The Cold War era was marked by vicious circles.
Americans distrusted Russians as much as Russians distrusted Americans; instead of negotiating apropos of their differences, the two sides pursued enormous nuclear arsenals (as some members of each society died for want of adequate health care).
The chemistry between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev allowed for an end to the Cold War.
How did Reagan’s approach to the mortal enemy of the day differ from Bush’s to the mortal enemy of the present?
He was firm, but non-violent. He did not, for example, carry out a shock-and-awe campaign against Albania for being a communist menace, though it was a totalitarian country in sore need of reforms.
Bush’s invasion of Iraq in response to the Al Qaeda threat is as ridiculous and counterproductive as would have been a Reagan attack on Albania.
Reagan, furthermore, made appeals to the man-in-the-street on the Communist side. He talked about their aspirations to live in freedom and prosperity. They wanted freedom and prosperity. The weight of their desires definitely influenced the Kremlin to put an end to the Cold War.
Present-day Muslim countries are not comprised exclusively of religious fundamentalists who think that a woman’s place is behind the burka and veils and that Western popular music is an affront to Allah. We should be regularly communicating to the populations of Muslim countries that peaceful co-existence, not endless hostility, is in our mutual best interest and that we want to see them enjoying the freedom of listening to whatever music they prefer. That will not produce peace from one day to the next, but the support from without for those people’s aspirations for freedom will, as sure as I am typing this, produce better results in the long run than will shock and awe campaigns.
Reagan also effectively strengthened our defenses, as opposed to depleting them as Bush has done. What sense does it make to leave our ports and chemical plants inadequately defended (sitting ducks to Al Qaeda terrorists) as our military gets stretched to the breaking point in Iraq (where, prior to the invasion, Al Qaeda wielded less than no power)?
In a notorious debate between vice-presidential candidates in 1988, Dan Quayle compared himself to John Fitzgerald Kennedy and got told “You’re no Jack Kennedy.” Will somebody please tell Bush that he is no Reagan?