by hilzoy
I have noticed with horror the way stories from Iraq that once would have shocked me have come to seem ordinary. (Not less awful; just less surprising.) I can remember when the news of an IED killing three or four soldiers was unusual, and when it was a particularly bad day when the number of Iraqis whose deaths made the papers hit double digits. Not anymore.
But I really don’t want to imagine a day when this is not shocking:
“The Shiite prime minister promised Sunday to reshuffle his Cabinet after calling lawmakers disloyal and blaming Sunni Muslims for raging sectarian violence that claimed at least 159 more lives, including 35 men blown apart while waiting to join Iraq’s police force.
Among the unusually high number of dead were 50 bodies found behind a regional electrical company in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, and 25 others found scattered throughout the capital. Three U.S. troops were reported killed, as were four British service members.”
One hundred and fifty nine? In one day? Dear God.
The story goes on to note that “the country’s Sunni defense minister challenged Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s contention that the U.S. military should quickly pull back into bases and let the Iraqi army take control of security countrywide.” This was not a surprise — not after reading this story in the NYT:
“The commander, Brig. Gen. Shakir Hulail Hussein al-Kaabi, was chosen this summer by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad to lead the Iraqi Army’s Fifth Division in Diyala Province. Within weeks, General Shakir went to Colonel Jones with a roster of people he wanted to arrest.
On the list were the names of nearly every Sunni Arab sheik and political leader whom American officers had identified as crucial allies in their quest to persuade Sunnis to embrace the political process and turn against the powerful Sunni insurgent groups here.
“Where’s the evidence?” Colonel Jones demanded of General Shakir. “Where’s the proof? What makes us suspect these guys? None of that stuff exists.”
To that, Colonel Jones recalled, the Iraqi commander replied simply, “I got this from Baghdad.”
The incident was one of many that alarmed Colonel Jones, who just completed a yearlong tour as commander of American forces in Diyala. In the end, he said, he concluded that the Iraqi general’s real ambition was to destroy the Sunni political movement here — possibly on orders from Baghdad.
“I believe this is a larger plan to make Diyala a Shia province, rather than a Sunni province,” he said. (…)
Led by Lt. Col. Louis Lartigue, the squadron detained the current and former commanders of the major crimes unit of the Muqdadiya police force and accused them of running death squads. They also arrested an Iraqi Army battalion commander in connection with death squad activity.
Troops also identified an Iraqi captain, now on the run and thought to be in Basra, who Colonel Jones said had been placed in his army job by General Shakir and is now believed to have led death squads in Muqdadiya.
“As we got into it, there were guys more than just partial to the Shia,” Colonel Lartigue said. “They were criminals.” He said General Shakir should be removed for “poor generalship,” if nothing else. “It would be a little like getting Al Capone on tax evasion,” he said.
But it is not clear whether anyone other than the Iraqi leaders can remove a commander of his rank, and even that would still leave Diyala with abundant problems.
“The U.S. Army is past the point where we say, ‘Fire this guy,’ ” Colonel Jones said. “All we can say is, ‘Hey, this guy is bad. Iraqi government, what are you going to do about it?’ ”
“We’re going out on a low note,” added Colonel Jones, whose unit, the Third Heavy Brigade Combat Team of the Fourth Infantry Division, is returning to Fort Carson, Colo. “We are very frustrated because we were so close to getting this thing moving in what we thought was the right direction. Now, the army and I believe the police are moving against this direction.
“This is a tipping point. If we demonstrate to the Sunnis that we are not going to remove Shakir and that we are going to allow him to do business as usual, then they’re going to lose faith in us and faith in the reconciliation process. And this thing is going to go kinetic in a big way.””
As long as the militias control either the government, the army, or both, our present policy of training the Iraqi Army so that they can stand up and we can stand down is a non-starter. It’s worth recalling, at this point, that the geniuses who got us into this war did not begin planning for dealing with the Iraqi army and the militias until February of 2003. Here’s what happened to that plan:
“He never got to test it. Orha chief Jay Garner liked the plan, but, in early May, President Bush replaced Garner with Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, and orha became the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Crandall subsequently learned he wouldn’t be continuing on to Baghdad and wouldn’t receive an anticipated $70 million DDR contract. His contacts in the CPA and the U.S. military told him that senior Pentagon officials thought “no taxpayer money should be spent on a defeated force.” Days later, on May 23, Bremer issued CPA Order 2, which disbanded the Iraqi military without attending to the future of its nearly 400,000 officers and troops. Crandall, stunned, thought that neglecting DDR for both Saddam’s army and the militias was a dangerous mistake. But the incoming CPA director for national security, Walter Slocombe, had a more sanguine view of the militias.””
