hist2004
05-02-2004, 09:26 AM
On the morning of Sunday, October 23, 1983, shortly after the sun rose over the Shouf Mountains of Lebanon, a Mercedes truck barreled across a parking lot that separated the Beirut airport terminal from the temporary U.S. Marine headquarters. Skirting sand-bagged bunkers and crashing through a series of barbed wire fences and gates, the truck dodged the bullets from a sentry's rifle and headed straight for the building where some 300 Marines lay sleeping. As witnesses watched in horror, the driver smashed the truck through the remaining barriers and into the lobby of the headquarters, where he detonated some 2,600 pounds of explosives. Within seconds, the four-story building was reduced to a heap of rubble, trapping hundreds of dead and wounded soldiers under the crushing weight of broken cement and cinder blocks. Minutes later, a similar attack destroyed a nearby barracks housing French paratroopers.
The next day, U.S. newspapers described a nightmare scene at the Beirut airport, where rescue workers used blow torches, pneumatic drills, and cranes in a desperate effort to free Marines still pinned under the collapsed building. "I haven't seen carnage like that since Vietnam," a Marine spokesman told reporters. 241 Marines lost their lives in the suicide attack, attributed to Lebanese Shi'ite militants. The French counted over 56 paratroopers dead.
Both the US Marines and the French paratroopers were part of a 5,800-person multinational force stationed in Beirut since September 1982, sent there not to wage war but to keep peace in the beleaguered city. From the beginning, the use of the Marines as a peacekeeping force had been controversial in the US, but the controversy thus far had been largely contained within the walls of the White House, where Reagan administration officials argued with each other over the mission of American troops in Lebanon. The devastating attack on October 23, however, ignited a national debate.
While a visibly shaken President Reagan, in remarks made soon after the explosion, indicated his intention to resist those who would "drive us out of that area," others -- in Congress and in the press -- questioned the utility of a small Marine presence in an unstable and increasingly violent country. The Marines could not keep peace in a nation torn by civil conflict, they argued; moreover, many Muslim factions viewed the Marines not as a neutral force but as allies of Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Christian leader whose shaky government the troops were helping to prop up. While Druze and Shi'ite snipers shot at the vulnerable Marines from their strongholds in the Shouf Mountains, critics said, the US forces had neither the numbers nor the go-ahead to do anything but fire back in self-defense.
The American troops should be augmented, some contended, and take a more active role in the battles between Muslim factions and Lebanon's fledgling, US-supported national army. The Marines should be sent home as soon as was logistically possible, others asserted. References to Vietnam abounded in the media. Meanwhile, polls showed that the American public disapproved of the Marines' presence in Lebanon by a margin of 3 to 2.
It was little wonder that Hedrick Smith of The New York Times described President Reagan -- who was expected to announce his bid for re-election soon -- as "a man under siege, tested politically and personally more severely than at any other time in his tenure." The chief executive's dilemma was clear: to withdraw the troops would give the appearance of buckling under the pressure of terrorist attacks; to beef them up would risk an intensification of the conflict in Lebanon and a possible confrontation with Syria and its chief supporter, the Soviet Union. "Most politicians," Smith wrote on October 25, "say the sheer horror of the event has given the President some breathing room to plot his next moves, but not [for] long."
Background: The Israeli Invasion of Lebanon
The Marines were in Lebanon as a consequence of the most recent upheaval in that war-torn nation. The sharp socioeconomic and religious disparities among the 2.5 million residents of mountainous Lebanon were intensified by the presence of numerous highly politicized Palestinian refugees. The protracted civil war that broke out in 1975 was exacerbated by the actions of nearly 5,000 Syrian troops, who entered Lebanon in June 1976. Sent to contain the strife, they played off Lebanese and Palestinian factions against each other -- and animosities continued to fester.
