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Yeah, I find that quite remarkable, given the number of people that have participated in the thread is only a few more than the total votes for Unca Ronnie.
Ahh... the benefits of free and open forum registration!
But nah, on second thought, no one HERE would stack a poll with alternate account votes...
Do you know how to vote more than once in a City-data poll?
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,363 posts, read 54,576,673 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wehotex
He didn't actually start the war. The Vietnam war was started in the eisenhower administration and escalated through the Kennedy and johnson admins. It is easy to look back in hindsight and say that we should not have been there. But when you consider the serious Cold WAr menace that existed then (the cuban missile crisis happened in 1962 plus the militaristic rise of USSR and China among other things), the threat of expanding Communism (Domino Principle) was very real and scary. World domination by the Communists was NOT out of the question. It was every bit as real as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan taking over other countries in years preceding and during WWII and maybe US this time. Given those circumstances, any of the Presidents probably would have done the same thing as LBJ. LBJ's legislative accomplishments and attempts to make the country a better place far outshine those of most other Presidents. He would have been a Great President if not for Vietnam.
Many found it quite easy to look at Vietnam in 1968 and even earlier and conclude we had no business getting involved in what was essentially a civil war. Even MacNamara, one of escalation's principal architects, has admitted very little was known/understood about the situation there when decisions were made to increase US involvement.
No hindsight required, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, they screwed the pooch.
I don't think you can vote more than once. I tried it, and it didn't work, perhaps because it uses my IP address.
vBulletin (the forum software they use) keeps track of the users and the options they chose in the poll. That's how it knows to display the option you selected in italics when viewing the poll results.
It's a real battle for second place between Bill Clinton and Obama.
I wonder who will win between them?
I find it very amusing that the Obama supporters are quick to point out that he's only been office for a few months when someone's posting something derogatory about him, but those same Obama supporters will vote him the "greatest president since JFK" despite his only having been in office for a few months.
My experiences while in the military for over 20 years were very different than yours. For example, I didn't vote for Reagan, and voted for Carter. But long after retiring from the military, I learned that thanks to Carter's involvement against the Shah's ((a dictator, of course) human rights, the Ayatollahs took over, and the result was a new enemy of the US.
The Shah ruthlessly suppressed any political dissent which eventually led to his downfall. The new Iranian government really wanted to get their hands on him (literally) and the Shah was having difficulty finding a country that would admit him (he had cancer and needed medical care). Carter allowed the Shah into America (I think Hawaii or CA) and that was the catalyst for the Iranian takeover of our embassy. A good attempt at loyalty from Carter, as we have a history of leaving our allies in the lurch, but it really backfired.
Of all our enemies, I think the Iranians are the most patient and skilled, as you'd expect from a civilization that invented chess. I feel like they've been playing us like a piano.
The Shah ruthlessly suppressed any political dissent which eventually led to his downfall. The new Iranian government really wanted to get their hands on him (literally) and the Shah was having difficulty finding a country that would admit him (he had cancer and needed medical care). Carter allowed the Shah into America (I think Hawaii or CA) and that was the catalyst for the Iranian takeover of our embassy. A good attempt at loyalty from Carter, as we have a history of leaving our allies in the lurch, but it really backfired.
Of all our enemies, I think the Iranians are the most patient and skilled, as you'd expect from a civilization that invented chess. I feel like they've been playing us like a piano.
Thank you.
The Shah was a decades old situation, which Carter inherited.
Had he NOT allowed him into the US, people and politicians here would have screamed bloody murder - many of them conservatives, no doubt.
But, who am I to get in the way of GOP revisionist history? WE NEED ICON! GIVE US ICON! GRUNTGRUNT!
LOL Reagan! Highest unemployment in decades, reversal of his election promised tax cuts (replaced with multiple tax increases) massive deficit spending, selling weapons to an enemy... can you IMAGINE had Carter or Clinton done that? We'd never hear the end of it. But it was Ronnie, the B movie actor.... and they licked it up...
Punked by a homophobic, racist, douchebag, whose financial policies still haunts this country and his party, to this day.
The Shah was a decades old situation, which Carter inherited.
So Carter 'inherited' the issue of Iran, so is free of blame, yet Reagan inherits Carter's contractionairy monetary policy, and receives blame?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ♠atizar♠
LOL Reagan! Highest unemployment in decades, reversal of his election promised tax cuts (replaced with multiple tax increases) massive deficit spending, selling weapons to an enemy... can you IMAGINE had Carter or Clinton done that? We'd never hear the end of it. But it was Ronnie, the B movie actor.... and they licked it up...
See above.. And yes, he did tax corporations and the rich, but those policies were later reversed. As a matter of fact I do not recall him running on a platform of tax cuts until he was up for re-election in 1984. After the early 80s recession, we saw the highest growth rates since WWII, low unemployment, low inflation, and a massive boom in the logistics and technology fields.
As for weapons selling... What enemy are you referring to? In the 80s the enemies you speak of were on our side, and helped make the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that much more difficult. As a matter of fact, Carter began those weapons sales in the late 70s. And Clinton did sell weapons to the enemy as well, however, he covered it up better than Reagan by going through mediator countries instead.
American presidents are without a doubt some of the biggest arms dealers in the world. As it turns out, Reagan's administration is the only one that got busted, and they could not even link him to the arms deals.
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