Ronald Reagan, 'Naive' on Terror

admin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 22:07:00 +0000

"...Mr. Reagan praised the Nicaraguan contra rebels, who had a bloody record fighting the Communist Sandinistas, as 'the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers.' In the cold war contest with the Soviet Union, he armed and embraced the Afghan 'freedom fighters' and their Arab allies, some of whom evolved into the terrorists of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. That long-ago radio address sounds naïve in retrospect in another respect, too."

Clay Waters

After spending several hundred words scratching his head over what the word "terror" really means, intelligence reporter Scott Shane ended his Sunday Week in Review essay "Dropping the Word Bomb," on safe ground with a couple of selective anti-Reagan anecdotes suggesting the strongly pro-defense Reagan was naive about the threat of terrorism. (If we're talking about terror naivete, why skip the eight years of Bill Clinton, a period where Osama bin Laden attacked U.S. targets with impunity while planning 9-11?)

El Salvador's "Right-Wing Junta" vs. Sandinista's "Left-Wing Council"

admin — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 13:21:00 +0000

Tim Weiner's obituary for Jeane Kirkpatrick, America's forceful ambassador to the United Nations, includes some of Weiner's trademark foreign policy liberalism.

Clay Waters

Saturday's obituary for Jeane Kirkpatrick, President Ronald Reagan's envoy to the United Nations, was written by Tim Weiner and draws on Weiner's background as the paper's liberal defense reporter during the 1990s.