Israel compelled Syria to stay out of South Lebanon, which became a free-fire zone in which Palestinian and Lebanese guerrillas battled with Israeli troops and their surrogate Lebanese forces. A full-scale invasion of the south by Israel in March 1978 was halted at President Jimmy Carter' s insistence. However, Israel kept up pressure by bombing central Lebanon in spring 1981 in support of the Maronite Phalange forces, led by Bashir Gemayel. When Israeli jets killed 200 civilians in Beirut on July 17 and 18, 1981, the new administration in Washington intervened urgently. Reagan's special envoy Philip Habib rushed to the region. A U.S. mediated ceasefire came into effect on July 24 and lasted through April 1982.
In April an Israeli diplomat was shot in Paris, and on April 11 and again on May 9, there were Israeli air raids on West Beirut. The PLO responded with sporadic shelling of the Galilee, but this was not sufficient pretext for Israel to carry out its objective to invade Lebanon and destroy the PLO. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Prime Minister Menachem Begin hoped they would decapitate the Palestinian national movement and remove forever the political challenge to Israel's own rule over the Palestinian-populated West Bank and Gaza Strip. Moreover, Begin and Sharon, despite disagreements within the Israeli government, sought to bolster the political fortunes of Bashir Gemayel, who planned to contest the presidential election on August 23. Just as Syrian forces supported their Lebanese candidates, so might Israel exert leverage on the Lebanese political scene.
On June 5, 1982, in the wake of the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London by a dissident Palestinian group, Israeli attacks on PLO positions in Beirut succeeded in provoking the PLO into heavy shelling of northern Israel. Israel then launched "Operation Peace for Galilee." Steamrolling over Palestinian and Syrian forces, a 10,000-person Israeli army advanced through southern Lebanon to the outskirts of Beirut within a week and laid siege to the city of 500,000 in a determined effort to root out the 6000 Palestinian fighters trapped inside. The air, land and sea bombardment lasted nine weeks, rained 60,000 shells on the city, and killed nearly 7,000 persons; on August 12 alone an eleven-hour air and artillery barrage killed 300 civilians.
The Israeli invasion, as expected, also provoked a confrontation with Syria, who lost nearly 400 tanks, 86 MIG fighter aircraft and 19 surface-to-air missile batteries in a week's fighting. Nonetheless, Syria remained powerful in northern and eastern Lebanon and enjoyed strong diplomatic backing from Moscow. President Hafez al-Assad had a deep antipathy toward Bashir Gemayel and was determined to stamp out any Israeli influence in Beirut.
The Lebanese themselves remained deeply divided. Some initially welcomed the Israelis as a means to remove the PLO forces, whose presence was particularly resented in the Shi'ite south. Gemayel's Maronite forces were pleased to have Israel fight on their behalf, but hesitant to admit it in public. Syria and Israel armed their clients as the confrontation accelerated during June and July.
The First Multinational Force (MNF)
The deadly mix of national hostilities and territorial ambitions, which centered on the Israeli bombardment and siege of Beirut, alarmed the Reagan administration and triggered a flurry of diplomatic efforts, spearheaded by special envoy Philip Habib. Seeking ultimately to rid Lebanon of all foreign troops -- Israeli and Syrian alike -- Habib was able to broker a deal in early August that ended the siege of Beirut: the PLO agreed to surrender its heavy weapons to the Lebanese government and evacuate some 15,000 military personnel from Beirut; Israel agreed to allow them to go unharmed and not to enter the capital city.
As part of the agreement, a multinational force (MNF) of American, French and Italian troops would be assembled to oversee the evacuation. The PLO wanted a peacekeeping force to guarantee the safe departure of its forces and protect the Palestinian civilian community that remained in the refugee camps. Lebanese welcomed the MNF as a sign of international commitment to their stricken nation. It was thus that, for the second time since 1958, the US sent a contingent of Marines to Beirut.
