A Rare Admirable Quality in Ronald Reagan?

I'm going to write words I never thought I'd write or say: it may not be such a terrible to look to Ronald Reagan on a key issue in the United States for the last several years:

Reagan was far to the left of the 2010 Republican Party on issues such as torture. The convention that he signed in 1988 holds that there is no circumstance of any kind that permits torture, which certainly would include the 9/11 aftermath and related anti-terror efforts today.

But it goes even deeper than that. As I noted in an early 2010 blog post: “Reagan would not have approved of drone-fired missile attacks aimed at killing terrorists; as president, he several times rejected anti-terrorism operations for the sole reason that civilians would have been killed by collateral damage. In 1985, he surprised aides such as Pat Buchanan by ruling out a military response to a Beirut hijacking for fear of civilian casualties; Lou Cannon reported then in the Washington Post that Reagan called retaliation in which innocent civilians are killed “itself a terrorist act.” And the idea of trying terrorists in military tribunals as opposed to a civilian court of law? The Reagan administration was completely against that. Paul Bremer (yes, that Paul Bremer) said in 1987, “a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are — criminals — and to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law, against them.”

To be clear, I absolutely do not think Reagan was a saint, nor does Will Bunch, who also points out that the "'Reagan Doctrine' in Central America, leaving the fight to anti-Communist thugs and death squads that the then-president called “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers,” is arguably the gravest moral failing of his tenure." I couldn't agree more.

But that doesn't take away from the rather stark stance Reagan took against torture, nor does it detract from the obviously-opposite stance of current torture-apologists who claim to look to Reagan as their guiding light. Again, this is in no way an apology for Reagan, and I think his policies were overwhelmingly terrible and negative on both the U.S. and the world. That said, the fact that he was so strongly anti-torture does matter, and just serves as another reminder of how far the right has gone in the last 30 years, as well as how the vision of Reagan that today's right props up as its paragon does not always reflect the Reagan who was actually president.

Dobbs

Why do I even do it? Why do I open a link to the latest Lou Dobbs' piece? Do I hate myself? Do I have a sick fascination with evil? Sigh.

Yesterday, Dobbs opened up on Democrats refusing to wear the flag lapel pin. First, I want to congratulate those Democrats like Barack Obama who are drawing the line. It's a stupid, meaningless symbol that panders to the basest part of American society.

But that is Lou Dobbs' schtick and he defends it. He uses the classic right-wing "you're a traitor but the fact that you can do that is why this is such a great country even though I wish I could throw you in prison you commie bastard" trope.

Dobbs pukes:

"The Couric, Moyers and Obama explanations of their discomfort with the wearing of the American flag should give us all pause, because whatever our partisan affiliation, whether liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, each of us should at least agree that we are Americans, that our allegiance is to this country and that our national values of individual liberty and equality are the foundation upon which we all stand as Americans. The flag belongs to all of us as Americans, and it's our right to either wear a lapel pin or not.

I choose to wear that flag on my lapel because the nation it represents makes that choice possible."

Meanwhile, Lou is paying a Mexican migrant 13 cents a day to wash his American flag bed sheets.

Taking Care of Our Soldiers and Vets

It's nice to see politicians finally asking questions about the abysmal lack of care and attention that soldiers and veterans are getting. As Erik pointed out a few months ago, a Republican-led Congress had no problems wrapping itself in the flag for the war even while it slashed funding for vets. It's nice to see questions are finally being asked. Let's just hope it doesn't stop just with some officers stepping down or getting fired, but instead leads into a deep inquiry into why Congress was (and maybe still is - time will tell) so willing to send soldiers into areas of serious risk of injury, and yet was so unwilling to spend to see that they were taken care of physically and psychologically if and when they did get injured.