historians.

 

You'd like to believe it, but it isn't true. He is popular here and one of the most popular American President in Europe. Poland is so proud of him they not only erected a statue of him, but also named a park after him as did England. Millions of East Europeans are living free today because of Reagan. Even the Soviet respected him.

 

The destruction of the American economy is Reagan's main legacy. The collapse of the Soviet Union happened to coincide with his presidency, but his massive wasteful spending on military projects was mostly political payback.
The B-1 Bomber program was killed by Eisenhower, it came back and was killed again by Johnson, it was last killed by Carter, because there was no point in building an obsolete aircraft, and the stealth bomber program was already underway .
Reagan funded the program as a payback to North American Rockwell for their political support.

 

Unlike Carter, Reagan had both a political philosophy and a world outlook, both of them quite clear, in relation to which Europeans could orient themselves. He did not hesitate, he acted. He was consistent. He was usually predictable. The lines of his policies rapidly became distinct.

He thought Russia was winning the arms race. So he rearmed with all deliberate speed and on a considerable scale. He thought Russia and its surrogates had made unacceptable territorial gains during the 1970s. So he set about reversing these gains where possible and made it plain beyond any possibility of misunderstanding that any further attempts to advance would be resisted from the start. He thought the nuclear balance in Europe had been upset by recent Soviet deployments. So he set about restoring it with the deployment of American cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe.

These actions won broad support in Europe, not least because of the self-confidence with which they were taken. It is remarkable, looking back on it, how quickly Reagan contrived to reestablish the concept of American leadership of the West as inevitable and right, part of the natural order of things. He was helped by the friendship, based on a general identity of views, that he rapidly established with Margaret Thatcher, already emerging in 1981 as the most influential of the European leaders.

But Reagan's personal appeal was very wide, affecting European politicians who in no sense shared his basic ideological assumptions. One senior European Socialist leader, after his first meeting with the president, observed wryly: "It is very hard indeed to dislike that man." Reagan also appealed to the general European public. He was soon seen as a man of goodwill, who meant well and had a proper appreciation of Europe's dignity. He was regarded as trustworthy, if not always well advised.

His appeal in Europe never approached the intensity of the glamour radiated by John F. Kennedy. But it touched a much wider audience. Kennedy mesmerized the elites (or some of them) and especially the intellectuals, who were the group least pervious to Reagan's charm. But Reagan was liked by ordinary people, especially those anxious to get on and better themselves. He was, and is, identified in Europe with the pristine American spirit of self-reliance, endeavor and determination to make the most of God's bounty. For Europeans he stands not indeed for the New Frontier, now the vaguest of fading memories, but for the Old Frontier, a perennial and attractively concrete image.

In many ways Reagan recalled Dwight Eisenhower in the friendly feelings he evoked in a wide variety of ordinary Europeans: as with "Ike," many jokes were made at his expense, but they were tolerant, unmalicious jokes. But Reagan has been more popular than Eisenhower, who aroused, at least for a time, bitter feelings in both Britain and France for the deliberate steps he took to frustrate the Anglo-French Suez expedition in 1956. By contrast Reagan was seen as a president who was willing to put the interests of his European political partners, when need be, above global considerations. This was illustrated by the discreet but generous assistance he afforded to the British Falkland Islands expedition in 1982, something the British will not soon forget and which all Europe noted with approval. The fact that Reagan was under pressure from Latin America and some of his own close advisers to remain strictly neutral greatly enhanced his action in European eyes. The Germans and the French were led to believe that, ceteris paribus, he would do the same for them.

 

Sorry, Reagan left office with almost 20 million jobs, low unemployment of a little over 5%%

 

And huge ballooning deficits that eventually would cripple the nation.

 

It didn't cripple the nation. That deficit helped bring down the Soviet Union and freed millions of Europeans. It was a good trade off. The only people who hate him is Democrats. Guys like you that refuse to give him credit for anything. But it won't wash.

 

Ho hum , "my Jewish girl friend said " well did she also add, WW2 20million DEAD,total economic embargo , from 1917 on,90% Illiteracy under the tsar. The crimes and betrayals of the Stalinist bureaucracy ,the estimates 5-7 million dead in WW1,the invasion of 23 arimies in the civil War 1921-23,generalised Poverty and want from the 400 years of tsardom. that's THE TSAR of all Russia's , the MONARCH,ABSOLUTE ruler , lovely man. NOT!

The Reason it lasted so long was because of the tenacity and willingness of sacrifice of the soviet and international Working Class, against Capitalism, BTW, gee, the Russian Capitalist Mafia are so well CRIMINAL, and have seen the dropping of the average Life expectancy of the Russian population, THANKS CAPITALISM,

Whats Your Jewish GF's opinon on That?

Why do you use her god nut religion to describe her?

Where was she born? , her religious stupidities are irrelevant , PS god doesn't exist!

 

US political consciousness, is well a Bit backward , in official circles , Obama why say more , Dumb as Pig POO.

They are the same ,Serve the same master, Wall Street, in their" War on Sanity" , this is what Money junkie think does.

 

It shows you the little self-righteous bubble neo-cons live in that Fox News still pays Oliver North and treats him as a respectable military contributor. A (*)(*)(*)(*)ing criminal is their military analyst!

 

I believe that line of reasoning is disingenuous; it was a warfare-State on a for-profit, capital basis that was employed to compete with the former Soviet Union; it should have been a welfare-State and an industrial automation race on a for-profit basis that should have been employed; but for a lack of "goodwill toward men" on the part of the secular and temporal, right.

 

ho uhm sums your post up about right

so i didn't add in your little diatribe, thanks for the info…we know all that…what are you bored or something.

lol is that a fact or just some flakey communist drivel , frankly the style of capitalism practiced is Russia is not even a 3rd grade demented version of it. uuuu hold europe hostage for gas in the cold of winter..

Actually there are a lot of soviet jews now living abroad ..soviet Jews are a cut above you know and i honour them with the distinction..Marx and Trotsky so many genius from that gene pool...and the 80's was a huge break for them…she wasn't so religious…why am i answering this ridiculous question , like it has any relevance or bearing on my post. i said she was a Soviet Jew and you go all funny..not funny ha ha but you know funny

,
Kiev , she is beautiful ,really a work of art.

it wasn't about what she believed in,or religion for that matter…that seems to have been missed by you ... there is a distinction between soviets and soviet Jews.
The latter i find are far more enlightened and intellectual than your run of the mill ruskie with his pseudo intellect hammering away on the planet, using words like technology and computer to impress people ..ever listen in on one of their live conversations…very funny stuff when they get heated about something they think they are expert on.
Now the Soviet Jew is another matter all together…far superior..and low me just some Italian, Irish, French Canadian, German , Dutch ,French and English miss mash of a Canadian.

Ahh the inevitable God does not exist routine…how droll

 

Why did Obama sell weapons to al qaida in Libya?