gandalf: Excellent post. I don’t know what I would add, save I disagree with the idea of cutting bait in Iraq. I say this only because of the aftermath in Southeast Asia after we unceremoniously hit the door there in 1975.

Aecetia: I would also say that you need to take that point in history and put it into context. Reagan was an ideologue and a true believer and the Cold War was at one of its hottest points since the early 1960s. Much like our allying with Stalin and the Soviet Union in order to defeat the greater threat of Nazism, I believe that Reagan’s interpretation of containment could be brutally pragmatic at times and, yes, it was helped by Cold Warriors like Kirkpatrick (a woman that always struck as me as being even more forceful than Maggie Thatcher).

sdnativeson: I had a Jesuit priest in school that used to advocate “Benevolent Despotism”. I’m thinking that is the direction the US should go from here on out. I’ve taken it on as my coaching and parenting style, and the early returns seem to support it.