I remember the Reagan years quite well. He was mocked as an amiable but bumbling moron who was leading the US to disaster by confronting the USSR. The left admonished him to just get along with the USSR, don’t confront them, don’t apply pressure, and quit calling them names. The evil empire speech caused far more frothing and conniptions on this side of the Iron Curtain than the other. When Reagan responded to Soviet medium range nuclear missiles in Europe with nukes of our own atop Pershing and cruise missiles, we were warned by left and the realists that we were playing chicken with the future of mankind. The Nuclear Freeze movement sprang into being, and amazingly it existed only on one side of the Iron Curtain — the side that was only starting to deploy nukes. But that was the refrain on the left – accomidate, pull back, never criticise, don’t antagonize them because you’ll only make it worse. As it turns out, they were dead wrong. Theirs was the losing strategy.
So excuse me if I find a certain similarity in the response to Bush II — except where Reagan’s critics thought him amiable, Bush’s find him evil. And we’re beginning to discover that maybe, just maybe Bush’s strategy of confrontation, speaking the truth, using force if necessary is having the same effect in the Middle East that Reagan’s same strategy had on Eastern Europe and the USSR. Now there are clearly differences between the two — e.g. Bush has used far more direct force than Reagan, and where Reagan confronted a powerful elite in one powerful nation propping up powerful elites in lesser nations, Bush confronts a diverse stew of tyrannies, factions and groups. So while the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe was abrupt — once it became clear that the USSR couldn’t stop one, they all fell, I don’t expect the overthrow of tyrannies in the Middle East to be as abrupt – each will have to fall on its own, although clearly people in one country will be emboldened by success (or chastened by failure) in other countries.
The doom sayers have been warning us of the wrath of the Arab street, and it finally made an appearance. Not against the US though, but against Syria. The Lebanese looked at what happened in Iraq and decided they wanted some. Now every tyrant worries that their own people will make the same decision. What did they see happen? They saw the brutal suppression by a dictator, they saw him slaughter over 500,00 of his own people during different revolts against him. Then they saw him toppled by America, and they saw the first tentative steps of the Iraqi’s to live free. They see that America is serious about dealing with tyrants – as witnessed by the continuing committment to Iraq despite the combat deaths. They see America’s committment to free elections – as witnessed by the loss of America’s handpicked man in the Iraqi elections without any response from America. But most importantly, they see the people of Iraq standing up for themselves — still dying at the hands of the remnants of their old tyrants regime, but now not being ruled by their fear.
