What Would Reagan Do?

++Stephen Colbert did a fun spoof on Bill O'Relly,Ileana Ros-Letinnen, and others appearing on Fox News opining about what President Reagan would do about Syria. Colbert said they invented Super Reagan, who can solve all present problems.

++Invoking Reagan to contrast with President Obama has been a constant practice of the Right thoughout Obama's presidency. We had the Zombie Reagan in the 2012 presidential primary, who would cut taxes, balance the budget and create millions of jobs. Now we have the Reagan who would simply warn Assad not to use chemical weapons and if he did,Assad would be assassinated. And certainly Reagan wouldn't trust the Russkies in any negotiated settlement.

++This is what the real Reagan did in the Middle East on such matters. To secure the release of the Iranian hostages, his envoy made a commitment that the United States would not invade Iran or destabilize the  Iranian Islamic Republic. 

In 1983,the marine barracks  in Lebanon were attacked by suicide bombers of Hezbollah and 299 American and French servicemen were killed. Reagan promptly withdrew from the country.

From 1986-1988, Saddam Hussein conducted the Al-Anfal campaign against Kurds and other ethnic minorities using chemical weapons. Separate from that campaign was the gas attack in 1988 on Halabja, a Kurdish territory, between 3,200 and 5,000 were killed and 7-10,000 were injured and thousands more died years later. From classified documents, we know the United States knew all along in great operational detail about these attacks and did nothing because we wanted a tie in the Iran-Iraq War. Ronald Reagan did nothing about the largest use of chemical weapons since WWII.

Saddam Hussein attacked the U.S.S. Stark and killed 37 Americans. Ronald Reagan simply accepted Saddam's apologies.

With the war in Afghanistan, USIA became the world's largest distributor of literature prompting Islamic fundamentalism, surpassing the Saudi efforts to spread Wahhabism. Islamic fundamentalism was seen as the appropriate ideological counter-balance to Communism.

I don't think it is wise for conservatives to invoke the Big Ron on matters concerning Syria.