The decision to send the Marines, however, had not been made without considerable debate within the Reagan administration. Habib and members of the National Security Council (NSC) saw a larger purpose in the presence of US forces than merely overseeing an evacuation. When Habib, says one State Department official, "originally raised the idea of bringing in Marines in the context of getting the PLO out, it wasn't limited to getting the PLO out. It was that the evacuation was the necessary first step toward building the authority of the government in Beirut, and then we will help the government expand it throughout the rest of the country." Similarly, recalls then NSC staff member Geoffrey Kemp, the NSC felt that sending in the Marines "would be a real assertion of superpower strength. [The idea was] that if you're a superpower, [if] you've got all these goddamned forces that you've built up for one reason or another, and you can't use them in a situation like this, then you've got a prostrate country."
On the other side of the fence was, ironically, the military and its civilian head, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who resisted putting the Marines in what he regarded as a highly ambiguous position. "The Department of Defense didn't want our troops going in at all in that kind of situation," recalls Francis West, then assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. "There wasn't a military mission .... We could understand why people might want us there as a symbol and a guarantee, but a symbol and guarantee of what? It wasn't peacekeeping; there wasn't really a peace to keep. It wasn't taking out some hostiles. It didn't strike us as being an appropriate mission to use American military force. . . ."
Weinberger lost the fight to keep American troops out of the MNF, but he succeeded in imposing strict limits, in terms of both time and role, on the mission. The Marines would go there solely to ensure a peaceful evacuation of the PLO and "in no case," President Reagan told reporters at a press conference, would they "stay longer than 30 days."
The 800 Marines arrived on August 25. On August 28, under the watchful eyes of the MNF, the PLO began to pull out. The evacuation, which took three days, went off without incident. Nearly 14,000 Palestinian and Syrian fighters left by sea and land. A comparative calm seemed to settle over Beirut. There seemed to be some promise of stability with the election of Bashir Gemayel as president by the Lebanese parliament on August 23, a choice that had the strong backing of both Israel and the United States. Habib and others in the Reagan administration saw in the new president Lebanon's best hope for forging agreements with both Israel and Syria to withdraw their forces, and for uniting the nation in some semblance of order.
Meanwhile, on September 1, President Reagan announced a US initiative aimed at bringing peace to the Middle East. The initiative called for 1) a resumption of Palestinian autonomy talks, 2) Palestinian self-rule in the occupied territories for five years, 3) a freeze on Israeli settlement expansion, and 4) the eventual confederation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jordan.
The Reagan Plan was greeted with cautious approval by the Arab governments, which convened for a summit in Fez in early September. But the Israeli government was furious and denounced the initiative. In Begin's view, Reagan seemed to miss the point of the invasion of Lebanon: Begin wanted to consolidate his control over the territories and expand the number of settlements as quickly as possible. He would welcome a bilateral peace treaty with Lebanon -- along the lines of the bilateral treaty with Egypt of 1979 -- but under no circumstances would he link that to a comprehensive accord that would involve the Palestinians and require Israel to give up the West Bank and Gaza.
Taking advantage of the lull in Lebanon's civil conflict, Weinberger ordered the Marines back home in mid-September, twelve days ahead of schedule. His abrupt action took officials in the State Department and the NSC by surprise but, with Gemayel now at the helm, they bowed to the defense secretary's wishes. On September 10, the MNF left Beirut. Two weeks later they were back.
The Second Multilateral Force
On September 14 -- four days after the MNF embarked from Beirut -- Bashir Gemayel was assassinated in a bomb explosion at the headquarters of his Phalange militia. The bombing was almost surely at Syrian direction. Morris Draper, a special presidential envoy to the Middle East, notes that the US was "very badly hit by the loss of Bashir Gemayel because he was a strong person and a very close friend of the United States .... He was indebted to the US for many things, including his election.... His loss was very discouraging."
Within hours, the Israeli army moved into Beirut, taking the lightly-armed Lebanese forces by surprise. That attack, launched despite vehement American protests, violated the Habib-brokered evacuation accord. The Israelis occupied the entire city, seized truckloads of documents from Palestinian offices, and tried to locate and arrest any remaining PLO officials.
