Quote:
Originally Posted by HOZ
Upon taking power Reagan faced this....
1. In 1980 the Soviet Union was winning. The MOST evil, most oppressive, most omnipotent force ever conceived was WINNING. They invaded Afghanistan because they could. Like who would stop them? They had a death grip on Central America and South America. They were winning in Asia (NK was doing better than SK!!!) they were winning in Europe. They held their triumphant Olympic games and the only thing WE (west) could do is boycott it. Honestly, dude....people were waiting for the day they would try to invade North America!!!!! BTW: the Soviets invented today's terrorism.
So no....it was not predictable unless you like bad news.
2. ME being worse now? Umm...No. The Iran- Iraq war broke out and it was the worst war since WWII involving casualties and it was the first war since WWI that openly used chemical weapons. So the ME was not stable at all. Reagan had to deal with all sort of failures in the ME in his administration.
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Plus he had to clean up the mess of the well meaning but utterly stupid Jimmy Carter.
He had the Lebanon crisis, up until that point the worst terrorist attack on U.S. assets, he had to deal with a extremely aggressive Soviet Union both in Central America and in Europe, he had to deal with the Korean Airline shootdown, Ghadaffi in Libya was much more aggressive back them dealing in terrorist attacks in Berlin
the American economy that Reagan inherited was in a similar state to today, where it was in tatters, the armed forces in America was pretty much a running joke except for the Marine Corp, and not to mention he got shot 2 months into his first term.
When Reagan took office the Soviets were on the verge of securing a massive sphere of influence and things were not stable as the Soviets were funding useful terrorist groups as far as central America, things were not stable but that was thanks to Kennedy and his mishandling of the Cuban Missile Crisis for example.
Reagan walked into a pretty terrible situation where people were thinking the same thing that they're thinking today, that the American Empire was dead.