And here’s what I wrote about that decision over a year ago (in a post that also has a lot more background on the militias):
“Just think about that one for a moment. Crandall was not talking about spending money to be nice to the defeated force. He was not proposing to buy Iraqi army and militia members little gold pins commemorating their years of service, or to send them off into retirement with a no-expense-spared going-away party. He was proposing to figure out which members of the army and militias could be integrated into an Iraqi army, and to find ways of reintegrating the rest into civilian life that would minimize the chances that they would pick up guns and go out and wreak havoc. Which is, of course, what they have done. Instead, “senior Pentagon officials” decided not to spend money on “a defeated force.” The very same defeated force that now constitutes a large part of the insurgency, as well as the militias that were never disarmed, and are now terrorizing the north and south of Iraq. What a brilliant decision.”
Andrew Bacevich has an op-ed in the LATimes on “the debate over “who lost Iraq?”” I can’t imagine why there’s any debate over this. The answer is obvious: the administration that fought this war with no restraints on its power, and proceeded to display a combination of arrogance, incompetence, and irresponsibility that still takes my breath away.
*** UPDATE: Despite what it says at the bottom of this post, it was written by me, hilzoy. I had been removing spam, and I must have forgotten to log out of the admin account. Moe has no responsibility whatsoever for this post, and would probably disagree vehemently with it.
Certainly we should nail this failure to the Bush administration, starting at the top and going several layers down.
How widely or deeply we need to go on responsibility depends on how you feel about an argument like:”Well, President McCain would not have lost Iraq, so he will handle Iran competently.”
Then there is the third level, of Atrios and Yglesias, that Iraq could never have been won, by anybody under any circumstances, which is so broad as to really remove any culpability or include almost everyone, but might lead to a better policy.
Andrew Bacevich has an op-ed in the LATimes on “the debate over “who lost Iraq?”” I can’t imagine why there’s any debate over this. The answer is obvious: the administration that fought this war with no restraints on its power, and proceeded to display a combination of arrogance, incompetence, and irresponsibility that still takes my breath away.
That didn’t take long for you to reveal yourself after the election.
We haven’t lost Iraq until we decide to lose it. You all want to lose it, therefore you have decided it is lost. This is not going to go down like Vietnam where the Democrats approved the Communist takeover and got away with it, thanks to John Kerry among others. I will personally go to Arlington Cemetery and extinguish the eternal flame at JFK’s grave if you surrender to Al Qaeda in Iraq.
You had your successes in fighting against America before and it led to the killing fields in Cambodia, thanks President Jimmy Carter, but it is not going to happen this time. You will not be successful in wiping the Kurds and Israelis from the face of the earth as long as there is anything I can do about it.
By the way, Moe Lane, you are a damned fool if you think that losing is the best way to go.
That was DaveC, representing the “I guess we just didn’t want it enough’ school.
DaveC, what distinguishes your view from the Confederate loyalists who do not concede final Northern victory in the American civil war, Russian restorationists still loyal to the czar, or the Yorkists who think that their favorite dynasty wuz robbed when Richard III went down? What would constitute evidence that victory is not a practical goal?
Mods, is accusing everyone opposed to continuing the occupation of Iraq of wishing genocide on Israelis and Kurds actually within the posting rules?
You should probably head on out to Iraq, DaveC, and win the war. Or are you only good for empty accusations of treason?
You had your successes in fighting against America before
Go check the election results, DaveC.
The Democrats are doing what has been asked of them by the American people. If anyone here is fighting America, it would be you.
“We haven’t lost Iraq until we decide to lose it.”
As a general proposition, this is pure delusion.
Why do the same people who spent the last years telling us that “elections have consequences” insist that incompetent strategy and inadequate tactics have no consequences?
“You all want to lose it, therefore you have decided it is lost.”
To the extent that I am included in that “you all”, this is a lie, and an unusually scurrilous one.
