Some brief reactions on late President Reagan and his legacy

(Attn.: Prof. Joanna Kirkpatrick & Dr. Jaffor Ullah) 

By Jahed Ahmed

 

What was then in the center is now on the left; what was then in the far right is now in the center; what was then on the left no longer exists.

-Cass R. Sunstein, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School (Ref. NYT article 06/07/04*)

 


Reagan: no �God-sent�, nor 'evil-sent '

 

Upon not so unexpected demise of former US president Ronald Reagan, when former British premier Lady Thatcher, along with other world leaders, made such comments as "Ronald Reagan had a higher claim than any other leader to have won the cold war for liberty�and he did it without a shot being fired�, or for that matter, when former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said, "While adhering to his convictions... he was not dogmatic; he was looking for negotiations and cooperation. And this was the most important thing to me: He had the trust of the American people"; I would like to have my own reservations. However, dismissing Reagan as a �bogus and hopeless president� (mm message 17573), or dismissing the whole essence of a newspaper article* that explicitly discusses both merits and some demerits (for example, same NYT article says �Perhaps most of all, Mr. Reagan's legacy prevails in the muscular foreign policy of the current occupant of the White House, who seems far more the spiritual heir to the Reagan revolution than to his own father's presidential policies���� After it was revealed that officials in his administration had sold arms to Iran as a ransom for American hostages, then used the proceeds to help the Nicaraguan contras, Mr. Reagan only reluctantly acknowledged that it had happened, and a commission he had appointed himself concluded that his detached management style had failed him�)  of the late president with rhetoric such as �sycophancy dies hard� (mm message 17571) by some learned men; I find it hard to distinguish between a 100% since truth revealer and an truth-revealer on occasional basis only.

   True that Reagan era, along with many pivotal successes�, was also marked by many scandals and failures, many of which later happened to be true (Iran contra, for instance, and domestic economic deficit); yet history, I believe, will give Reagan his due credits for his overall performances. 

   The two writers of Mukto-Mona I cited above would have done justice to Reagan, if they would have shown generosity of the mentions of some of the often ignored noble acts done by the late president while portraying his demerits. For example:

�         By virtue of Reagan�s 1986 Immigration Reformation Act, millions of illegal immigrants, who were mostly from poor developing countries of Asia and Latin America, became legal in USA. Later, they became US citizens and many brought their family to USA. Rest became capable of supporting their family and relatives left back home through legal employment/stay in USA and fiscal help/meetings. 

�         Reagan was the 1st US president to appoint a woman as a supreme court Justice. Her name is Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who took her seat on December 19, 1981.   

  Reagan was no �God-sent�. However, he was no evil-sent either; since neither sycophancy, nor partial portrayal of truth is conductive to intellectual honesty.

 

(The end)

New York

09 June 2004

 

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