Two days later, the Israeli army allowed 1,000 men from the Phalange to enter two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, in southern Beirut, just north of the airport. In reprisal for Gemayel's death, the Phalange murdered over 700 of the civilians whose safety the US government had guaranteed. Some reported a death toll as high as 2,000. (A subsequent Israeli investigation reported that the Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon and the chief of staff had approved and facilitated the entry of the Phalange into the camp, but the report stopped short of stating that Israeli officials had sanctioned the massacres.) The reaction in Washington was outrage, mixed with guilt. Draper described the American sense of responsibility in the wake of the massacres:
The United States made assurances in the form of the documents that Phil Habib and I negotiated with the parties; namely that the stay-behind Palestinian civilians would not be harmed. We had the multilateral force in there as a symbolic protection during the period of the greatest threat ... We felt that that symbolic presence had been adequate to establish the ground rules; we had assurances from all the parties including the Christian militias.
Draper noted that the US was not alone in its sense of responsibility:
Not only in the US but in France and Italy, there was a deep, deep sense that our honor was at stake.... There was a very strong sentiment in the chanceries of Rome and Paris, as well as Washington, that there was a responsibility ... to recover confidence and show again that these three countries would assist the government of Lebanon to assert its legitimate authority.
Within 48 hours, the White House decided to redeploy US forces in Lebanon, over the objectives of Weinberger and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Once again, the Marines were sent to Beirut to keep the peace. And on September 21, Amin Gemayel, brother of the slain Bashir, was elected president of Lebanon. As one of his first acts, he requested that the American, French and Italian troops return to Beirut to help the Lebanese Armed Forces restore order.
The US decision was made only after intense debate in the NSC. As Geoffrey Kemp, the NSC staff member for the Middle East, remembers:
The trauma of Bashir's assassination and [the massacres in] Sabra and Shatila, together with the ... promise from the US to the Palestinians through Habib that we would be responsible for their safety, made some redeployment inevitable for moral reasons. It was a traumatic experience, particularly for [the new secretary of state] George Shultz ... [who] was very much caught up with the Middle East, following not only the Lebanon drama of the summer but also the president's [peace] initiative.
Kemp describes the president's perspective at the time:
The president had a straightforward view, namely that in the wake of the summer crisis both Syria and Israel were in more vulnerable positions than they had been in for a long time. The Syrians had been beaten in a major confrontation with Israel and were in no position to consider major military options. The Israelis were shattered morally by Sabra-Shatila. Ronald Reagan's personal view was that in the wake of the redeployment, the US had the opportunity to put a lot of pressure on both Syria and Israel to withdraw.... If there was a speedy withdrawal of Israeli and Syrian forces, there was a hope that the new Gemayel government could establish some credibility and Lebanon could be rebuilt from within.
Alternatives to the return of the MNF had been explored briefly. The possibility of redeploying to Beirut some portion of the UN force in southern Lebanon was considered. But the main debate focused on the nature and extent of the US commitment. The State Department wanted only a small force for diplomatic purposes: Philip Habib reportedly felt that diplomatic agreement was possible without an expanded military role. The Department of Defense felt that no practical military mission could be accomplished and didn't want any forces used at all. The NSC staff argued for a larger commitment, as Kemp recalls:
We should not merely send back a battalion of Marines, certain staff members argued, but should consider a much larger, beefed up MNF with the US taking a greater responsibility for a larger area of southern Lebanon; the French and Italians expanding their sphere of influence and the British backpacking behind. But [we should] do so in a way that laid down a strong marker to Israel and Syria that we meant business, that we were going to act like a superpower.
The president rejected this more ambitious undertaking and decided upon a diplomatic endeavor buttressed by a military presence and supported by three U.S. allies -- France, Italy and Great Britain -- with help from moderate regional states, especially Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
The Marines, roughly 1,600 of them, arrived back in Beirut along with the other MNF troops on September 29, 1982, and set up camp at the Beirut International Airport; French and Italian units had already begun to arrive on September 26. The location, which was the Pentagon's choice, made it easy to resupply or evacuate the Marines. Nonetheless, the airport was highly vulnerable to attack: it was overshadowed by the high ground of the Shouf Mountains and adjacent to the southern suburbs, which were teaming with Palestinian refugees and Shi'a displaced from south Lebanon. At the time, this vulnerability appealed to the military, who reasoned that posting Marines there would signal to potential enemies that the US did not intend to fight.