The Bush regime had six years of getting everything its way. There were no restrictions–no restrictions of any kind–placed on its ability to run the war in any way it wanted to.
I’m sorry, DaveC. I share your feeling of heartsick disappointment at how horribly wrong this war has gone. But I am not going to start accusing my compatriots of “wanting to lose”. I just accuse our leaders of not knowing how to win.
Which they have demonstrated time and time again is the truth about them.
“You all want to lose it, therefore you have decided it is lost.”
false. but assuming it was true, it would have nearly as much effect on the situation over there as people who decide “we must win, therefore we shall”. wishing and stomping your foot won’t make it so.
Pull out your kids before it’s too late.
Past years show new cons great failure.
Shitte can’t control Iraq mess.
Good grief, that’s one of the most vile and ignorant screeds I’ve ever seen come out of DaveC. Dave–if that really is you–you ought be ashamed of yourself. Go sleep off the election hangover and come back when you’re ready to actually discuss this.
I think DaveC was speaking to that the “Posted by Moe Lane” at the bottom of the post. Not sure, though.
But the rest: pretty uncalled-for.
DaveC: it was me, not Moe, who wrote this. And I no more want us to lose than I want illnesses like AIDS and malaria to exist. Saying that there is such a disease as AIDS, or that we are losing, isn’t a way of expressing approval; it’s a statement about what I take reality to be.
DaveC:
While it’s only natural, when one’s country is involved in a military conflict, to wish for a “victory”, rather than a “defeat”, the sad fact is that in the US’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, such terms have been basically, by this point in time, rendered irrelevant. And they have been rendered so by the actions and policies of the Adminstration which has waged the war;
and no one else. No one else.
Talk about “winning” in Iraq, by late 2006, is just so much waste of breath/pixels: the
fundamental problem is that the (US) Government itself has never properly defined “victory” in any detail, only a vague set of hopes (a peacful, democratic, unified pro-Western Iraq, etc) which by any rational metric have not, aren’t in the process of, and WAY not likely to be fulfilled. Ever.
The best, I think, that we can hope for in Iraq is to devise some sort of plan which will (gradually and carefully) get American servicemen/women out of harm’s way while providing some level of internal security for some form of Iraqi “state”.
And I’m sorry if this scenario casts a pall on your simplistic win-vs-lose worldview, but, as hilzoy points out, this is what the reality is – and while I, like hilzoy, don’t particularly want a “defeat”, we have to take reality into account sooner or later (unlike President Bush and his Administration who just seem to want to ignore it).
Oh, and Dave: posting rules forbid my expressing my true reaction: but the stuff about “you all want to lose” and “fighting against America” really isn’t the best way to frame an argument. We’ve read enough of your postings by now to know you’re better than this: trollery won’t get you anywhere.
This is not going to go down like Vietnam where the Democrats approved the Communist takeover and got away with it…
Hell, Vietnam wasn’t even like the Vietnam of your febrile dreams. Please confine your delusions to a single conflict at a time; it’s awfully hard to combat that much calumny in one post.
“such terms have been basically, by this point in time, rendered irrelevant.”
Naw, Iraq is a horrible defeat for all Americans. And when a country loses a war so humilatingly, the consequences are usually catastrophic, in several senses of the word:examples abound:post-Civil War South; France after 1870; the immediate fall of the Kaiser in Germany, decade of chaos, rise of fascism; Russia after 1918; 70s America followed by Reagan.
The next decade will make the last look like a cakewalk. I continue to believe we need to think revolution, not reform and need to imagine a totally new America, not a restoration or reconstruction of something broken. And the final destruction of our domestic enemies.
Signed:Lil’ Mary Sunshine, eternal optimist.
DaveC: “You had your successes in fighting against America before and it led to the killing fields in Cambodia, thanks President Jimmy Carter, but it is not going to happen this time. You will not be successful in wiping the Kurds and Israelis from the face of the earth as long as there is anything I can do about it.”
I’m not sure what Carter had to do with the Khmer Rouge, considering that it was Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia, pre-Carter, which was particularly helpful in setting things up for the Khmer Rouge to take charge (it’s nice to have chaos, when one is trying to take over).
