Complete Idiot’s Guide to American History

by Alan Axelrod

  A lengthy investigation gradually revealed that, in 1985, a cabal of Israelis had approached National Security Advisor Robert MacFarlane with a scheme in which Iran would use its influence to free the U.S. hostages held in Lebanon in exchange for arms. Secretary of State George Schultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger objected to the plan, but (MacFarlane testified) President Reagan agreed to it. In a bizarre twist, U.S. Marine lieutenant colonel Oliver (Ollie) North then modified the scheme in order to funnel profits from the arms sales to the Contras.

  As was the case with Watergate during the 1970s, investigation and testimony implicated officials on successively lofty rungs of the White House ladder—through national security advisors John Poindexter and MacFarlane, through CIA director William J. Casey (who died in May 1987), and through Defense secretary Caspar Weinberger. Few people believed that President Reagan had been ignorant of the scheme, but even if he had been the unwitting dupe of zealots in his administration, the implications were bad enough, painting a picture of a passive chief executive blindly delegating authority to his staff.

  In the end, Ollie North was convicted on three of 12 criminal counts against him, but the convictions were subsequently set aside on appeal; Poindexter was convicted on five counts of deceiving Congress, but his convictions were also set aside; CIA administrator Clair E. George was indicted for perjury, but his trial ended in mistrial; and Caspar Weinberger was indicted on five counts of lying to Congress. All of those charged were ultimately pardoned by President Reagan’s successor, George Bush. Although the 1994 report of special prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh scathingly criticized both Reagan and Bush, neither was charged with criminal wrongdoing.

  Desert Shield and Desert Storm

  President Reagan’s second term, marred by the Iran-Contra affair, a bumbling performance at the 1986 summit with Mikhail Gorbachev, and the 1987 stock market crash, nevertheless saw the “Teflon president” emerge personally unscathed. Vice President George Bush sailed to easy victory in the presidential race of 1988. Where the “Great Communicator” Reagan had been charismatic, however, Bush was perceived as testy, and, with the economy faltering (the principal issue was high unemployment), his popularity rapidly slipped in the polls. Bush seemed doomed to a one-term presidency.

  Then, on August 2, 1990, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, a dictator whose florid mustache recalled Josef Stalin and whose ruthless actions summoned to mind Adolf Hitler, ordered an invasion of the small, oil-rich Arab state of Kuwait. It was the beginning of a tense and dramatic crisis, but it was also President Bush’s finest hour. His administration brilliantly used the United Nations to sanction action against Iraq, and with masterful diplomacy, the president assembled an unprecedented coalition of 31 nations to oppose the invasion. Particularly delicate was acquiring the support of the Arab countries while keeping Israel, which was even subject to attack by Iraqi SCUD missiles, out of the fray. As to the U.S. commitment, it was the largest since Vietnam: more than a half million troops, 1,800 aircraft, and some 100 ships.

  Indeed, comparisons with Vietnam were plentiful, made principally by Americans who objected to trading “blood for oil” and who feared that the nation would become mired in another hopeless conflict. The fact was that Middle East oil had become essential to the Western economy, But the issues also went far beyond this commodity. President Bush was one of the last of the generation of U.S. leaders who had fought in World War Il. He well knew what can happen when an international bully like Saddam Hussein, in command of the fifth largest army in the world, is allowed to operate unchecked.

  In early August 1990, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia invited American troops into his country to protect the kingdom against possible Iraqi aggression. Called Operation Desert Shield, this was a massive, orderly buildup of U.S. forces. In January 1991, the U.S. Congress voted to support military operations against Iraq in accordance with a U.N. Security Council resolution, which set a deadline of January 15, 199 1, for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. When Saddam Hussein failed to heed the deadline, Operation Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm, a massively coordinated lightning campaign against Iraq from the air, the sea, and on land. After continuous air attack beginning January 17, the ground war was launched at 8:00 p.m. on February 23 and lasted exactly 100 hours before Iraqi resistance collapsed and Kuwait was liberated.

  New World Order

  Bush, who consistently earned high marks from the American public for his conduct of foreign relations, now enjoyed overwhelming popular approval in the wake of the successful outcome of the Persian Gulf War. But Bush did not bask alone in the war’s afterglow. Military success in the Gulf seemed to exorcise the demons of failure born in the Vietnam War, and with the liberalization and ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans felt that their nation was in the vanguard of what President Bush called a “new world order.” Not only had the long ideological struggle between communism and democracy ended in a victory for democracy, but a bully from the Third World, Saddam Hussein, had been defeated—and he was defeated with the cooperation of many nations and to the applause of most of the world.

  The Least You Need to Know

  President Reagan started a conservative revolution in America, introducing supplyside economics and undoing much of the welfare state that had begun with FDR.

