Unfortunately, politically, we are living with a televised version of Ronald Reagan that is a Perfect Man. Republicans are able use their fantasy Reagan as a political glue: affection for Reagan holds together their older voters and an odd coalition of anti-abortion and nationalist voters. A comparison with John Kennedy may prove useful.
The real Ronald Reagan was always a movie star. Jack Kennedy looked like he could have been a movie star. Each of them got into one big shooting war where their own forces took hundreds of fatalities. They did rather poorly at war.
Both of these actions ended as total failures. There is no other way to say it.
What happened to Kennedy and Reagan looks very similar at first look. Kennedy had the Bay of Pigs invasion in April, 1961, just after coming into office. (The missile crisis came later, in October, 1962. One U-2 pilot, Major Anderson, died. He was shot down over Cuba.) For Reagan, his war was his "Peacekeeper" action in Lebanon from 1982 to 1984.
As Commanders in Chief, our two "Hollywood" presidents were not up to it for the early challenges. Nothing worked for them. Neither of them maintained control or effectiveness. Yet still, even today, the Republican Party and its allies present an image of Reagan that erases his failures.
"Tear down this wall" was Reagan's best line. It was not magic. Assessing Reagan as a president begins with two life-and-death decisions:
-- Immediately on coming into the White House in 1981, Reagan formed an alliance with Saddam Hussein. He reversed Jimmy Carter's neutrality policy. Then Reagan went public, providing shiploads of material to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War. This Reagan-Saddam alliance did nothing for America and killed Iranians by the tens of thousands; then
-- Beginning in August, 1982, Reagan managed U.S. participation in a United Nations Peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. This was supposed to provide cleanup after an invasion by Israel. Reagan turned "Peacekeeping" into an alliance with Christian Felangist militias fighting Muslim and Druze militias in a renewed civil war.
Reagan's allies in Lebanon were the same militias that slaughtered 3,500 Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, July 16-19, 1982. Worse yet, Reagan pulled his 800 Peacekeepers offshore just prior to the slaughters. Put them back in two weeks later.
Think anybody Palestinian or Muslim in the Middle East has forgotten that one?
The heaviest part of it in terms of U.S. munitions is connected with firing the guns of five U.S. Navy ships. They were located offshore from Beirut. Later, Reagan added a sixth warship, the battleship New Jersey. By local count 1,500 civilians were killed by these shellings. A half-million people were driven east, to areas controlled by Syria.
Reagan on Lebanon: "Teach them a lesson."
For his part, "Hollywood" Kennedy allowed the Bay of Pigs invasion to go ahead as planned without significant review. Contrary to Reagan's reversals from Carter, Kennedy changed next to nothing that he got from Eisenhower. He also talked to Ike on the phone regularly. This was a respectful relationship.
Eisenhower and Kennedy fell for emigrant claims that there would be a popular uprising against the Castro brothers. So did CIA, if we are to believe later statements. So did their Cabinet members.
The situation with Vietnam developed politically similar to what happened during planning for Cuba. No one understood the risks. Between 1961-1962-1963 the U.S. lost almost 200 in Vietnam but it was not seen as a shooting war.
Kennedy had the good sense to end his invasion of Cuba early. Three days in, it was time to minimize slaughters of Cubans on both sides. There was no point to generating massive ill will.
Reagan didn't get that concept. He withdrew onshore forces when the Marine barracks was destroyed. He insisted on keeping the ships offshore, firing artillery at very questionable targets to May of 1984. Apart from ego there no point to it.
Reagan and his advisors missed it that blood debts in Islamic societies tie in to requirements for "just retaliation." That is the social valuation process that they use to avoid vendettas. It is mandatory.
Reagan invoked retaliation processes in Iran and in Lebanon. First time blow back came through, in January 1983, the U.S. embassy in Beirut was bombed. That killed 63. Six months later, in October, Marine BLT Barracks at the airport was flattened killing 241. The total for retaliation bombings was 398 dead.
Iranians came over to Lebanon and helped the locals make it happen.
At the end of this mess, in 1985, the Hizb Allah ("Hezbollah") was formed explicitly as a Lebanese-Iranian alliance -- effective to this day.
In order to match up with Reagan, Kennedy would have had to station warships off the coast from Havana. Then keep the warships there for the most of two years. And fire barrages with hundreds of artillery shells into the city suburbs.