Perhaps you’re implying that Carter didn’t give military assistance to Vietnam, when they were fighting the Khmer Rouge. However, that was also a Reagan policy (in fact, the Reagaon policy was to assist the Khmer Rouge), and I don’t see you attacking Reagan.
Although I am a life-long liberal, I am nonplussed by the comparison of Reagan/Bush to Leninist Russia, Weimar Germany, and the Resonstruction South. Was this intended facetiously? Little though I liked Reagan, the 80s saw a modest pullback in certain sorts of government regulation and social investment, not the sort of cruel chaos you invoke by these comparisons.
“Was this intended facetiously?”
No.
DaveC
We haven’t lost Iraq until we decide to lose it.
I guess once there has been a long enough period of Democratic Congressional control, coupled with events that can be falsely spun as Democrats obstructing the glorious Bush plan for victory, then we can say Iraq is lost because then Bush can be absolved and Democrats blamed.
That seems to be the conservative agenda these days. With the warmonger McCain a Republican front runner for 2008, it is going to make the next two years very interesting in that so many conservatives are going to be desparate to pin blame for this failed war on someone other than themselves.
That jockeying may already be underway with the “bipartisan” commission studying future options for the war. Does anyone expect Baker to propose something other than face saving devices for Bush, et al.? It was a mistake to have him involved in the effort for this reason, but perhaps wise in another sense in that Bush would probably not listen if anyone else brought him even a morsel of unpleasant news.
______________
The NYT article regarding Gen. al-Kaabi is as clear a death knell as any on hopes for a less than disasterous conclusion to the Iraq adventure (I assume it accurately reflects a general trend). The army we are relying on to straighten things out so that we can leave appears to be an active part of the problem. And the orders come from the government we have set up, which seems intent on fomenting rather than quelling civil war.
The point has already been made many times that the Iraqi Army will end up being just another militia that serves the political ends of the government officials that control it. How many more Americans must die in order to insure this result?
“Little though I liked Reagan, the 80s saw a modest pullback in certain sorts of government regulation and social investment, not the sort of cruel chaos you invoke by these comparisons.”
Trilobite, I’m not sure what Bob M meant, but AIDS victims in America might have a different perspective on Reagan–the same might be true of Mayan villagers who survived the genocide in Guatemala while Reagan praised the human rights record of those responsible.
As for DaveC, you at least ought to get your basic history right before you type your um, thoughts, though I suppose that would spoil the mood. Vietnam and Cambodia fell to the communists in 1975, before Jimmy Carter was President.
Bombing Cambodia didn’t just create chaos there–it probably killed hundreds of thousands of villagers and actively recruited enraged village survivors for the Khmer Rouge. That analysis regarding its recruitment effects is directly from the CIA (as quoted in Ben Kiernan). During the early 70’s refugees were more scared by the bombing then by the Khmer Rouge. And yeah, that was under Nixon, not Carter.
Honestly mcmanus, again with the typical understatements and euphemisms? We’ve already entered a new revolutionary period (on Oct 26 of 2001 at the absolute latest, though I personally would argue for Dec 13 of 2000, and I could easily see someone making a case for January 20 of 1969!).
bob is just trying to break it to you gently, folks 😉 The final shape of the New America is unknowable, but the Old America is history. And don’t believe anyone who tells you that revolutions can only be initiated by the people. No doubt things would have evolved differently if 9/11 hadn’t happened, but it’s delusional to believe that once tyranny has its foot in the door it will go away without a fight.
Of course it’s early days yet. Six years ago there was no organized insurgency, and last Tuesday was the first substantial counterrevolutionary success. Just because it happens slowly, and the factions aren’t shooting at each other doesn’t mean it isn’t a real revolution (and no, I’m not saying it couldn’t come to shooting one of these days).
p.s. bob you forgot Russia after Afghanistan. Whether that’s more hopeful or less hopeful than your other examples is debatable, but I think it belongs in the list…
Dave C’s comments should be taken very seriously–as a warning to al Democrats. he is expressing the views of at least 30% of the population.
The leaders of the Republican party can’t afford to be seen as the ones who lost Iraq. For the sake of the survival of the party as well as their won egos they have to find a way to doge responisbility and that means blaming the Deomcrats. As Dave C has demonstrated a third of the population is ready to buy their dodge.
