opinion
Also in this section:
What they're saying about Ronald Reagan
Weisbrot, Reagan's legacy
Leight, Dissenting on Reagan on Latin America
US State Department, Human trafficking in Panama
Greenpeace, Skimp on the shrimp
Carson, Chávez has no magic wand
ICFTU, Labor rights in the Americas, 2003
Jackson, Now that Navarro won by that huge margin...
Leis, Is a Free Trade Agreement in Panama's interest?
 
What they're saying about Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan... had the greatness to recover from the ashes the confidence and unity of his people at a time of profound weakness, division and isolation, the products of the loss in Vietnam and its consequences.
Editorial in El Panama America
In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth --- a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.
Israeli politician Natan Sharansky
The world must not forget that under his leadership, America helped the Indonesian military commit genocide in East Timor.
Jose Luis Oliveira, East Timorese
human rights activist
...Reagan must be given props for his immigration amnesty of 1986 that brought relief to many hard working immigrants.
There has not been another amnesty since. Sure White House officials and Congress have talked the issue to death, but nothing concrete has been done to help the current population of undocumented who live under the radar but pay taxes.
Good intentioned or not, Reagan, a Republican President, broke from the GOP's strong anti-immigrant stance and spoke of extending to immigrants the traditional hospitality of America and admitting those who were willing to make a contribution and accept the American way of life, while enforcing laws against illegal immigration.
...[M]ore than seven million immigrants came to the United States during the 1980s and contributed mightily to the unprecedented prosperity of that decade.
Editorial in Caribbean Hardbeat (New York)
No one forgets that his government gave support to the hated Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and in Central America he is remembered as an interventionist who exchanged arms with Iran in order to finance the guerrilla war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
Editorial in La Estrella (Ft. Worth, Texas)
Ronald Reagan had the confidence that comes with conviction, the strength that comes with character, the grace that comes with humility, and the humor that comes with wisdom. He leaves behind a nation he restored and a world he helped save.
US President George W. Bush
The foundation of the Japan-US alliance that now serves as a driving force to solve international issues with other countries was built during President Reagan's era.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
In his lifetime Ronald Reagan was such a cheerful and invigorating presence that it was easy to forget what daunting historic tasks he set himself. He sought to mend America's wounded spirit, to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism. These were causes hard to accomplish and heavy with risk.
Former British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher
In practical terms, Reagan got it right. Thanks largely to the "neoliberal" attitudes he espoused, after a bout of self-pity the US put on her running shoes and since then has been sprinting away from the rest of the pack.
Columnist James Neilson,
the Buenos Aires Herald
Yes, history will make a very big deal out of the role Reagan played in demonstrating that a formidable enemy, the Soviet Union, could be finessed into a peaceful solution. And that is quite enough to prove his worth as a president in international affairs.
But, what about domestic affairs?
Our presidents of late seem to have declared the US the benevolent dictator of the world, oddly by a unilateral demonstration of our military might.
Meanwhile, the homeland, especially California, has become mired in a crazy quilt that features telephone, cable, digital and computer companies annoying their customers to death, all major corporations creating their own credit card offerings featuring big money bargains at Mafia interest rates, insurance and health care that no one understands and most people cannot afford, movies and television featuring mainly gay sex and violence produced by moguls who don't shave yet, an auto industry pushing monster trucks as gasoline heads for $3 a gallon, a totally manipulated stock market and housing market where you too can share in the American dream if you can qualify for $500,000 on your credit card, gangs, graffiti, road rage.
Columnist Bill Bell,
Whittier (California) Daily News
The American people liked Reagan, and re-elected him in one of the biggest landslides in history, because he trusted them. He conveyed to them that they need not be tied down by class, race, childhood misfortune, poverty or bureaucracy --- they, the people, could make something of themselves. Indeed, they could remake themselves, endlessly.
Former US Secretary of State
George P. Shultz
Reagan abandoned the Roosevelt New Deal --- which he admitted had saved his family during the Great Depression --- in favor of a belief in the efficacy of massive corporate welfare inculcated in him by his paymasters at Warner Bros., General Electric and the conservative lecture circuit. Though Reagan the man was hardly mean-spirited, Reagan the politician betrayed the social programs and trade unionism he once believed in so fiercely.
Columnist Robert Scheer,
The Los Angeles Times
This was a period in which the Cuban American National Foundation was very close with the president. The president invited a lot of Cubans to Washington. So there was a feeling, and maybe a reality, of access on the part of the Cuban-American community to the president of the United States.
Jaime Suchlicki, University of Miami Institute
for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies
As forgetful and irresponsible as he was, he forgot to take his worst works to the grave.