I don't remember Kennedy doing that. Most likely, until they rewrite Kennedy's history, he's keep on not having done that.
Thing is, fewer than 1% of the American public know that Reagan used the naval guns to fire on Beirut. Next to nobody knows that Reagan had more than 4,000 5" shells were fired in one series of barrages. Then 288 and 290 16" shells in single days were unloading from the New Jersey. There were lots of those days. A half-million Lebanese were driven from their homes.
Not one of these American shells hit a military target. Arguably, there were no military targets to be hit -- at most little pickup trucks carrying 81mm mortars.
I also don't remember Kennedy taking sides in a regional war apart from Vietnam. Eisenhower had "Advisers" in Vietnam, so of course Kennedy continued the policy.
Know your hoaxes.
If you listen to corporate media, you will hear grave tones recite a story that Jack Kennedy was a loser. A lightweight mentally. Same time, Ronald Reagan was a Perfect Man, close to God.
Of course they rewrite our history -- Cuba and Lebanon are excellent examples. Put out lies, build hoaxes -- that's the job.
"Hoaxes Are Our Most Important Product."
There is no way to paint Reagan as a great president, unless you erase what he did with Saddam Hussein and with the Felangists in Lebanon.
To understand Kennedy, to rate his performance, you can do worse than comparing him with Reagan. The real Reagan.
For most Americans what they have for information is the corporate rewrite of history. For example: corporate media ignored the 20-, 25- and 30-year anniversaries of the Marine BLT Barracks bombing. So much for "Thank you for your service." Reagan's alliance with Saddam didn't happen. Reagan's alliance with the Christian Felangists didn't happen. Sabra and Shatila didn't happen. Have I mentioned that Reagan was a Perfect Man?
Libya in 2012 is covered with every Republican complaint. We lost 4 people. "Lessons Learned" from Lebanon are never mentioned.
Perfect Man. They gotta have it.
The performances of Kennedy and Reagan are doubly interesting. You have the two men, obviously. You have their performances and their personalities. Hey, folks, they're dead presidents!
Same time, you get prime examples of how the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy perpetrates hoaxes. On the whole, of course, any rational appraisal has to put Kennedy a strong step ahead of Reagan. Neither of them accomplished all that much. They were great talkers. Great stylists. The problem for Reagan is that he was a barbarian when he was tempted to slaughter Iranians and Lebanese.
Reagan cost America, big time. The Hizb Allah likely would not exist. The mission for Qods Force would reflect a different charter. The "Paper Tiger" idea echoed by Usama bin Laden was popularized with descriptions of the Marine BLT Barracks bombing and Reagan's subsequent retreat. The man bit off more than he could chew and he did any number of foolish things to look tough.
Kennedy ??? Bay of Pigs failed stupidly. He let Vietnam build year on year, plus the utter madness of paying out 3-million piasters ($42,000) to the pair who killed the Diem brothers.
Reagan's negatives overwhelm. Reagan was the one who came up with the idea of using the naval guns. Big on WW II documentary footage. With Kennedy, the big blunders came from listening to CIA. Give them time, they would make a murderer of Pope Francis.
We can do better.
Below the orange muffin for chronologies, hard core history, links, a consideration of their ultimate presidential legacies.
"The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."
-- William Shakespeare, Mark Anthony's funeral oration in "Julius Caesar"
In Reagan's case, the evil lives in the world; the good of his military adventures is invented, not real.
In Lebanon, at war, Reagan was out of his element. He was overwhelmed. Out-of-control allies ignored his efforts at leadership. There was no exit strategy. The Multinational Force motto "We come in peace" disappeared.
Instead of reaching out more widely to get help, Reagan delegated full executive power to subordinates. His team acted out slogans: "Teach them a lesson," "Peace through superior firepower," "A big enough explosion solves any military problem."
Reagan missed the core of what was happening in Lebanon. In a television speech four days after the Barracks bombing, Reagan misrepresented what he did know. No one corrected him.
CIA failed to build a cause-and-effect chain model for what was happening in Lebanon and Iran. Careerists defended Ronnie's slogans against all evidence.
The world did not have Wikileaks. There was no Internet. No GoPro. No one had the guts of a Manning or a Snowden or a means to put out the facts of what was happening inside the White House if they had wanted to.