Facts don’t matter. Reality doesn’t matter. The argument over who lost Iraq will go on for decades. The Republicans want this to play out like VietNam: “We could have won but the Democrats made us lose”. Again, it matters not the least wha the truth may be. Egos are at stake here and the Republican party’s only selling point is the myth of their stregnth on defense. They HAVE to blame the Democrats.
The Deomcrats my think that they got a madate to do something different in Iraq but they did not get a mandate to lose. If the Deomcrats force the administration to withdraw the Republicans will blame the Democrats for the defeat. They will succeed in blaming, too.
Facts and truth don’t matter if the lie is what people want to believe.
bobm:
Love your own personal version of bomb throwing, but really?
Naw, Iraq is a horrible defeat for all Americans. And when a country loses a war so humilatingly, the consequences are usually catastrophic, in several senses of the wordexamples abound:post-Civil War South; France after 1870; the immediate fall of the Kaiser in Germany, decade of chaos, rise of fascism; Russia after 1918; 70s America followed by Reagan.
Which of these is not like the other? America may have lost the Viet Nam war and has yet to have sink in the loss of Iraq, but not in the sense of an occupation by a foreign power and destruction of existing social orders. Heck, the French loss of Algeria was more of a blow and a better analogy for the political impact at home.
I would say that the Viet Nam war again provides an imperfect but useful analogy to the Iraq debacle — the primary after effect of both will be the recriminations as to who was responsible. I expect the conservatives to try desparately to lay off blame for Iraq — DaveC reflects a trend rather than a lone voice.
The big wild card in this is the ongoing war in Afghanistan — will it also fall into the abyss as it seems to be doing now? Failure in Iraq puts a whole new spin on the significance of Afghanistan. Bush policy is almost certain to lead to failure there (with him undermanning the effort from the beginning, making deals with Afghan drug warlords and acquiescing to Pakistan allowing Taliban and Al Queda safe harbor to attack Afghanistan — a weird repeat of the 80s). But it provides a second drama and one that actually relates to the war against Al Queda terrorists, and which will unfold in the remaining two Bush years.
lily: If the Deomcrats force the administration to withdraw the Republicans will blame the Democrats for the defeat. They will succeed in blaming, too.
I wish I thought you were wrong.
I’ve been thinking for some time that the only strategy Bush has left is to pretend “everything’s fine” and have troops stay in Iraq until leaving Iraq can be blamed on someone else. From Bush’s pov, it doesn’t matter who: not even if he is succeeded by a Republican.
For the oil interests funding the Bush clan, though, the important thing is that the US retain access to/control over Iraqi oil, despite George W. Bush (again) having made an expensive mess of things. To that end, I suspect the goal is still close to what the original GWBush administration plan was: put a “strong man” loyal to the US in charge of Iraq, and call that victory. Let’s not forget that the original plan for the occupation was to put Ahmad Chalabi in charge of Iraq, sell off all the nationalized industries (except the oil) to the highest bidder, no restriction to Iraqi bidders only. That would have meant an Iraq where US corporations owned most of the industry and had built most of the infrastructure, and a government (supposedly) loyal to/compliant with US control, in charge of the oil industry. I think that’s what victory still looks like to the American oil industry and the American corporations who have done so well out of Iraqi “reconstruction”: that is, to Bush and to Cheney.
Of course, if the Democratic Party can take the blame for “losing” the war in Iraq, all the better for the Republican party, and I don’t suppose that Bush and Cheney and their backers would find that in the least disagreeable.
DaveC, you are aware that it was Bush I who left the Kurds to twist in the wind following the 1991 Gulf War, are you not? Lotta dead Kurdish rebels over the next year or so. Not so much once Clinton came in and enforced the no-fly zone.
What ARE they teaching the kids in school these days…
Lily, don’t spread that name around! You’re giving away the game.
Trilobite, I’m not sure what Bob M meant, but AIDS victims in America might have a different perspective on Reagan–the same might be true of Mayan villagers who survived the genocide in Guatemala while Reagan praised the human rights record of those responsible.
I’m sure they would, but I wasn’t making a moral assessment of the Reagan-Bush years. In fact, I expressly disclaimed such an attempt. I was challenging the idea that America in that period could be meaningfully likened to countries suffering post-war economic and social collapse. Reaganite America’s moral lapses with respect to foreign policy or tiny domestic minorities shed little light on that question.
