AN ADDENDUM of sorts to my last post:

In their effort to criticise Barack Obama's response to the situation in Iran, Republicans are tripping over themselves to invoke Ronald Reagan. This is nothing new, but they should at least get their facts right. No, John McCain, President Reagan did not stand up for the people of Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring . That happened in 1968, when Mr Reagan was in his first term as governor of California. Nor was Alexander Solzhenitsyn deep in the gulags when Reagan gave his "evil empire" speech. Someone inform Mike Pence. Next will we hear someone credit the release of " Tropic Zone " with forcing an armistice in the Korean War?

This is all very amusing, but Republicans are losing sight of Mr Reagan's actual foreign policy. His approach toward Iran was brutal realism that resulted in the sale of missiles to the mullahs' regime. His approach towards South Africa was also pure strategy—support for a racist regime as a way of hurting the Soviets. Many of the anti-communist forces backed by his administration (in Asia, Africa and Latin America) were also hostile to their own people. In other words, he rarely exhibited the woolly-headed, we-support-you idealism that his party is now advocating.

(Photo credit: AFP)