Reagan was a terrible President who was a disaster at Foreign Policy, Economic Policy, and Social Policy. He may not be the worst President ever but he is likely in the top three of Worst Presidents of the 20th Century.
1.) War on Drugs ramped up to new levels:
2.) His silence and lack response to AIDS for more than
six years. Even to the point of not allowing Surgeon General Koop to speak out about AIDS.
This would be like if today, Obama told his Surgeon General to not tell the American People about a disease that could affect anyone and without treatment
will kill them.
3.) Iran-Contra
4.) Recognition and essentially support of the Apartheid Government in South Africa.
5.) Providing intelligence and weapons to both the Iraqi and Iranian Government during the Iran-Iraq war.
6.) His support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan which would eventually result in the rise of Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. Support included weapons, funding, and CIA training.
7.)
Foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The World Court would find that this constituted state sponsorship of terrorism and an attempt to overthrow an elected government. Nicaragua decided to take their case to the World Court in Nicaragua v. United States. In an unprecedented decision in the history of world justice, the World Court sanctioned the U.S. for "unlawful use of force" for "sponsoring paramilitary activity in and against Nicaragua", ordering the U.S. government to pay billions of U.S. dollars in compensation. The World Court ordered Reagan to terminate his campaign, but the Reagan White House dismissed the ruling and then vetoed two Security Council resolutions affirming the Court ruling and calling on all nations to observe international law
8.)
This pattern of funding right-wing military and paramilitary groups would continue in Guatemala. In 1999 a report on the Guatemalan Civil War from the UN-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification stated that the American training of the officer corps in counter-insurgency techniques was a key factor in the genocide
Entire Mayan villages were attacked and burned and their inhabitants were slaughtered in an effort to deny the guerillas protection. According to the commission, between 1981 and 1983 the Guatemalan governmentfinanced and trained by the USdestroyed four hundred Mayan villages and butchered 200,000 peasants (1).
9.)
In Panama this funding was more covert. Manuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama, was on the payroll of the CIA as of 1967. By 1971 his involvement in the drug trade was well known by the DEA but he was an important asset of the CIA and so was well-protected. CIA Director George H. W. Bush arranged to give Noriega a raise in 1976 to a six-figure salary. The Carter administration dropped the future dictator from its payroll but he was reinstated by the Reagan administration and his salary peaked in 1985 at $200,000 (2). Noriega allowed CIA listening stations in his country, provided funding for the Contras, and protected covert U.S. and U.S.-funded air shipments of supplies to the Contras(3).
10.)
Reagan offered controversial support to the rightist El Salvador government throughout his term; he feared a takeover by the FMLN during the El Salvador Civil War which had begun in the late 1970s. The war left 75,000 people dead, 8,000 missing and one million homeless; some one million Salvadorans, fleeing the war and government backed right-wing death squads, immigrated to the United States. He backed attempts at introducing democratic elections with mixed success.
The list goes on really.
