Warfare Against Their Socities: The Case of Poland,” in Janos Radvanyi, ed., Psychological Operations and Political Warfare in Long-Term Strategic Planning (New York: Praeger, 1990), 103.
110. Edmund Morris, Dutch, 492; and William P. Clark, “President Reagan and the Wall,” Address to the Council of National Policy, San Francisco, California, March 2000, 11.
111. John Barletta, Riding With Reagan: From the White House to the Ranch (New York: Citadel Press, 2005), 52.
112. Reagan’s handwritten draft of the September 1, 1983 KAL statement is on file at the Reagan Library.
113. The last quote is cited in Hedrick Smith, “Reagan’s Crucial Year,” New York Times, October 16, 1983.
114. Reagan, “Remarks at the Annual Pulaski Day Banquet,” New York, NY, September 25, 1983.
115. Ibid.
8. Quoted in “D-Day in Grenada,” Time, November 7, 1983; and Morris, Dutch, 501. 9. Figure is based on 58,000 dead from July 1959 through April 1975, which is a very broad time frame.
10. Quoted in Richard Harwood, “Tidy U.S. War Ends: ‘We Blew Them Away,’” Washington Post, November 6, 1983.
11. Reagan, An American Life, 454.
12. Data provided in Meese, With Reagan, 219.
13. Ibid., 220–21. Numbers provided.
14. It is greatly unappreciated how seldom the tough-talking Reagan chose to use force. For instance, he deployed troops in combat far fewer times than Bill Clinton, not to mention other presidents. In the few cases where he used force, action was fast and decisive, largely successful, and usually a morale booster (another example was the bombing of Moammar Kaddafi in Libya in April 1986). Charles W. Dunn notes that this rapid, rare use of force allowed Reagan to avoid liberal criticism over the use of excessive force in the battle against Communism. He chose prudently, selecting spots that were eminently doable. See Charles W. Dunn, The Scarlet Thread of Scandal (Lanham, MD: Rowman-Littlefield, 2000), 150. Judiciousness in the use of force had long been Reagan’s inclination. In a May 1968 speech, he spoke of one of his favorite presidents: “Eisenhower understood the authority as well as the limitations of force in international politics; he was not afraid to make it count in a world where force still settles the fate of nations.” “Speech to Republican State Central Committee Finance Dinner,” Sheraton-Cleveland Hotel, Cleveland, May 22, 1968. Speech filed at Reagan Library, “RWR—Speeches and Articles (1968),” vertical files.
Reagan, too, felt force was necessary to settle scores—but not all scores at all times. He felt that one must recognize not only force’s authority but also its limitations.
Agreeing that Reagan was “very reluctant to use power,” contrary to his trigger-happy cowboy image, aide Ken Adelman offers an instructive example: Secretary of State Haig, according to Adelman, underwent “tremendous agony” the first two years of the administration because “he wanted to take it to the source and go after Cuba”; but Reagan vetoed the idea. Adelman explained: “Basically because Ronald Reagan, whenever he used force, wanted to make it pretty easy, pretty cheap, pretty quick, and pretty decisive…. [He was] quite moderate, and quite unwilling to really use much.” See Kenneth Adelman in Hofstra conference (1993) proceedings, 240.
15. Quoted in Monica Crowley, Nixon in Winter (New York: Random House, 1998), 226. 16. Lawrence F. Kaplan, “We’re All Cold Warriors Now,” Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2000.
17. Reagan, “Keynoting the Conservative Decade,” Remarks at the Heritage Foundation’s 10th Anniversary Banquet, October 3, 1983.
18. Ibid.
19. Reagan, An American Life, 450–51.
20. Moscow TASS International Service, October 26, 1985, published as “Reagan Speaks on Grenada Invasion Anniversary,” in FBIS-SOV-28-OCT-85, October 28, 1985, A8. 21. TASS commentary written by Konstantin Yuriyev, titled, “A Breakfast of the President (topical satire),” November 4, 1983, published as “Reagan ‘Breakfast’ Remark Prompts Satire,” in FBIS-7-NOV-83, November 7, 1983, A2–3.