The naval gunnery killings went all but unreported in America. A handful of Arabic publications posted one-day casualty reports. Not one organization from the U.S. had reporting resources up in the hills above Beirut. The AP and UPI feeds were shut out.
Meanwhile, out in the Arab and Persian parts of the world, photos of victims' bodies and shattered blocks of houses made the rounds. Some of those images had been recorded by Iranian military photographers.
Collateral murders be damned.
How many English speaking people anywhere connect Reagan's use of naval guns with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard-Lebanese team carrying out the destruction of the Marine BLT Barracks at Beirut Airport and a French paratroop barracks ??? The October 23rd, 1983, attacks.
Party of God -- the Hizb Allah
We're talking a group that leads 2,000,000 people.
The prestige that Iranian Republican Guard ("IRG") and their Shia allies earned with the "just retaliation" martyrdom bombings in 1983 made all the difference in 1985. That was the rallying point to consolidate Lebanon's Shia militias.
Keep in mind that Iranians are Persians. Lebanese are overwhelmingly Arabs.
Their defining Open Letter includes specific commitments to Iran's Grand Ayatollah. IRG also got to move a cadre of 1,500 picked troops over to Lebanon to stay.
Americans out. Persians in. They are still there.
Thank you, Ronald Reagan ! Keep in mind that no one, ever, from the American side has apologized for the murders in Lebanon and for helping Saddam Hussein.
Bloody Lebanon 1982-1984
A brief history picks up in 1982: Israel invaded Lebanon in June to go after the Palestinian PLO and Fatah. IDF dashed up north as far as Beirut. Then a civil war lit up between local Christian Felangists and Muslim militias.
President Reagan and our French, Italian and British allies responded sensibly at the start. They tried to head off mass murders and possible destruction of Beirut by coming in to Lebanon in August, 1982, as United Nations Peacekeepers. Eisenhower had participated in a similar action landing 14,000 troops in 1958. Ike maintained impartiality and got back out after three months.
Initially a U.S. unit of 800 men was deployed to monitor an evacuation of PLO fighters out of the port of Beirut. These Marines were withdrawn on September 10th, 1982. The Israel Defense Force remained in control of the south side of Beirut.
Disaster followed. On September 16th of 1982, the Israeli army sealed off two sides of the Palestinians' Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The residents of the two camps had been disarmed with the PLO departure. Then Christian militiamen went inside the camps and slaughtered as many as 3,500 Muslims. The killings were indiscriminate. Dead bodies included children with their throats cut. Murders went on to the 19th of September. The Christian attackers brought along a bulldozer to help cover over the evidence.
Reagan waited 15 days and then sent 1,200 Marines back ashore. He maxxed out at 1,800 troops. No tanks were deployed.
“However long it takes we will work relentlessly for full accountability from those responsible for Sabra-Shatila.” That's from the Palestinians in 2013. There is a cemetery where 1100 massacre victims were buried on one day: September 20, 1982.
By winter of 1983, President Reagan was using the naval guns from US Navy ships offshore routinely. These were the big guns of a cruiser, USS Virginia, frigates USS Bowen, USS Pharris, and destroyers USS John Rodgers, and USS Arthur W. Radford. More than 4,000 rounds were fired from 5" guns in one prolonged suppression action.
Then on April 18th, 1983, the front of the American embassy on Rue de la Paris in Beirut was pancaked by a conventional truck bomb. The rooms running up the front of the main building were sheared off, falling down as rubble. Americans including the White House had no idea that this was a "just retaliation" action.
Reagan doubled down on his slogans and increased the intensity of U.S. firepower. After the embassy blast Reagan upped available U.S. firepower by ordering battleship New Jersey and its 16" naval guns to Lebanon from Long Beach, California.
By summer of 1983 Reagan had the naval guns and unlimited quantities of ammunition firing on uphill Lebanese residential areas to the east of central Beirut. That firing pattern moved around to the southeast .
Lebanese houses and apartment buildings were flattened in wide swaths. The 5" shells come to earth with a distribution that flattens every structure a quarter-mile wide and a half-mile deep. Civilians are toast. Firing 100 rounds gets that effect.
It's the "Collateral Murder" setup from the East Baghdad video using the 5" guns instead of helicopters with machine guns. Imagine that attack on the East Baghdad Reuters office, but knock down the whole block. Take out Reuters and half the buildings in the blocks around it.