  The Reagan-Bush years saw victory in the 50-year Cold War (as well as victory in the brief but dangerous Persian Gulf War) but at the cost of quadrupling an already staggering national debt and sidelining such domestic issues as welfare and the AIDS crisis.

  Main Event

  President Reagan had been in office only two months when he exited the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981, after delivering a speech. Six shots rang out, fired from a .22-caliber revolver loaded with explosive “Devastator” bullets. Secret Service agent Timothy J. McCarthy and Washington police officer James Delahanty were hit, as was White House press secretary James S. Brady, who suffered a severe head wound.

  The president was bundled into his limousine, where it was discovered that he, too, had been wounded in the chest. Fortunately, the bullet, lodged in his lung, had failed to explode and was removed in an emergency surgical operation. “I hope you’re all Republicans,” the president quipped to his surgeons.

  The shooter, 25-year-old John Warnock Hinckley, Jr., was the drifter son of a wealthy Denver oil engineer. Hinckley was obsessed with screen actress Jodie Foster, who had made a sensation as a teenage prostitute in “Taxi Driver,” a 1976 film dealing in part with political assassination. Hinckley apparently decided to kill the president to impress Foster.

  A jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity, and fie was confined to a psychiatric hospital. All of his victims recovered, except for Brady, who was left partially paralyzed. Brady became a passionate advocate of federal regulation of handguns—a policy President Reagan had himself opposed.

  Real Life

  The words put into Gordon Gecko’s mouth were paraphrased from a real-life Wall Street manipulator, Ivan Boesky, who told the graduating class of the School of Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley, on May 18, 1986: “Greed is all right, by the way … I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”

  Word for the Day

  During the Reagan years, the Wall Street word for the day was arbitrage–the art of buying securities, commodities, or currencies in one market and immediately (sometimes simultaneously) selling them in another market to profit from price differences. Arbitrageurs like Ivan Boesky acted on takeover bids and impending mergers, buying blocks of the target company’s stock at a low price, with the hope of selling them at a much higher price when the merger occurred. If the merger failed to occur, losses could be devastating.

  Real Life

  Michael R. Milken (b. 1946) was a star executive at the prestigious Wall Street trading firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert, Inc. He engineered a number of high-stakes, high-pr
ofile corporate takeovers through the use of high-yield junk bonds, making many of his clients and himself enormously wealthy in the process. However, it was subsequently discovered that much of Milken’s trading was based on illegal inside information, and in 1989, a grand jury handed down a 98-count indictment against him for violating federal securities and racketeering laws. When Milken pleaded guilty to securities fraud and related charges in 1990, the government dropped the insider trading and racketeering charges, which carried greater penalties. His 10-year sentence was later reduced to three, and Milken returned to the world of finance upon his release. His spectacular rise and equally dramatic fall mirrored the course of the economy and cast a harsh light on the era’s questionable business ethics.

  Stats

  On “Black Monday,” October 19, 1987, $870 billion in equity simply evaporated as the market dropped from a Dow of 2,246.73 to 1,738.41 points.

  Word for the Day

  AIDS–Acquired immune Deficiency Syndrome–is caused by infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which attacks immune system cells, ultimately producing severe suppression of the body’s ability to resist other infections.

  The disease is transmitted sexually, through the blood (for example, through transfusion with infected whole blood plasma), and during birth, from infected mother to their children.

  Stats

  Since the first AIDS cases were formally reported in 1981, approximately a half-million AIDS cases and mote than a quarter-million AIDS-Mated deaths have been reported in the United States. It is believed that another million Americans, have been infected with HIV through the mid-1990s but have not developed clinical AIDS symptoms.

  Voice from the Past

  “So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.”

  Ronald Reagan, statement made on March 8, 1983

  Word for the Day

  Americans learned two important Russian words during the 1980s. Perestroika (literally, restructuring) was how Gorbachev described his program of liberal political and economic reforms. Glasnost (openness) described how the traditionally secretive and closed USSR would now approach its own people and the rest of the world.

  Stats

  Combined U.S. and coalition forces in the Gulf War amounted to 530,000 troops as opposed to 545,000 Iraqis. U.S. and coalition losses were 149 238 wounded, 81 missing and 13 taken, prisoner (they were subsequently released). Iraqi losses have been estimated in excess of 80,000 men, with overwhelming loss of materiel.

  Real Life

  The only thing Americans cherish more than their cynicism is their heroes, and the Persian Gulf War produced one in General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, overall commander of operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, on August 22, 1934, Schwarzkopf graduated from West Point in 1956. He served with distinction in numerous staff strategic and personnel management assignments, as well as in field command in Vietnam and in the 1983 invasion of Grenada.