To reinforce this message, the Marines' mission order drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff avoided giving the troops any responsibility for protecting the airport or any other part of Beirut, and stipulated that the Marines would not engage in combat except in self-defense. The Pentagon tried to place limits on the time as well as the scope of the Marines' mission, but was less successful than in the troops' first foray into Beirut. "We tried to make it explicit that we were going in for 60 days," says Assistant Secretary of Defense West. "I tried to have that written into the operations order. And people at my level over in State said, 'Now look, you're really trying to hold our feet to the fire: it might be 65 days, it might be 55 days. You've got to give us some latitude on this, I And I said, 'Hey, in essence, we don't mean years.' And they said, 'Of course we don't mean years'."
But as it turned out, the days stretched into months. A vear later the Marines were still at the airport, while the administration pursued a largely futile effort to bring stability to Lebanon.
Diplomatic Initiatives
While Weinberger and the military may have viewed the reintroduction of the Marines into Lebanon with dismay, the State Department and the NSC welcomed the opportunity to have an impact on the troubled Middle East. "Nothing comes for free," Geoffrey Kemp says, recalling NSC thinking at the time. "Let's gamble." He saw the possibility of securing three long-term strategic changes in the region. The first would be full Israeli and Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon that would lessen regional tensions by ending the dangerous conjunction of Syrian and Israeli forces, each with their superpower backer. The second would be the creation of a workable government within Lebanon, controlling its sovereign territory and at peace with Israel. The third, using those successes in Lebanon as a springboard, would be real progress in the Middle East peace process, which had been stalled since the Camp David accords of the Carter administration. All three goals proved elusive.
Back on September 1, the Reagan Plan proposed reviving the concepts of the Camp David accords and fostering Jordanian-Israeli negotiations over the West Bank and Gaza. Pending talks on the basis of the Reagan Plan, which was firmly rejected by Israel, the US would get a "springboard" in place in the form of an agreement between Israel and Lebanon that would grant Israel diplomatic recognition and include an Israeli troop withdrawal. Habib reasoned that a Lebanon-Israel accord would help soften Israel's stance toward Jordan and the Palestinians; moreover, once Israel had agreed to pull out of Lebanon, Syria would follow suit. Morris Draper, Habib's deputy, recalled Habib's sense of determination:
We thought we (could] move heaven and earth to get real movement, to show the world and the Lebanese people that the legitimate government could take over. We thought we ought to do everything we could to get the Israelis committed to a withdrawal agreement with very, very short notice. In fact, [Israel should] start the withdrawal process within days.
But heaven and earth were not moved. While the US had declarations from both Israel and Syria that they wanted to withdraw quickly to their own borders, both remained vitally interested in the terms on which withdrawal was to occur.
Formal negotiations between Israel and Lebanon did not begin until December 28, three months after the MNF landed. Secretary of State Shultz did not join the negotiations until April 1983, and an agreement was not reached between Israel and Lebanon until May 17, 1983. The early optimism proved unfounded; and the bilateral agreement, when finally reached, was immediately rejected by neighboring Syria.
The May 17th agreement fulfilled Israel's terms for peace: Israel and Lebanon would terminate their state of war (which dated back to 1948), establish embassies in each other's capitals, and respect each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Israel pledged to withdraw its troops, but a secret annex to the agreement was widely believed to provide for joint patrols and the preservation of Israel's client forces in southern Lebanon. Moreover, a key clause in the May 17th agreement stipulated that Israel was not obliged to bring its army home unless Syria did likewise.
