Calling out America for its own poor choices shouldn't be demonized--in fact, it's *exactly* how you turn your little "America can do no wrong" mob into a political cult. That's another direct tie from Reaganism to Trumpism: the idea that American leaders (unless they are democrats) can never do anything wrong--especially not the militar…
Calling out America for its own poor choices shouldn't be demonized--in fact, it's *exactly* how you turn your little "America can do no wrong" mob into a political cult. That's another direct tie from Reaganism to Trumpism: the idea that American leaders (unless they are democrats) can never do anything wrong--especially not the military--and that America should not look at its past failures (unless done by democrats) in an attempt to make itself better in the future, because any kind of negative self-assessment about the US is *wrong* (apparently). This is exactly how Trump gets people to turn away from this country's loooonng history with racism and conspiracy theories: by making America and Americans themselves off-limits for criticism. Well, that's *exactly* how a country goes on to make the same mistakes it has always made, because it refuses to look at itself in the mirror and address its deficiencies.
Lebanon *was* a disaster. Ronald Reagan got some 243 servicemembers (an a whole bunch of French paratroopers) killed when he sent them to a civil conflict and put them in a barracks that was weakly-protected from suicide bombers--a threat that had grown more persistent with Reagan's refusing to negotiate with terrorists (when you refuse to negotiate with terrorists who typically take hostages, they just suicide bomb things in the future because they know hostage-taking is now futile). And *after* the Marines and French paratroopers were killed, Reagan *withdrew* the Marines back onto ships and then promptly withdrew all forces from the conflict with his tail tucked between his legs. Beirut sent a message to Bin Laden at the time (who was on his way to Afghanistan) that actually, these big militaries were inherently weak when it came to "martyrdom operations."
Reagan's feeble intervention in Lebanon set us up for failure and exposed the weaknesses in our armor that Bin Laden would go on to exploit via "martyrdom operations" in Africa (suicide bombings at our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania), in the Near East (the USS Cole suicide bombing in Yemen, 2000), and finally at home (the use of commercial aircraft as massive suicide bombers against domestic targets in the US). How's that for off-limits criticism of America?
Calling out America for its own poor choices shouldn't be demonized--in fact, it's *exactly* how you turn your little "America can do no wrong" mob into a political cult. That's another direct tie from Reaganism to Trumpism: the idea that American leaders (unless they are democrats) can never do anything wrong--especially not the military--and that America should not look at its past failures (unless done by democrats) in an attempt to make itself better in the future, because any kind of negative self-assessment about the US is *wrong* (apparently). This is exactly how Trump gets people to turn away from this country's loooonng history with racism and conspiracy theories: by making America and Americans themselves off-limits for criticism. Well, that's *exactly* how a country goes on to make the same mistakes it has always made, because it refuses to look at itself in the mirror and address its deficiencies.
Lebanon *was* a disaster. Ronald Reagan got some 243 servicemembers (an a whole bunch of French paratroopers) killed when he sent them to a civil conflict and put them in a barracks that was weakly-protected from suicide bombers--a threat that had grown more persistent with Reagan's refusing to negotiate with terrorists (when you refuse to negotiate with terrorists who typically take hostages, they just suicide bomb things in the future because they know hostage-taking is now futile). And *after* the Marines and French paratroopers were killed, Reagan *withdrew* the Marines back onto ships and then promptly withdrew all forces from the conflict with his tail tucked between his legs. Beirut sent a message to Bin Laden at the time (who was on his way to Afghanistan) that actually, these big militaries were inherently weak when it came to "martyrdom operations."
Reagan's feeble intervention in Lebanon set us up for failure and exposed the weaknesses in our armor that Bin Laden would go on to exploit via "martyrdom operations" in Africa (suicide bombings at our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania), in the Near East (the USS Cole suicide bombing in Yemen, 2000), and finally at home (the use of commercial aircraft as massive suicide bombers against domestic targets in the US). How's that for off-limits criticism of America?