Vessey and Weinberger had not wanted the Marines sent to Lebanon in the first place, a “peace keeping” mission set in motion by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, with the Americans inevitably being pushed to side with the Maronite Christian forces backed by Israel, and against the Muslim forces. Colonel Timothy J. Geraghty, the Marine commander, said “It is noteworthy that the United States provided direct naval gunfire support—which I strongly opposed—for a week to the Lebanese Army at a mountain village called Suq-al-Garb on September 19 and that the French conducted an air strike on September 23 in the Bekaa Valley. American support removed any lingering doubts of our neutrality and I stated to my staff at the time that we were going to pay in blood for this decision.”
Vessey and Weinberger continued their foot dragging for weeks, even while commanders of American and French naval forces made plans for a joint strike employing carrier aircraft. An Oval Office meeting on November 16 left everyone thinking that the strike would be implemented, but Weinberger decided it wouldn’t be, telling the French only hours before their planes took off that the Americans wouldn’t be joining them, which led to a lot of “burger-eating surrender monkey” jokes in Paris.*
While the Reagan Administration argued among themselves, House Speaker Tip O’Neill called for the withdrawal of the Marines. For this he was denounced by the White House as being unpatriotic. In early 1984, the Marines were “redeployed” to naval vessels offshore. In September 1984, another truck bomb was detonated near the American Embassy in Beirut, killing two Americans. When questioned about it, President Reagan blamed Jimmy Carter, saying that there had been a “near destruction of our intelligence capability” during his Administration.
The attacks didn’t go entirely unavenged. On February 4, 1984, the battleship New Jersey fired about 300 16-inch shells at Muslim positions in Lebanon. The 1,000-pound shells probably killed hundreds of people, though exactly who isn’t clear, because the Navy didn’t know the precise characteristics of the propellant it was using, and the shells may have landed as much as five miles off-target.†
Because they were “peace keepers,” the Marines carried unloaded rifles and did not build heavily defensive positions, which might have been a good idea before the U.S. started shelling Muslim positions, or might not have been, because the U.S. was clearly Israel’s ally, regardless of how “neutral” we tried to appear. In Libya, the State Department may have been reasonable in denying Libyan Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens’ request for additional security. Traveling with armed guards might have alienated the Libyans and compromised our mission in Libya. Maybe it’s not a good idea to undertake high-risk missions in the first place, because “high risk” means that eventually something bad will happen, and when it does it will be your fault that it did. Secretary of Defense Panetta will testify before Congress on Thursday, giving us a chance to learn if the Republicans are interested in doing more than yell at women over this issue.
Afterwords
I’ve been reading Kenneth Pollack’s The Persian Puzzle and David Crist’s The Twilight War, and also have consulted Wikipedia on the bombing and the New Jersey, which, for whatever reason, neither author bothers to mention. Pollack is a former CIA analyst who did not exactly distinguish himself by writing The Threatening Storm, which made what I can vaguely call the neoliberal case for invading Iraq on the grounds that, while Saddam Hussein was not responsible for 9/11, in an alternative universe he could have been. Crist is a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve who served in the first Gulf War, and the post 9/11 invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan.
*To make matters worse for the French, their attacks weren’t very successful.
†In one of his less-appealing moments, Ronnie chuckled “Have you ever heard a 16-inch shell going off?” Because there’s nothing funnier than dead babies.