The American expectation of a benign Syrian attitude stemmed, apparently, from an August 1982 statement by the Syrian foreign minister that "Syria would remove its troops when asked to do so by Lebanon," and by conversations between Habib and the Syrians. As Draper described the Syrian view at the end of 1982:
The Syrians were not negative to what was going on. We briefed the Syrians regularly and they told us to go ahead ... We tried to bring in the Syrians in a more direct way but the Syrians did not want to do anything resembling direct negotiations with the Israelis.
The Syrian ambassador had a different view:
The Americans explained very little to President Assad and some of what they did transmit was not what occurred. This became very clear later, when the Americans brought the May 17th Agreements to President Assad and informed him they were irreversible, that not even a comma could be changed. President Assad was presented with a fait accompli that was simply unacceptable to Syria and to the people of Lebanon.
Assad, his military arsenal rebuilt and refurbished by the Soviets, refused to withdraw. He argued that the Syrian presence could not be compared to Israel's invasion, since the Syrians had come as Arab League peacekeeping forces. He also suspected that Israel would never withdraw fully from the south: Syria would find itself vulnerable to attack if Israel alone retained a presence on Lebanese soil. The Syrians declared Habib persona non grata and diplomatic progress halted. Syria's stance, in turn, provided Israel with grounds for refusing to withdraw, and Lebanese political forces were left in disarray.
Neither the first nor the third goal had been achieved: there was no Israeli or Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and no process had begun toward negotiating a regional peace. The issue of the rationale, scope and duration of the Marines' presence in Beirut therefore became potentially contentious among the contending regional parties. The accompanying failure to create a viable political system within Lebanon -- the second goal articulated by the US administration -- risked undermining the security of the Marines themselves.
The Marines under Fire
As the Reagan administration's diplomatic initiatives faltered, the civil war in Lebanon began to heat up. Inexorably, the Marines were drawn into the conflict. The White House and the Pentagon had placed its highest hopes for maintaining peace in the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the US-bankrolled and trained army of the central government; but LAF could not maintain control over Beirut much less establish its authority outside the capital city.
The mission of the US component of the MNF (there was no agreed, common mission for the MNF as a whole) was to establish an environment that would facilitate the withdrawal of foreign military forces from Lebanon and to assist the Lebanese government and the LAF in establishing sovereignty and authority over the Beirut area. As Assistant Secretary of Defense West described it, the idea was to provide time and space for the newly formed Lebanese government to develop political and military strength:
The MNF went in on a crescent that fundamentally allowed Gemayel and the Lebanese government to form behind it. The MNF was a psychological and, to some extent, physical shield. Behind this protective shield, the central government could build and train new Army and police forces, which Gemayel could use later to control the various independent militias operating in the country.
Former US diplomat George Ball sketches a less flattering picture:
Having trapped itself by its overly exuberant rhetoric, the Administration did not have the faintest idea what to do. It had fallen victim to the same mistake America had made in Vietnam -- the belief that... America could mix in the internal affairs of a small country... and effectively impose a papier mache regime on all the warring factions.
On-the-ground coordinating arrangements were good. The MNF had frequent and constructive contacts with other national MNF contingents and with the embassy country team. There was a good sharing of information. Absorbing and assessing the very large flow of information was often a problem, however. This was especially true for reports of terrorist incidents; between May and November there were over 100 intelligence reports warning of terrorist car bomb attacks.
The Marines were initially well received by Lebanese of all persuasions and particularly by the local population, who derived some sense of security from the Marines' insertion between themselves and the Israelis. Although the environment remained dangerous -- fighting among the Lebanese factions and between them and the Israelis over the heads of the Marines was a common occurrence -- at first the presence of the Marines seemed to provide a measure of stability and time for the major powers to work their miracle.
The Marines had no responsibility for internal security; this was the job of the LAF. The LAF had little capacity to carry out the mission, however, and it was the American intention to instill that capacity as rapidly as possible. An Office of Military Cooperation (MAAG) was established, headed by an Army colonel, and the Marines were given the additional task of helping to train Lebanese army units. That new mission, however, meant that the Marines could be perceived as aiding one side in the civil conflict, given the questionable legitimacy of the government and its intimate ties to the Phalange.
