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President Obama needs to spend more time working on the economy and less time on recreational activities. His campaign promises of making the America and world a better place is yet to be realized. Blaming Bush will not work much longer. He has to get working at stimulating business. Without a vibrant business community, real recovery will not happen.
16 Million Americans are now suffering without hope in a jobless recovery. [21] Earlier, the president promised unemployment would never rise above 7.8%, [22] as an additional 4 million jobs were destroyed after the Obama stimulus passed, as experts predicted. [23]
Some doubt Ronald Reagan's importance in bringing down the Berlin Wall. In addition, some doubt that he even had a strategy for hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union. Regardless, one could argue that evidence suggests otherwise. One could also argue that President Ronald Reagan was the most dynamic anti Communist president in the history of America.
Paul Kengor’s The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, contends that Reagan’s goal of defeating communism and winning the Cold War can be traced to his early struggles against communists in Hollywood as head of the Screen Actors Guild in the late 1940s. In this fight against an attempted communist takeover of the union, Reagan was, in the words of fellow actor Sterling Hayden, a “one man battalion.”
Peter Schweizer, based at the Hoover Institution, was the first scholar to significantly make the case that Ronald Reagan deliberately set out to win the Cold War. In two books—Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (1994) and Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (2002)—
Schweizer used interviews with some of Reagan’s national security and foreign policy staffers, national security directives, Reagan’s speeches and private correspondence, and documents from several foreign countries, to argue that Reagan intentionally abandoned détente, moved beyond a passive containment policy, and pursued a strategy of victory.
Schweizer noted that at the heart of Reagan’s strategy was a sophisticated effort to exploit Soviet vulnerabilities, especially its economic vulnerabilities, which included:
(1) covert financial and intelligence support to the Solidarity union in Poland and other opposition groups within the Soviet empire;
(2) financial and military support to the Afghan resistance;
(3) cooperative efforts with Saudi Arabia to drive down the price of oil, and limiting Soviet natural gas exports to the West, thereby reducing Soviet hard currency earnings;
(4) a campaign to limit Soviet access to Western high technology;
(5) a technological disinformation effort to help disrupt the Soviet economy;
(6) a massive U.S. defense buildup, including the SDI program, to put more pressure on Soviet economic resources;
and (7) financial, military and logistical support for anti-communist forces in several Third World countries. “Reagan,” concluded Schweizer, “did have a well-developed plan seeking the demise of the Soviet Union.”
Asleep at the wheel is the only explanation for this oversight. Our CIA and military officials dropped the ball on this one. Hasan's actions prior to his rampage should have taken seriously.
In my world of electrical maintenance and distribution, if someone is injured because of a violation of a safety rule, the responsible person is fired. In the Hasan case, the responsible people who ignored Hasan's dubious activity should be fired.
So did the Army know and do nothing? Or did the CIA just never pass along the intelligence? Does it even matter?
It is not like Hasan’s radicalism was a big secret. His calling card had SoA or “Soldiers of Allah” on it. His fellow soldiers were given the Koran. He complained to commanders about being sent to an unjust war.
Hasan wasn’t the “quiet loner” who shocked everyone. Everyone knew about his radical bent and no one did anything. Roger L. Simon already eloquently expressed the answer for why no one spoke. Political correctness kills
Did President Ronald Reagan bring down Communist Russia? One could argue that Communist Russia was a bankrupt society economically and ethically before President Reagan took office. However, President Reagan pushed Russia to dismantle the Berlin Wall and took the steam out of Russia.
The only man who foresaw the Soviet collapse and implemented policies to bring it about was Reagan. During his first term Reagan pursued tough policies aimed at curtailing the Soviet nuclear threat and stopping Soviet advances around the world. Calling the Soviets an "evil empire," Reagan initiated a massive defense buildup.
He deployed Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe. He sent weapons and other assistance to anti-communist guerrillas in Soviet satellites like Afghanistan, Angola and Nicaragua. He announced a new program of missile defenses that would eventually "make nuclear weapons obsolete."
These measures were fiercely resisted by liberal Democrats, who decried Reagan's policies as confrontational and likely to make nuclear war more likely. But Reagan's military buildup and his missile defense program threatened the Soviets with an arms race they could ill afford.
His doctrine of aid to anti-communist guerrillas halted Soviet advances in the Third World: Between 1980 and 1985, not an inch of real estate fell into Moscow's hands.
