Morning in America...a Bloody Dawn.

Reagan's 1984 campaign included a TV ad which boasted that it was morning in America again, implying that Reagan's policy had brought about improvement in economic atmosphere which was allowing citizens to thrive again. Not only did it help entrench Reagan into the oval office for another four years, its helped cement the message that the Republicans were going to continue to maintain moral and political order. They sought to preserve traditional values and help stabilize a country rocked by waves of social change. They did this by implementing a drastic return to privatization and purging democratic institutions as well as those in the republican party that were labeled as too liberal. In an era marked with the rise of the minorities, the republican party was riding a wave of counter culture in order to impose the will of the Reagan administration.

Reagan inherited the oval office in the midst of heightened Cold War tensions. The Carter administration, which had preceded him, had upped military aid for Afghanistan in their battle with the Soviets and failed miserably in handling the Iran crisis and subsequent uprising. Carter and Brzezinkski(National Security Adviser to Carter) basically renewed the Truman Doctrine in regards to the Middle East, "Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interest of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled be any means necessary, including military force."(Carter, 1 ) As backwards as this sounds, Carter only laid the framework which Reagan would drape his evil doings, all while being masked as the victor of the Cold War.

To kick things off, Reagan supported a covert war in which he helped secretly fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. He blatantly defied congress and used diverted profits from missile sales to U.S. enemies in Iran. When the Iran-Contra scandal came unraveled he had the audacity to compare savage rebels to the American Founding Fathers, "Reagan's 'moral equivalents' were notorious for torturing, mutilating, and slaughtering civilians. Employing terrorist tactics, the Contras destroyed schools, health care clinics, cooperatives, bridges and power stations and were responsible for the deaths of most of the 30,000 civilians killed in the war." (2) Civilians in nearby El Salvador didn't fair well either when hundreds more civilians were killed by U.S. trained troops, one village of 767 was slaughtered, including 358 children.(3)

The U.S. sought to 'rebuilt' its military ego by invading Grenada after suffering an embarrassing loss of soldiers in a bombing attack in Lebanon, but more so the deflation caused by Vietnam. Though Reagan claimed victory, it came at the price of 29 U.S. soldiers while battling a vastly inferior force. Dick Cheney, a familiar face to us today, championed the cause after the fact when the then congressman, "applauded the United State's new can do image around the world." (4) This attitude has chilling implications as we know how Cheney's story would continue.

Going along with the new elevation of the Truman Doctrine, Reagan and Bush Sr. inserted the United States into the middle of the Iran-Iraq war. Arms were funneling into Iran as special U.S. envoys were sent to Iraq, namely Donald Rumsfeld. His purpose was to assure Iraq that the U.S. was not punishing them for using chemical weapons...how could they after U.S. companies were key in providing strains of anthrax used in Iraq's chemical weapons. (5)

Though these crimes against humanity may been enough to condemn Reagan as one of the most vicious presidents in the history of the United States, his greatest crime may be his failure to compromise and perhaps miss an opportunity to denuclearize the entire world. Failing to see eye to eye with Mikhail Gorbachev, Russia's new visionary leader, cemented America's government as being controlled by a military-industrial complex for decades to come.(6) Giving up Star Wars would prove to be a flaw that would haunt the U.S. through future administrations.

Though Reagan stood at the head of the country when the Berlin Wall fell, his legacy is forever disputed by the other choices he made.He was a party to slashing social spending while increasing military spending exponetially and helped groom a class of Washington elite who would steer the ship astray when they took their turn at the helm. I found this 2011 Washington Post opinions piece, which reveals a little about just how little the American people actually knew about the President they heralded as their hero.

Jules Tygiel commented on Reagan's legacy, "...The Soviet Union had disappeared, its communist ideology largely discredited. United States foreign policy operated in a unilateral universe, a dominant military power unchecked by powerful foes, treaty obligations, international law, or entangling alliances, a world where ideology shaped reality rather than the logical opposite. The extremes between not only rich and poor, but rich and middle class, had grown ever wider. Conservatism had replaced liberalism at the core of American political discourse." (7)

We will see that this final triumph over Communism will be overshadowed by the cloud of terrorism and turbulence which followed in its wake. A Bloody Dawn was about to give way to the blazing heat of the sun fueled by the blowback caused by the rise of a conservative driven America.

Courtesy of Hair Pin

1 - 414 Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of The United States (New York: Gallery Books, 2012)

2 - 431 Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of The United States (New York: Gallery Books, 2012)

3 - 432 Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of The United States (New York: Gallery Books, 2012)

4 - 435 Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of The United States (New York: Gallery Books, 2012)

5 - 439 Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of The United States (New York: Gallery Books, 2012)

6 - 448 Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of The United States (New York: Gallery Books, 2012)

7 - 392 Griffith, R., & Baker, P. (2007). Major problems in american history since 1945: Documents and essays. (3rd ed.). Boston: Wadsworth.