As time went by, the security environment changed for the worse. The US embassy in West Beirut was partially destroyed by a car bomb on April 18, 1983, leaving 63 people dead, including 17 Americans. The "Islamic Jihad," a group presumably backed by Iran, claimed responsibility. The local population resented the effort by the US-backed LAF to impose control on West Beirut. The MNF airport security perimeter shrank. Patrols into the city ended. Artillery and sniper fire increased, as did terrorist threats. But the Marines were given another mission after the bombing: to protect the ambassador and the new embassy buildings under construction in East Beirut, which was thought to be safer than Muslim West Beirut.
Moreover, their task was complicated by the unilateral withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Shouf Mountains, overlooking the airport and the city, to a line further south along the Awali River. The IDF, recognizing that its lines were overstretched and that the Israeli public would not support a continued high level of casualties, hoped that the Phalange could take over the Shouf. Washington wanted Israel to delay its withdrawal until the Lebanese government was prepared to assume authority over the Shouf. But the IDF allowed Phalange forces to enter the Shouf's Druze villages in July, triggering bloody clashes.
Israel's sudden withdrawal on August 31 provoked a major battle for control of the mountains. The Marines were exposed to cross-fire as the Lebanese Army helped the Phalange fight the Druze mountaineers. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt announced the formation of the National Salvation Front, a coalition of largely Muslim groups backed by Syria. The new organization called for the rejection of the almost-moribund May 17th agreement and the establishment of a new government in Beirut that reflected Lebanon's Muslim majority. Within days, the Maronites lost sixty villages, suffering 1000 dead and 50,000 homeless. Only on September 26 did the US and Syria negotiate a cease-fire, with the Druze in control of the Shouf. The cease-fire accord recognized the legitimacy of the Gemayel government, but Gemayel's credibility was severely eroded.
By then, the dangers to the MNF had increased dramatically. As Assistant Secretary West saw it:
When the Israelis unilaterally decided to pull out of the Shouf, the objective situation on the ground changed. Then the Marines genuinely faced the unknown... Objective conditions changed without an objective radical reconsideration [of US government policy].
In effect, the Marines' mission had shifted from peacekeeping to encouraging and supporting the Lebanese government's armed offensive in the mountains. During August, the US mounted daily air reconnaissance over the Shouf and over Syrian artillery positions to the east. A further 2,000 Marines were moved to offshore positions and the battleship New Jersey, with its 16-inch guns, joined the naval squadron off Beirut on September 25. By then, the Marine commander was authorized to call in air and naval gunfire not only for self-defense but also to support the Lebanese army. Naval guns had shelled targets in areas that Syria controlled. For example, offshore destroyers fired on Druze positions on September 8 and 19 to bolster the LAF.
On August 29 -- a day after the first direct strike by the Marines against Druze positions -- the first two Marines were killed by Druze artillery; rocket fire killed two more on September 6. Although the military was disturbed at the apparent lack of clear purpose in its engagements with the Druze forces, the commander of the Marine Corps argued that "whoever is shooting at us ... is shooting more at where we are than who we are. There is no indication anybody is purposefully taking Marines under fire." However, the intensity of the fire into the MNF positions was considerable. Mortar and sniper fire were commonplace, and the MNF frequently went to battle stations.
Tension eased only with the ceasefire on September 26 and the subsequent effort to initiate a "national dialogue" among Lebanon's warring factions. Some White House officials viewed the ceasefire as an indication of the effectiveness of American saber-rattling." The dispatch of the New Jersey, one senior official argued, triggered the "meeting that led to a cease-fire. It was, I think, clearly attributable to the potential application of force."
The Marine battalion, the principal unit of the MNF, was billeted in a four-story, reinforced concrete building that had earlier served as Israeli headquarters. The building provided good protection against sniper and indirect fire, but less protection against any direct fire or car bombs. An extensive perimeter defense was intended to keep car bombers and others away from the building. Armed sentries were posted at regular intervals. There was, however, a limit to the amount of protection that was possible in the middle of a working airport. There were busy roads on both sides of the MNF headquarters building and a parking lot in front of the building.