  During the Persian Gulf War, Schwarzkopf commanded a combined U.S.-coalition force of 530,000 troops opposed to 545,000 Iraqis and achieved overwhelming victory. Frequently appearing on television press conferences during the conflict, he impressed the American public with his forthrightness, military skill, and softspoken humanity. “Any soldier worth his salt,” Schwarzkopf declared, “should be antiwar. And still there are things worth fighting for.” Much honored, he retired after the war.

  Democracy

  (1992—)

  In This Chapter

  End of the Reagan-Bush years

  The New Right, Libertarians, and militia groups

  An electronic democracy

  Writing about what has happened is much easier than writing about what is happening. Because we don’t live in the future, it’s no mean feat to say one current event is historically significant, but another one isn’t. The history of our times has yet to be written. So this closing chapter is nothing more than a moistened finger lifted to the prevailing ,winds. By the time you read this, some of these winds may be forgotten breezes, and I may well have overlooked the coming storms.

  The Economy, Stupid

  In 1980 and again in 1984, the American electorate voted Ronald Reagan into office with gusto. In 1988, Americans had relatively little enthusiasm for either Democrat Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts, or Republican George Bush, vice president of the United States. Nor was there wild enthusiasm in 1992, when the incumbent Bush was opposed by the youthful governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton. However, during the Bush administration, the American dream seemed somehow to have slipped farther away. True, the world was probably a safer place than it had been at any time since the end of World War II (but it was still a dangerous world), and the United States had acquitted itself in the best tradition of its long democratic history by resolving the Persian Gulf War. Yet the electorate felt that President Bush habitually neglected domestic issues and focused exclusively on international relations. Candidate Bill Clinton’s acerbic campaign manager, James Carville, put it directly, advising Governor Clinton to write himself a reminder lest he forget the issue on which the election would be won or lost: “It’s the economy stupid.”

  Third Party Politics

  The economy. It was not that America teetered on the edge of another depression in 1992. Although homeless men, women, and even children could be seen on corners and in doorways of the nation’s cities, there were not the long bread lines or crowded soup kitchens of the 1930s. But a general sense existed among the middle class, among those who had jobs and were paying the rent, that this generation was not doing “as well as” previous generations. Sons were not living as well as fathers, daughters not as well as mothers. The pursuit of happiness, fueled in large part by cash, had become that much more difficult, and a majority of voters blamed it on George Bush. Bill Clinton entered the White House by a comfortable margin, but if voters rejected Bush, a sizable minority of them also rejected Clinton.

  For the first time since Theodore Roosevelt ran as a Bull Moose candidate in 1912, a third-party contender made a significant impact at the polls. Presenting himself as a candidate dissatisfied with both the Republicans and Democrats, billionaire Texas businessman H. Ross Perot (b. 1930) told Americans that they were the “owners” of the nation and that it was about time they derived benefit from such ownership.

  The New Right

  The Perot candidacy was not the only evidence of widespread discontent with politics as usual. Americans who had come of age in the 1960s, the era of the Great Society and of protest against the Vietnam War, tended to take liberalism for granted, as if it were naturally part and parcel of the American way. Beginning in the 1970s, however, a conservative counter-movement gained increasing strength. Its values rested upon the family as traditionally constituted (father, mother, kids), a strong sense of law and order, reliance on organized religion, a belief in the work ethic (and a corresponding disdain for the welfare state), a passion for decency (even to the point of censorship), and a desire for minimal government.

  Right to Life

  Many who have identified themselves with the new right hold passionately to a belief that abortion, even in the first trimester of pregnancy (when the fetus cannot survive outside of the womb), is tantamount to murder. The so-called Right to Life movement has spawned a fanatic fringe, whose members have bombed abortion clinics and have intimidated, assaulted, and even murdered physicians who perform abortions. However, the mainstream of the movement has relied on legal means to effect social change, with the ultimate object of obtaining a constitutional amendment barring abortion. The Right to Life movement became so powerful a political lobby that the Re
publican party adopted a stance against abortion as part of its 1992 platform.

  Regardless of one’s attitude toward abortion—whether pro life or pro choice—many Americans are alarmed by a trend among particular political candidates and even entire political parties to become identified with single issues—such as abortion, gun control, prayer in schools, gay rights—rather than with an array of issues, let alone a philosophy of government.

  Christian Right

  The First Amendment to the Constitution specifies that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Church and state are explicitly separated in the United States; but the government freely invokes the name of God in most of its enterprises. Our currency bears the motto “In God We Trust,” both houses of Congress employ full-time chaplains, and (despite occasional protests) the Pledge of Allegiance most of us grew up reciting at the start of each school day describes the United States as “one nation, under God. “ While many Americans shake their heads over their perception that religious worship has somehow gone out of fashion in America, most opinion polls agree that approximately 96 percent of the population believes in God. A 1993 survey was able to turn up fewer than one million Americans willing to identify themselves as atheists-out of a total U.S. population, according to the 1990 census, of 248,709,873.