I am, in short, calling for a sense of proportion. Reagan was far from my favorite President, but he was no Lenin, and the stock kerfluffles, homelessness increase, AIDS epidemic, etc. of the 80s are not in the same league with the hyperinflation, mass unemployment, mass starvation, riots, insurrections, lynchings, miltary clampdowns, curfews, resettlements, etc., that characterized the periods invoked by Mr. McManus. Anyone who thinks they were should visit Africa, Iraq, or Palestine and see what social breakdown actually looks like.
I agree with that, trilobite–I was just making the moral point. Go to some places outside the US and Reagan’s influence had effects similar to that of Lenin–not just in Guatemala, but El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Angola. But yeah, if he’d done that in the US he wouldn’t be remembered so fondly.
I sorta doubt Bob M literally meant that 5 million people died of famine or other civil-war-related causes within the US, as happened in the USSR under Lenin. But maybe it’s necessary to point this out.
“Love your own personal version of bomb throwing, but really?”
That even liberals can say that Ronnie wasn’t all that bad shows that Ronnie was indeed very very bad. He changed the entire ethos and conciousness of the most powerful nation on Earth, from a creditor nation and a egalitarian model for the world to a debtor nation in search of slav…cheap labor overseas. Dow 900-2800. Reagan changed the ethos of the business class, from pride in production to the search for windfall profits thru market manipulation.
He made us like it, and it may be irrrevocable.
Almost nothing Junior has done was not made possible, perhaps inevitable, by the preparation and model provided by Reagan. Example:backing Saddam, and providing Saddam with chemical weapons. So how much of the current death toll is on Ronnie’s head? Deficit, star wars, cronies and corruption attempting to actually harm effective gov’t agencies…all Reagan.
Okay, the millions aren’t dead yet. But if Ronnie had continued the Carter energy policies, leaving aside energy independence and a better position in the ME, where as a country setting the model for a non-carbon economy, would the world be on global warming 25 years on? I suspect a strong move in the 80s would actually have eliminated the threat. So the billions that will die on the coasts as the waters rise and thank the Gipper.
Oh, and much much more.
Why the Trade Deficit Matters ..Thomas Palley, from today. Good dude, posts infrequently.
“Over the last twenty-five years successive Republican and Democratic administrations have assiduously created a global economy in which goods, capital, finance, and corporations are free to move. This new system has boosted profits by allowing companies to establish export-production platforms in low wage countries and batter America’s unions into submission.”
Worth reading. “Outsourcing” was not something that just happened, but was deliberately created with fiscal and monetary policy by Greenspan and his friends.
And that we deny it, just as we deny Reagan’s “SS Trust Fund FICA Ripoff” shows the additional degradation in discourse and rational thinking the our 2nd worst President ever created. He was a liar, and nobody cared.
Trilobite, my intent was to invoke relatively famous lost causes some people won’t give up on.
That even liberals can say that Ronnie wasn’t all that bad shows that Ronnie was indeed very very bad.
Love this post, too, although Reagan is still not a parallel to your other examples, and I don’t think Reagan can be described as a result of post-Viet Nam chaos. But so what, since I agree with the larger point rather than the details of how you made it.
The point well made (and which really matters) is that Bush is not some deviation from Reagan conservatism — the ills of Junior are an extension of the same philosophy. As a matter of building conventional wisdom, nothing is more important right now than to link Reagan/Bush conservatism permanently to the current messes. Saint Ronnie may have been a snake oil salesman, but he was nonetheless a good one, and now is the time to correct the historical lesson of his legacy.
I agree with your bigger idea — that severe military losses can result in severe political change. (Heck, even succesful military conflict can have a bad effect — PNAC is an example of the ugly militarism that can result from success — Iraq can be seen as the warmongering peversion resulting from the wrong conclusions being drawn from the success in the Cold War). We are in a time of ideological peril as the US public realizes the extent of the Iraq disaster (it has yet to really sink in). Afghanistan may also further stir the mix in ugly ways.
But military reversal does not authomatically lead to such evils — it can serve as a crucible for burning out the poison (like facism from post-WWII Germany). It just makes it doubly necessary to denounce the ideology that brought us to this place, starting with Reagan.