Like the morning sun rise in the east, it never fails. At every foreign policy fork in the road, conservatives faithfully ask, WWRD--What Would Reagan Do? When President Obama urged U.S. strikes against the Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons in Syria, right-wing politicians and pundits laughably looked to The Gipper for guidance. And with this week's meeting of the United Nations General Assembly raising the possibility of a thaw in U.S-Iranian relations, Ronnie's reanimators (for example, here and here) predictably mocked "Obama's tough talk" compared to "Reagan's tough actions."
Unfortunately for his hagiographers, Americans don't have to speculate about what Ronald Reagan would have done about Syria and Iran. We know what he actually did. That is, after his disastrous intervention in the Lebanese civil war resulted in hundreds of U.S. casualties at the hands of Syria and its proxies, President Reagan turned tail and retreated in humiliation. As for the mullahs in Tehran, Ronald Reagan didn't send a message to Iran, but instead a cake, a bible and American weapons....Perrspectives
We Know What Reagan Would Have Done about Iran and Syria
John Perr
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