Reagan e o Líbano

The road to the October 1983 suicide bombing began with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. The Israelis claimed the invasion was justified in retaliation for PLO attacks on Israelis.

But, as New York Times correspondent Thomas Friedman noted in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem, "the number of Israeli casualties the PLO guerillas in Lebanon actually inflicted were minuscule (one death in the 12 months before the invasion)."

Defense Minister Ariel Sharon told the Israeli cabinet that his "Operation Peace for Galilee" would extend only 40 kilometers into Lebanon.

… the U.S. embassy in Beirut "sent cable after cable to Washington, warning that an Israeli invasion would provoke terrorism and undermine America’s standing in the Arab world, but not a word came back."

When Palestinians fought back tenaciously, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) responded with indiscriminate bombing. The Palestinian Red Crescent estimated that fourteen thousand people, mostly civilians, were killed and wounded in the first month of the Israeli invasion.

… The U.S. government signed an agreement with Arafat, pledging that U.S. forces would safeguard civilians who stayed behind. Once the PLO withdrew from Beirut, the U.S. troops were pulled out and put back on Navy ships.

…As Thomas Friedman noted, "Although the Israelis confiscated the arms of all of the Moslem groups in West Beirut, they made no attempt to disarm the Christian Phalangist militiamen in East Beirut."

Sharon invited Lebanese Phalangist militia units trained and equipped by Israel to enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. …The militia entered the camps and over the next 48 hours, more than seven hundred Palestinian women, children, and men were executed; many corpses were mutilated.

Palestinian sources estimated that the death toll was much higher. Israeli troops launched flares over the camps to illuminate them throughout the night and provided the Phalangists with food and water during their respites from the killings. Palestinian women sought to escape the slaughter but "the Israelis encircling the area refused to let anyone cross their lines." … After the Phalangists finished, they brought in bulldozers to create mass graves. More Palestinians may have been killed at the two camps than the total number of Israelis killed by the PLO in the previous decade.

… An Israeli government commission concluded a few months later that "Minister of Defense [Sharon] bears personal responsibility" for the debacle. Sharon resigned as defense minister as a result of the commission report.

The carnage at Sabra and Shatila threatened to plunge Lebanon back into total chaos, and Reagan quickly agreed to a Lebanese request to send US troops back into Beirut. Reagan repeatedly called for Israeli withdrawal from Beirut and declared: "Israel must have learned that there is no way it can impose its own solutions on hatreds as deep and bitter as those that produced this tragedy."

The massacres of the Palestinian refugees catapulted the U.S. much deeper into the Lebanese quagmire.

On April 23, 1983, Reagan announced to the press: "The tragic and brutal attack on our embassy in Beirut has shocked us all and filled us with grief. Yet, because of this latest crime we are more resolved than ever to help achieve the urgent and total withdrawal of all American forces from Lebanon, or I should say, all foreign forces. I’m sorry. Mistake." But the actual mistake was a U.S. policy that would cost hundreds of Americans their lives.

On September 13 Reagan authorized Marine commanders in Lebanon to call in air strikes and other attacks against the Muslims to help the Christian Lebanese army. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger vigorously opposed the new policy, fearing it would make American troops far more vulnerable.

The suicide truck attack on October 23 stunned the world. Yet, as Colin Powell, who was then a major general, later observed in his autobiography: "Since [the Muslims] could not reach the battleship, they found a more vulnerable target, the exposed Marines at the airport."

…
A few months later, U.S. troops were quietly removed from Beirut. But the U.S. continued an aggressive posture in the area – as well as providing massive arms and aid to the Israeli army that was seeking to suppress and rule much of southern Lebanon.

The U.S. intervention into Beirut did nothing to stabilize or pacify the region.
Now, 20 years later, the main lesson that Bush seems to draw from Beirut is the need to "be tough." Bush declared on September 7: "In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge. In this, they are mistaken."
…
The issue is not whether the US runs from a challenge: but whether political leaders have any incentive to learn from the deaths of American soldiers. And judging from Bush’s challenge to those who are killing Americans in Iraq – "Bring ’em on!" – there is scant hope for the learning curve of the current Oval Office occupant.
October 23, 2003

James Bovard is the author of Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave MacMillan).