What Reagan Left Us

...Those days neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote of a "new unilateralism" replacing "docile internationalism...

...In his strategy statement that September he warned, "We will not hesitate to act alone if necessary to exercise our right of selfdefense by acting preemptively...

...The symbol is embodied in our national anthem, which finds reassurance in the fact that, after the nightlong Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812, "our flag was still there...

...I am with you, Mr...

...No," says the White House, contending that this is "a matter of privacy and sensitivity...

...They ought to give medals for that kind of service...

...Laird said the photographs precludedthat...

...My Lai then, Abu Ghraib now, and both times, Seymour Hersh to break through the official silence...

...A recorded conversation has Kissinger asking Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird whether there was any way of sweeping the massacre under the rug...

...Shielding the Public...

...Rumsfeld has said he would resign in a minute if he thought he was being "ineffective...

...But the true legacy of Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States, is the ideology that bears his name—"Reaganism," which consists of "Reaganomics" and the "Reagan Doctrine...

...The Stars and Stripes occupies a unique role in American life...

...Curiously, the issues of privacy or sensitivity did not appear to arise when a Bush campaign commercial showed a flagdraped firefighter being carried from Ground Zero in New York...

...He said, "We got some pretty quick action out of our Soviet friends...

...He did not say they had reopened at Abu Ghraib prison under new management...

...In his 2002 address to the United Nations General Assembly the President said, "We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather...

...If people want to say we are an imperial power, fine...

...Cox, who returned to Harvard Law School .later wrote, "The long-range aim of the Watergate investigation and prosecution was to show that the government could cleanse itself and put itself in a shape that the people could trust...

...The Pentagon has reinforced its ban after several hundred pictures escaped to someone who had filed a Freedom of Information request...

...Reaganomics was based on the socalled "supply-side" theory that reducing taxes would stimulate the economy and shrink the size of government— "starving the beast," it was called...

...A controversy has bubbled up over whether the flag-draped coffins arriving from Iraq and Afghanistan may be shown by the news media...

...But the deep tax cuts, accompanied by whopping defense spending increases, did help to produce an economic boom—along with a record deficit...

...It was Dash and Cox together who laid the basis for the impeachment that Nixon escaped only by resigning...

...He resumed the pursuit of the tapes up to the Supreme Court and won an 8-0 vote that obliged Nixon to release the most incriminating tapes...

...I cannot help but suspect that President Bush—who has yet to attend a funeral service for any of the honored dead—wants to avoid calling attention to the mounting number of casualties in a battle far from over...

...Real happiness is a byproduct of serving others...

...Ambassador [Anatoly F] Dobrynin was in, slobbering over me...

...Powell was not advised of Bush's final decision to go to war until two days after Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia was briefed in January 2003...

...Maybe that is part of the expensive education of a President...

...It is because the disgusting photographs of Iraqi prisoners being abused go to the heart of the President's proclaimed values that the Administration is having so much difficulty contending with the almost universal wave of outrage they have generated...

...Dash later wrote, "Nixon believed he was a sovereign who had the authority to act above the law, [he was] a President who brought us close to dictatorship...

...Bush, termed it "voodoo economics...

...Now the President has only affection for the Security Council that on June 8 unanimously backed the Iraq rebuilding effort, although it offered little in the way of concrete assistance...

...It mandated bringing down the Communist "Evil Empire" by a calculated policy of supporting "freedom fighters" in countries like Angola, Afghanistan and Nicaragua...

...The extent of Pentagon outsourcing is further indicated by the fact that as many as 60 private security companies operate in Iraq, and the number keeps growing for an occupier short of interpreters, short of interrogators, short of restaurant workers to serve meals to the troops...

...The week of saturation with Reagan's flag-draped coffin made me think of other coffins...

...AndReagan's own budget director, David A. Stockman, said the concept was based on an illusion that he dubbed the "rosy scenario...

...concessions, were needed to achieve that result...

...In words that could be used for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal today...

...Conceivably the Bush unilateral fling is over and the Administration is returning to the more orthodox alliance-building of former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who served Bush the elder...

...Bush's Flip-Flop on the UN A superpower can unilaterally destroy a state, but not create a state...

...Nixon said, "Right now there is a chance to win this goddamn war...

...In pursuit of the Reagan Doctrine, the United States in 1983 invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada, where an airport runway was being built that could theoretically handle Cuban jet fighters...

...The Powell Recipe In an address last November at his (and my) alma mater, the City College of New York, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell gave his recipe for happiness: "Happiness cannot be achieved solely by amassing possessions or power...

...I can see no other reason to screen from public view the daily arrival of those who have made the supreme sacrifice...

...The Left-leaning government of Grenada was ousted and a new one installed...

...In December of 1970, Kissinger had a talk with an angry Nixon, who demanded a bombing campaign against targets in neutral Cambodia...

...Perhaps it is too soon to speak of a Wilsonian revival, but that kind of arrogance is no longer heard...

...Considering that no individual identification is visible in the pictures, it is hard to understand the justification for clamping the secrecy lid on the solemn procession of flag-draped coffins being carried off the cargo planes...

...In September 2002, President George W. Bush had only contempt for a United Nations Security Council that refused him a license for war in Iraq...

...The millions of flags that sprouted from lapels and car fenders after the 9/11 assault were tokens of unity in adversity...

