The Granada invasion sealed it.
By the time he began his second term in 1985, Reagan's approval rating had leaped 21 points--62 percent.
By then, the Iran-Contra scandal--covert U.S. weapons sales to Iran used to arm right-wing Nicaraguan rebels--was in full career.
In 1999, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush reported to journalist Mickey Herskowitz:
"One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief"My father [former president George H.W. Bush] had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it"If I have a chance to invade"if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."
Then came September 11, 2001, after Bush ignored repeated intelligence warnings Osama bin Laden was intent on attacking the United States.
Herskowitz said:
"Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."
Two years later the United States invaded Iraq, a country that had no hand in the fateful attacks and posed no existential threat to our nation's sovereignty.
After being re-elected in 2004, Bush stood before the American people talking about earning some "political capital" he intended to use. That "political capital" was privatization of Social Security and other Republican agenda items.
Now Donald Trump is up to the same old hijinx.
He's even brought in Reagan's old Iran-Contra enabler, Elliott Abrams, whom George H.W. Bush, pardoned on Christmas Eve 1992 upon Attorney General William Barr's advice, thereby avoiding criminal prosecution.
About the public relations stunt currently playing out on Venezuela's border, National Public Radio (NPR) seemed to be the only mainstream news outlet presenting jingoism-free truth when it reported:
"The U.S. effort to distribute tons of food and medicine to needy Venezuelans is more than just a humanitarian mission. The operation is also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela-which is why much of the international aid community wants nothing to do with it. Humanitarian operations are supposed to be neutral.
"That's why the International Committee of the Red Cross, United Nations agencies and other relief organizations have refused to collaborate with the U.S. and its allies in the Venezuelan opposition who are trying to force President Nicola's Maduro from power."
U.N. spokesman, Ste'phane Dujarric, said last week in a press briefing:
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