- He Funded Terrorism.
In 1970s, when the Russia was the biggest threat to America, the government of the United States started providing limited funds and training to Afghanistan mujahedeen to fight our Russian enemies. The Carter administration even authorized our intelligence service to equip them with weapons.
However, when Reagan was elected in 1981, the limited funds that were allocated for these militants began to increase significantly. In addition to arms, sophisticated military equipment and advanced weaponry were also given to them to better fight off our enemies. Our top-secret intelligence officers even played a much bigger role in training and arming these militants.
Little did our people know that much of the tactics that these terrorists know today were taught by our CIA officers, including car bombing and assassinations; and much of the weapons that this group, now known as Taliban, were funded by former president Reagan. It is estimated that more than $20 billion was given to the Afghan groups to train and arm them. But instead of solving our problems in war, we’ve just created the greatest enemy of our time.
- He Started Unnecessary Wars.
In 1983, Reagan ordered the Unites States Marines be sent into Lebanon as an international peacekeeping force. Despite the strong objection of his own secretary of defense, who perceived the situation as dangerous, he still pursued the order and sent the marines to the dangerous war zone. Making the already-dangerous situation much worse, Reagan strictly ordered the military to not load any of their weapons. So from the moment that they entered Beirut, they had become what we known as “sitting ducks.” As a result of Reagan’s absurd actions, 241 U.S. servicemen, 220 marines, and 21 other personnel died on October 23, 1983. Our unarmed military never had a chance to fight when a suicide bomber, carrying 2000 pounds of explosives, drove into the Marine barracks.
After the Beirut bombings, Reagan shortly approved the invasion of Grenada, an island with less than 100,000 inhabitants. 6,000 elite troops were sent on the island. In this attack, the U.S. completely defeated the government of Grenada. But it was considered by far the easiest invasion for the U.S. since the island had no special armed forces to fight against us. Little did people know that the decision to invade Grenada was only made to take the attention away from Reagan’s failure in Beirut.
- He Closed All Government-Run Mental Hospitals In The U.S.
A month before the 1980 election, President Carter passed the Mental Health Systems Act, which aimed to improve the community mental health programs and provide better service to people with chronic mental illness. But this Act had hardly become law because when President Reagan took over in 1981, he immediately discarded the policy as an effort to reduce government spending. In the summer of 1981, Reagan signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act into law, which reduced the federal funding of Community Mental Health Centers (CMHC). But not only that, it also repealed most of the policies of the Mental Health Systems Act, eliminating most services for people struggling with mental illness and converting the funds with smaller block grants.
The lack of funds and support from the government led to the closing of many mental state hospitals. Hundreds of patients were then released into local communities. But since not all communities are properly funded and appropriately equipped, most of the patients were brought in adult homes, with their families, or on the streets. Those who lived in that time witnessed how these homeless patients left out onto the cold streets without food, medication, care, or even proper clothing that would protect them from the freeze.
Reagan never understood mental illness and never cared for people with mental health problems. He already made similar decisions when he was the governor of California in 1967. He signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (LPS), which basically ended the involuntary commitment of mentally disordered individuals to institutions. The law allowed people to refuse treatment for mental illness, so as a result, thousands of patients were released and hundreds of hospitals were closed down.