Estimates for the number of civilian deaths range to 1,500 and up. Tens of thousands were wounded. Locals think that the body counts went far higher: 20,000 to 50,000 for overall losses.
Paper Tiger and the Marine Barracks
Ronald Reagan described the events of October 23rd, 1983, as follows:
This past Sunday, at 22 minutes after 6 Beirut time, with dawn just breaking, a truck, looking like a lot of other vehicles in the city, approached the airport on a busy, main road. There was nothing in its appearance to suggest it was any different than the trucks or cars that were normally seen on and around the airport. But this one was different. At the wheel was a young man on a suicide mission.
The truck carried some 2,000 pounds of explosives, but there was no way our marine guards could know this. Their first warning that something was wrong came when the truck crashed through a series of barriers, including a chain-link fence and barbed wire entanglements. The guards opened fire, but it was too late. The truck smashed through the doors of the headquarters building in which our marines were sleeping and instantly exploded. The four-story concrete building collapsed in a pile of rubble.
More than 200 of the sleeping men were killed in that one hideous, insane attack. Many others suffered injury and are hospitalized here or in Europe.
This was not the end of the horror. At almost the same instant, another
vehicle on a suicide and murder mission crashed into the headquarters of the French peacekeeping force, an eight-story building, destroying it and killing more than 50 French soldiers.
Prior to this day of horror, there had been several tragedies for our men in the multinational force. Attacks by snipers and mortar fire had taken their toll.
Reagan got the bomb wrong.
He had no idea that Iranians and Lebanese had put together an alliance to achieve pay-back. "Hideous, insane" is different from "They got revenge."
The FBI didn't do any better. Nobody knew squat about Islam.
Reagan did get it right that the guards opened up on the truck with their M16A2 automatic rifles. Thing is, this weapon fired a 5.56mm round that was fairly easy to defeat with steel armor. Heavy hub caps and solid tires kept the truck rolling.
1st Battalion 8th Marines had .50 caliber machine guns in their armory. These guns had armor piercing rounds would likely have stopped the armored truck. If nothing else, defenders could have shot apart the truck's wheels. Four of these guns were mounted uphill to protect the new embassy complex. None of the .50 cal guns were mounted at BLT Barracks.
The 1/8 and the 3/8 also had "Dragon" shoulder-launch anti-tank missiles. Sleeping in boxes.
The 1/8 took protection of the new embassy area seriously. Everything was in place. A security architecture was implemented with barriers capable of stopping a Syrian light tank.
The Hizb Allah
Before the Hizb Allah there was Amal, which means Hope. This was founded by Imam Musa Sadr. He organized the Lebanese Shia and largely avoided violent confrontations. Then in what looked to be a Sunni assassination, Sadr was "disappeared" while visiting Libya in 1978.
On a wider stage, Lebanon became a critical factor for the Iranians. They were fighting Saddam Hussein. They were also up against other Sunni states, particularly the the Gulf Cooperation Council. They needed desperately to have Shia support in Lebanon for an offset.
Ayatollah Khomeini established a well-supported presence in Lebanon. But the first wave of assassinations led everyone to question where he had gone, seeking deals. They killed Leftists: Hassan Bazzuni; a historian Hassan Hamdan; and a communist, Hussein Mrouei. Who would trade anything worth the candle for killing three no-power Lefties?
After the Hizb Allah went public in 1985 they rapidly replaced the older National Resistance Front. Then more assassinations: Sunni Sheikh Subhi as-Salih and Sheikh Hassan Khalid in the late 1980s. Another Sunni, Rafiq Hariri, went by a bombing in 2005. The total body count may have reached 100.
The big war in Lebanon is still Shia versus Sunni. That has been the big war in the Middle East for centuries. The Hizb Allah is not a normal political party -- it remains a party that relies on military force and assassinations to achieve its goals.
Legacy
Kennedy is well thought of. Apart from Vietnam generally and killing the Diem brothers, he acted sensibly. His choice for Vice President worked out brilliantly for getting through his legislative programs.
Reagan is different: either you love him or you think he was a "dunce" and a barbarian. He forced the Iranians to declare as enemies. He is truly the father of Hezbollah. Allowing the big kill at Marine Barracks set a standard for "just retaliation" terrorism.
Reagan did get two big tax breaks for the 1%.
For now, for Republicans, Reagan is the Perfect Man.