(no subject)

[redbird]

Can someone explain to me why we're having a national day of mourning for the man who created the Taliban?

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Tradition -- it's sort of what's expected for presidents. I'm trying to remember: did Nixon get one? I thought so.

[snippy]

No, I don't think anyone can adequately explain that. What a waste of tax dollars.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

LBJ was the last one to get a funeral on this scale, at any rate. But Nixon is the only one who's died since.

so soon forgotten

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

a national day of mourning for the presidency would seem to me more appropriate.

carter was the last president i actually respected, and who did not dishonour the office.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Er, no. He created what eventually became the Northern Alliance. The Taliban were the radicals who came after, and threw them out of most of the country.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Even if he had created the Taliban, though, if that was the price of getting rid of the USSR, it would have been well worth it.

Might as well ask the same about FDR, who armed the USSR, or about JFK, who created Diem.

Mourning?

[maryread.livejournal.com]

who me? no I'm not mourning for him. the ten young men whose photos were shown in silence on the NewsHour this evening, though -- and i never even knew them.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Reagan certainly deserves honour. But, as Eugene Volokh points out (http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_06_07.shtml#1086737836), perhaps this isn't exactly the most appropriate way to honour him.

[avram]

We’re having a day of mourning for Jimmy Carter?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

if that was the price of getting rid of the USSR, it would have been well worth it.

What, from Afghanistan?* Ask the women who went to university under the USSR, and were forbidden to teach their daughters to read under the Taliban. Given the choice between living in Moscow under Stalin and living in Kabul under the Taliban, I know which I'd choose: neither one would give me much freedom, but as a woman, I'd have far more freedom under Stalin than under Taliban. Not that this says much for Stalin: but at least I'd have the freedom to read, write, go out of the house, do my own shopping, go to university, work for a living, marry or not. Not a lot of freedom, but more than the Taliban would have allowed me.

The support of the mojaheddin (a mix of groups, including the bloc we now call the Northern Alliance and the group called the Taliban - which has been around since at least the early 1960s) over the USSR was the most shameful decision made in Carter's presidency. The decision to continue that support was not the most shameful decision of Reagan's presidency: I think we have to put supporting terrorists against a democratically elected government as more shameful than continuing a disgusting policy begun by Reagan's predecessor. I have to admit that deliberately supporting terrorists is more shameful even than invading Grenada to look good or ignoring an epidemic disease because it's only killing people who "don't matter" (though the latter is probably the stupidest decision of Reagan's administration).

Reagan did far more evil than good in his life - even counting 50 B-movies.

*If you mean the myth that Reagan ended the Cold War and brought down the USSR, that is indeed just a story right-wingers tell to avoid having to give thanks and praise to Mikhail Gorbachev. While such a great concatenation of events cannot really be sourced to one individual, when so many people are responsible, Mikhail Gorbachev was the one individual most responsible. Ronald Reagan simply happened to be President of the United States at the time.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Reagan certainly deserves honour.

For what? He was an evil President. Does he deserve honour for being a good husband and father? Many men are that without getting a national day of mourning.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Because the Republicans control all three branches of government.

B

[ex-erikvolso370.livejournal.com]

And, of course, the media.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

Because George Bush wants to get re-elected.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

That would have required him to have been elected the first time.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. I was using that as shorthand ...

[ala-too.livejournal.com]

Some one who is older than me will have to tell me if its tradition to have a national day of mourning for all Presidents when they die. If so, I'd be OK with that. Otherwise, it would seem rather political.

I wasn't a Reagan supporter. He was the only President under which I really wondered if we were going to get into a nuclear war. I don't wish death on anyone. In this case, it might well have been the best thing given his illness. That aside, I don't think death is the appropriate time to be nasty to anyone.

What actually bothers me more is that at a State funeral (read my tax dollars) no Democratic President is speaking. Reagan, for all my non-support, didn't have the US and Them view which is so prevalent in today's politics. That came much later. I wonder how comfortable he is with the funeral arrangements.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

*snork*

I'm just glad I wasn't drinking coffee when I read that...

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

And, of course, Reagan wasn't a good father, at least to his first two children, or a good husband, at least to his first wife.

Remember, Ronald "Family Values" Reagan is still the only American president to have been divorced. And he couldn't pick his son Michael out of a line-up, by all accounts.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

A national day of mourning is not traditional in the case of the death of every US president--Nixon didn't receive one.

[ala-too.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure we can tell anything from looking at the treatment of the only President that resigned.

How were other Presidents who served full terms with no resignation treated?

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Actually, I have to correct myself. It was widely reported that this was the first presidential Day of Mourning since LBJ's death in 1973, but that turns out to be false. According to a couple of pieces online, including one at Google Answers (http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=361043), there was a National Day of Mourning for Nixon in 1994. The practice began with Kennedy, and there has been a National Day of Mourning for every president who has died since 1963. However, I don't know if the stock markets closed for any previous president.