...Abu Ghraib, where contract civilians worked even as interrogators for military intelligence, cast a new light on a Pentagon that has outsourced defense functions to an unprecedented degree—from guarding U. S. Administrator L. Paul Bremer to feeding the soldiers in the field...

...He allowed the sale of missiles to Iran to raise money for sending arms to the contras, whom Congress had voted to cut off...

...This is all to discuss the latest Freedom of Information Act release of part of the 20,000 pages William Safire has called the "dead key scrolls"—the secretly recorded Kissinger telephone conversations that the former National Security Adviser fought tooth and nail to avoid releasing...

...They revealed how Nixon had tried to shift blame for the Watergate break-in to the CIA, and how he had ordered payoffs to the Watergate burglars for their silence...

...Duke University Professor Scott L. Silliman, who specializes in law, ethics and national security, considers it a matter of great concern that private contractors fill the most sensitive military roles...

...His 1980 opponent for the Republican nomination, George H.W...

...President...

...It was Hersh who broke the story of the American Army massacre of more than 300 Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai in November 1969...

...It was Dash, the one-time Philadelphia District Attorney, who negotiated the plea bargain deal thatmade disaffected White House Counsel John W Dean the star witness in exposing how Nixon managed the Watergate cover-up...

...Then it was Cox who fought for the release of the most incriminating tapes, driving Nixon to fire the special prosecutor and have his offices padlocked in what became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre...

...Five draft resolutions, with successive U.S...

...He came out of a meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on Sea Island, Georgia, talking about the warmth of their exchange...

...It was his trying to apply the doctrine to the contra rebels in Nicaragua that enmeshed the President in the Iran-contra scandal...

...But the flag has also been used for commercial and political purposes, and few are the candidates whose stump speeches are not set against a huge flag...

...It was also Dean who first expressed the suspicion that Nixon had a taping system in the Oval Office...

...Defenders of the Republic Samuel Dash, who was chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, and Archibald Cox, who was the original Watergate prosecutor, both died on May 31 during the Memorial Day weekend...

...Grenada's ironic monument to Reagan today is his portrait on its postage stamp—issued before he died...

...The position of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has taken on great symbolic importance...

...On January 13,2003, the President, not asking for his opinion, told Secretary Powell he had decided to go to war...

...This was the same Schröder who had campaigned against Bush over the Iraq War...

...It is interesting how the present echoes the past...

...William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, said...

...They pursued their investigative and prosecutorial mandates separately...

...it is a symbol of national unity for a republic without a crowned head...

...Butthatmust be considered a holdingoperationwhilewaiting to see how the antiRumsfeld campaign develops, especially among Republicans in Congress...

...The military command has moved with uncommon speed to schedule the first courts-martial in Baghdad's cavernous convention center...

...Then he asked: "Are you with me on this...

...The Reagan Doctrine was first enunciated in a 1982 speech to the British House of Commons that I covered, and then in the 1985 State of the Union message...

...But the President sought in vain to give NATO some role...

...Diplomacy seemed to have undergone an overhaul as Gunter Pleuger, the German UN delegate, praised the United States for its willingness to accept suggestions and revisions to the Security Council resolution, even if they left the U.S...

...Immediately, Kissinger relayed the order to the Pentagon, saying he wanted a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia—"anything that flies or anything that moves...

...Reading the transcripts, you know why...

...At a Georgetown University symposium that I participated in with David E. Sanger and Steven R. Weisman of the New York Times, it was generally agreed that if Powell had said No and offered his resignation, the war might have been averted...

...There are so many kids just laying there," he said...

...There ensued what White House Chief of Staff Alexander M. Haig called a "national firestorm" that forced Nixon to name a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski...

...And a cargo handler has been fired by a military contractor for furnishing pictures to a newspaper...

...As late as mid-January, Powell was telling British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, "I have a war to stop...

...You find there a clue to how Powel 1 could bring himself to support a war he did not believe in...

...Peter W Singer of the Brookings Institution says, "We have pushed the envelope of military outsourcing past the point of what anyone contemplated...

...According to Bob Woodward's new book, Plan of Attack, Powell wanted the President that if he invaded Iraq, he would "own" this country of 25 million people...

...At the Pentagon Bush praised him for "courageous leadership" and a "superbjob...

...In the spring of 1972, Kissinger elatedly reported to the President that the Soviets had engineered a negotiation breakthrough with the North Vietnamese...

...but they effectively worked in tandem to prevent President Nixon from subverting the government...

...to defy Soviet aggression...

...And there will be more monuments— many more...

...Abu Ghraib Under New Management Speaking in Pittsburgh in April, President Bush said, "Because of our actions, Saddam Hussein's torture chambers are closed...

...More Kissinger Tapes Full disclosure requires me to say that journalist Seymour M. Hersh is a friend of mine, Richard M. Nixon wasn't, and Henry Kissinger has been sometimes, sometimes not...

...in a less commanding position...

...But President Reagan held, as he declared in his State of the Union message, that "we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives...

...This was arguably an unconstitutional act...

...It was fitting, in its way, that they should be memorialized during a holiday dedicated to those who defended the republic...

...Powell replied: "I will support you...

...Would showing the flag-draped coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan be a solemn tribute or a violation of privacy...