Libya and Lebanon present a microcosm and a mesocosm for military actions in the Middle East. Libya and Lebanon scale close together, for a "Lessons Learned" exercise, plus the both of them involve militias. Best of it, you get a head-to-head comparison of Ronald Reagan with Barack Obama. Here's the head counts:
63 -- victims at the embassy 18-April-1983
241 - victims at the Marine barracks 23-October-1983
58 -- victims at the French barracks 23-October-1983
30 -- victims at Tyre for the Israelis 3-November-1983
392 total
Going up against Arab irregulars was a new problem in the 1980s. By the time Obama gets to the problem in Libya, supporting dictators has faded. With Libya you get to almost an exact opposite to Reagan's suicide-bombing disaster and the follow-on full blown "cut and run" surrender.
Plainly, Iraq is in the macrocosm class for military adventures. The medical statistic Total Extra Deaths, collected for Iraq, tops out at 1,400,000 lives. This tells us that Iraq was a different war altogether. It was an example of "Empire Heavy." It was a smaller version of Vietnam.
Reagan was president when the Marine barracks for Beirut was destroyed in 1983. His policies had made enemies among Arabs and Persians, Sunni and Shiite. Nobody over there had much reason to like us, including Likudnik Israelis. You would never know it.
What stands out, researching Libya and Lebanon, is the extent to which media and Internet coverage are dominated today by American conservatives and how much they are still head over heals in love with Ronald Reagan.
Conservatives love this man so much that their hounds in corporate media rewrite history and simplify stories to match their fantasies. Sheer bloodiness by Americans and their favored dictators has no part in their timeline. The hounds lie about Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, about our ally Saddam Hussein and the Iran-Iraq war, about the Muslim religion and about Muslims generally. The one identifiable product is confusion.
This is no way to inform "We the People" in a democracy.
Lebanon is reflected with one phrase: "They Came In Peace." Arrive as United Nations Peacekeepers, sure thing. But then, contrary to today's conservatives, Reagan approved unloading with this:
USS New Jersey fired as many as 300 "flying Volkswagen" 16-inchers a day. 2700-pound artillery rounds. 500-meter casualty radius. Smoked one village after another.
April 18, 1983. The American ambassador, Robert Dillard, had opposed Israel's invasion in 1982, objecting that Arafat and Fatah were not a serious threat. The embassy in Beirut was half-destroyed by a 1-ton thermobaric truck bomb. 63 victims.
You will not hear that it took six months for Reagan's White House, his area manager Robert McFarlane, the military brass, and the analytical teams at CIA/DoD to forget the embassy bombing. The Marine barracks was undefended.
October 23rd. A 20-ton truck bomb annihilated the Marine barracks. Same day and then 10 days later, our allies the French and then the Israelis down in Tyre were hit with similar PETN-and-liquid-butane truck bombs. Between these three large-scale attacks, loss of life came to another 329 people. The barracks building:
Pancaked to this:
Now this:
Threat-anticipation had gone out of style.
President Reagan's response is a classic combination of unconscious racial hatred and ignorance:
"But I think we should all recognize that these deeds make so evident the bestial nature of those who would assume power if they could have their way and drive us out of that area; that we must be more determined than ever that they cannot take over that vital and strategic area of the Earth, or for that matter, any other part of the Earth."
-- October 23, 1983
A battleship is Peacekeeping; truck bombs are barbaric. His National Security Council had wanted to 'teach a lesson" to the Arab Lebanese. A couple of them, including McFarlane, got promotions.
Today conservatives blame Iran and (I kid you not...) Hezbollah. Rational Western analysis gets tossed in the laps of straw dog Libruls "who favor compromise with militants who seek a worldwide Islamic caliphate and the imposition of a strict Islamic order on their fellow Muslim and non-Muslim citizens." That's the benighted Judith Miller at City Journal.
Hezbollah did not exist until 1985. Apparently not one of the righties' Senators or Congressmen, pundits, WSJ writers, et.al. know that.
How's this: Iran and the Hezzies are Shiite. They oppose any and all notions of a Caliphate.
Also, in 1983, Reagan was backing Saddam Hussein with billions of dollars in weapons for his war with Iran. Why would Iran not have killed a few Americans? They were at war with us. They deserve revenge as much as anybody.
America and the other countries stuck in Ariel Sharon's 1982-1984 "tar pit" paid blood for the experience. We should to try to learn something. Busting up righties is not as important. They make cartoons of themselves.
Won't hurt any of you, to know a little more about what you're talking about.
Promise you, this narrative will return to Libya. To Obama. We will get to two or three points we think deserve a priority, assuming you follow below le chignon d'orange.
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