22. The Kaiser op-ed appeared in the Washington Post, October 30, 1983, C1.
23. TASS release, November 1, 1983, published as “Critical Review of Reagan Foreign Policy Cited,” in FBIS-SOV-2-NOV-83, November 2, 1983, A4.
24. Vsevolod Ovchinnikov, “McFarlane’s Revelations,”
25. Valentin Falin, “Interview? No, a Program,”
26. Valentin Zorin speaking through Moscow Domestic Service, January 13, 1984, transcript published as “‘International Situation: Questions & Answers,’” in FBIS-SOV-16-JAN84, January 16, 1984, CC8–9.
27. Herb Meyer interviewed on “Reagan,” The American Experience, PBS. On this campaign by Casey, see the work of Peter Schweizer, in particular, Victory, and The Fall of the Berlin Wall.
28. So, said Meyer, “We hit ’em high, we hit ’em low.” Vulnerabilities were pinpointed. Stinger missiles were sent to Afghanistan; Bibles to Leningrad. “And we did a lot more,” he adds. “We were throwing banana peels under their feet every day.” This, said Meyer, was a byproduct of “Reagan’s historic decision” to start playing to win. Meyer in Hofstra conference (1993) proceedings, 126–27.
29. Peter Schweizer obtained a copy of the memo and cites it in Reagan’s War, 231–32.
30. Reagan, “Informal Exchange With Representatives of Le Figaro,” December 22, 1983. He rightfully identified this as one of his “greatest triumphs.” Reagan, “Farewell Address to the Nation,” January 11, 1989.
7. The assessment of the left and academic community is powerful. The verdict from academe—itself overwhelmingly politically liberal—began surfacing early. It was evident in a 1985 poll by National Journal, published only months into Reagan’s second term. The findings came from a questionnaire sent to members of the Presidency Research Group, an affiliate of the American Political Science Association. More than half of the 225 members replied, which, stated National Journal, provided a statistically representative sample. The group rated Reagan well, scoring him an A-minus/B-plus. Most of the assessments of Reagan’s policies were negative, partly reflecting the policy biases of those doing the ratings. Where Reagan scored especially well was in the restoration of “morale and trust” to both the country and the office of the presidency. Those who gave Reagan high marks pointed to his “mastery of the presidential office,” the restoration of national pride, and the “reviving of trust and confidence” in an institution “that in the post-Vietnam era had been perceived as being unworkable.” See Dom Bonafede, “Presidential Scholars Expect History To Treat the Reagan Presidency Kindly,” National Journal, 17, no. 14 (April 6, 1985): 743–47.
Harvard’s renowned presidential scholar Richard Neustadt, who said Reagan gave Americans a sense that “all was well,” recalled that watching Jimmy Carter in the presidency, one had to wonder if the presidency was “even possible.” Neustadt speaking on documentary, “The American President,” PBS, WNET-New York, 2000. Neustadt also said this in his classic work, Presidential Power.
Some political scientists refer to this rebirth of morale, for both the office and the country, as the “symbolic” aspect of Reagan’s presidency. It was a key factor driving his surge upward in late 1990s rankings of presidents. Among those surveys was a major 2000 poll by the Federalist Society and the Wall Street Journal, where Reagan ranked as the eighth best president ever, placing him in the “near great” category. A key factor in Reagan’s rising stock at the time was the 1990s erosion of the symbolic element of the presidency, due to the private behavior of President Bill Clinton. University of Louisville Political Scientist Gary Gregg spoke to this: “The symbolic aspects of the presidency are well under-rated…. This is one reason Reagan should be ranked higher than he generally is.” See James Lindgren, “Ranking Our Presidents,” 11. There are countless academic authorities that credit Reagan with restoration to the nation and the presidency: Larry Berman, A. E. Jeffcoat, James T. Patterson, Robert Dallek,