Editorial on Cuba's Radio Reloj
Ronald Reagan, it is fair to say, was really an anathema to the entire civil rights community and the civil rights agenda.
University of Maryland political science
professor Ronald W. Walters
Civil rights leaders still tag the Reagan presidency as the single worst period for racial progress in recent US history. But despite black fears, and to the bitter disappointment of many conservatives, Reagan did not end affirmative action, dismantle welfare or totally gut social programs.
Columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson
During the Reagan administration, weapons of mass destruction flooded Iraq and were used against Iran. Also under Reagan's orders, an Iranian passenger jet was shot at over the Persian Gulf by an American warship, and 290 passengers lost their lives.
Editorial in Kayhan (Teheran)
President Reagan was a very good friend of Afghanistan.
Said Tayeb Jawad, Afghanistan's
ambassador to the United States
This was a great man. This was a political giant who strode across the stage.
Former US Education Secretary
William Bennett
Indeed, if we owe Mr. Reagan anything... it is the space we now have to settle on our own truths in the full knowledge that other people's "truths," whether they come from the "left" or from the "right." and even when they are worthy of examination and particularized selection, can never rid us of the need, responsibility even, to discern and implement our own, based as they must be, on individual insight derived from the collective of native wit and imagination.
Editorial in the Trinidad & Tobago Express
Reagan didn't accomplish everything he set out to do; in particular, he failed to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. Even so, the GOP of today is unmistakably a Reaganite party: unalterably opposed to higher taxes, committed to promoting American ideals --- which are really universal ideals --- abroad.
Columnist James Taranto,
the Wall Street Journal
Ronald Reagan was a president who inspired his nation and transformed the world. He possessed a rare and prized gift called leadership, that ineffable and magical quality that sets some men and women apart so that millions will follow them as they conjure up grand visions and invite their countrymen to dream big and exciting dreams.
Former Canadian Prime
Minister Brian Mulroney
To him democratic freedoms and free enterprise were the critical pillars on which a peaceful and prosperous world could be built. He defined his mission with a clarity of vision and a firmness of conviction and provided strong, steadfast leadership that transformed the world in a profound and remarkable way.
Jamaica Labor Party statement
Reagan was not as good as the Republicans like to think, or as bad as the Democrats would have you believe.
Former California legislator
Jesse Unruh
His consistent championing of freedom contributed decisively to overcoming the division of Europe and Germany. We Germans have much to thank Ronald Reagan for.
Former German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl
Throughout his presidency, Reagan made nice with dictators --- no matter how nefarious --- as long as they parroted his opposition to communism. As soon as he entered the White House, his administration tried to normalize relations with Augosto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile, who was responsible for a bloody coup that overthrew a democratically elected (but socialist) government. The Reaganites also cozied up to the fascistic and anti-Semitic junta of Argentina, which tortured, slaughtered and disappeared its political opponents. And don't forget Reagan's attempt to woo Saddam Hussein, even after it was known that Hussein had used chemical weapons. (Reagan assigned this task to Donald Rumsfeld.)
Columnist David Corn,
The Nation (New York)
At home his vision and leadership restored national self-confidence and brought some significant changes to US politics, while abroad the negotiation of arms control agreements in his second term and his statesman-like pursuit of more stable relations with the Soviet Union helped bring about the end of the Cold War.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair
Reagan was the most dominating president of the 20th Century.
Former New York City
Mayor Rudy Giuliani
He was a much beloved president both within and outside of the United States. He created the Caribbean Basin Initiative, he fought the Sandinista revolutionaries and he promoted the strengthening of democracies in Latin America. He was a friend of Panamanians for asphyxiating the dictatorial Manuel Noriega regime by establishing commercial sanctions against it.
La Prensa (Panama) editorial
We don't celebrate any death, but we must be honest, we will not start saying now that President Reagan respected international law, that he treated Nicaragua well. We're not going to lie.
Former Nicaraguan President
Daniel Ortega
Of course, Reagan's legacy is controversial in some countries --- like ours --- in which the international policies of the former president clashed with the status quo and produced bloody confrontations that were costly and regrettable. But even in Nicaragua, just as there are some people who censure Reagan, there are many --- make that very many --- who admire him and consider that he contributed toward the conditions that permit the democracy we now enjoy.
Former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister
Francisco Aguirre Sarcasa
Now Nicaraguans are so free that health care and education have become merchandise and we become more like East Los Angeles, with gangs on corners in front of McDonalds and beautiful girls in miniskirts offering their charms.
Editorial in El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua)
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