[Snickering Hound]

The Evil Empire falling with Dukakis as its main foe seems improbable at best.

The Berlin Wall fell before Bush had been in office for a year, the collapse of the Soviet Union had been going on for some time. Dukakis would have done nothing, which is what Bush did.

He recognized the danger of Iraq. Saddam Hussein had the fourth most powerful army in the world and was a menace to his neighbors and a murderer of millions.

Bush's response to Iraq's military buildup before the invasion on the Kuwait border in 1990 was muddy at best.

Saddam was no puny enemy, as people made him to be for the purposes of dishonest politics. Aside from the 2 million he killed in the region, he was also cutting 10k and 25k checks to suicide bombers in Israel. His attempted assassination of by then former President GHW Bush showed that he was capable of trying to transfer or spread such havoc to America and GHWB's son, 43, was right for calling the danger what it was.

And yet it took another decade to remove him from power and that removal caused a vacuum that has been filled in the region by Iran which is even more hostile to the West than Saddam's Iraq.

[Yomin Postelnik]

A Dukakis election, G-D forbid, would have emboldened the Soviets. The man was not perfect, but 41 did many good things. Jeane Kirkpatrick summed it up best, essentially that Jimmy Carter wasn’t an international threat (didn’t worry about American exceptionalism), but Dukakis was.

The chaos in Iraq and the formation of ISIS was a direct result of pulling out and the Dems’ recklessness. ISIS was foreseeable just by looking at what happened to Afghanistan after it was left in a vacuum.

There were big problems later on with his relationship with his former foe, the worst example of anyone to ever hold that office, Mr. Clinton. One thing that the WW2 generation was not good at was recognizing the brute nature of the hippie hedonists. He treated them with decency and assumed they were decent. On this, he was unfortunately wrong, as we know all too well. But I think it stemmed from his nature of decency and he humanly/mistakenly thought that most others were like him. It’s a big mistake, but not a negative reflection of character.

[piytar]

I was going to make some comments, but you covered the main points I was contemplating. For what it’s worth, well stated and done Snickering Hound. /NO SARC

[familyop]

"And yet it took another decade to remove him from power..."

I and tens of thousands of other men would probably have been dead within a short time back then, if the task hadn't been discontinued for those years. Iraq was much reduced, and it was reduced further with more time and diplomatic and trade measures after the first War.

"...and that removal caused a vacuum that has been filled in the region by Iran which is even more hostile to the West than Saddam's Iraq."

Iran would have been stronger with a strengthening Iraq. During the first Gulf War, some Iraqi aircraft landed in Iran. The Iranian politicians threatened to attack any U.S. forces that intervened. Iran also trained Taliban guerrillas and sent IEDs and other materiel to Afghanistan despite differences between Shiites and Sunnis.

Iran is more isolated now. We'll see as to whether or not a couple of larger wanna-be empires want to go through with forming their new axis to try to destroy us. We either prepare to fight or face the unthinkable someday soon. Those are our choices, because the U.S.A. is not the international bully in the matter.