It was against the backdrop of Lebanon's deteriorating political and military situation that terrorists struck Marine headquarters on October 23. The catastrophic nature of the event propelled the long-simmering controversy over the Marines' presence in Lebanon to the center-stage of public debate in the US.
The Pros and Cons
The debate, as it played out in the press and among members of Congress in the days immediately following the bombing, essentially mirrored the arguments already heard within the Reagan administration. In the aftermath of the attack, however, the issue of when to bring the US troops home became even more highly charged. Many editorialists agreed with the view of NSC and State Department officials that US credibility and influence in the Middle East would be crippled by a pull-out of the Marines. "For a power with America's responsibilities," the Washington Post argued in an editorial, "it is inconceivable to hand the bombers the victory they sought by pulling the Marines out. American influence throughout the region could collapse. " Others saw even more perilous consequences if the US withdrew. "If the choice is to pack up and leave, " wrote the Atlanta Constitution, "then the consequences easily could become a Syrian-Israeli war over Lebanon -- in the short term less costly of American lives, of course, but risking in the long run an extremely dangerous US-Soviet confrontation."
In Congress, the president received bipartisan support from the leadership: both the Speaker of the House, Democrat Thomas P. O'Neill, and the Senate Majority Leader, Republican Howard Baker, asserted that the Marines should not be pulled out "at the point of a gun." In an October 27 op-ed piece in the New York Times, entitled "Hold Firm on Lebanon," Senator Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kansas) acknowledged "reservations about our involvement in Lebanon," but at the same time argued that an "American withdrawal would signal the collapse of the peace process and could quickly lead to other confrontations in Lebanon that could affect the entire region." Kassebaum urged the administration to provide better security for US troops in Beirut and to "back up our Marines with intense pressure for progress in negotiations for national reconciliation among the various factions in Lebanon."
But many voices called for the prompt pull-out of the Marines. "Tragically," wrote an editorialist in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "it is time to recognize that there are honorable tasks on this earth that cannot be completed. That if there were 16,000 US Marines committed to peacekeeping in Lebanon [instead of 1,600]... they could not impose order, political stability on the warring, hating factions that are there." The Greensboro Daily News of North Carolina warned, "If the President does not change course he risks a Vietnam-style commitment.... The President can avoid that tragic state by extricating the Marines from Lebanese soil as quickly as it can honorably be done." Even administration supporters in Congress, such as Senator Dan Quayle (R-Ind.), spoke of a phased pull-out of the Marines and their eventual replacement with a United Nations force.
Along with the calls for a pull-out came sharp criticism of what was seen as the administration's lack of clear purpose in Lebanon. Sensing a potential campaign issue in the coming presidential election, several Democratic hopefuls seized the opportunity to speak out against the president's policies. Senator John Glenn of Ohio, for example, urged the White House to "present to the American people and the Congress a clean and well-defined statement of our mission in Lebanon, including the likely scope and duration of our role." Bernard Aronson, policy director for the Democratic National Committee, echoed this sentiment: "If there's one lesson on the Vietnam War," he said, "it is, when you project American forces abroad you need to define a clear goal."
Even before his re-election campaign would get underway, however, Reagan could potentially face serious challenges from Democrats in Congress. On October 12, less than two weeks before the bombing, the president had signed legislation initiated by Congress that gave him limited authority to keep Marines in Lebanon for 18 months; any substantial expansion in the number or role of US troops would require new approval from Congress. While the president had left it an open question whether he considered himself constitutionally bound to abide by the bill (and the 1973 War Powers Act) , there was little doubt that legislators would jealously guard their role in any action the White House took. Already, some House Democrats were threatening to force Reagan to bring the Marines home by proposing a cutoff of funds.
Meanwhile, within his own administration, indications were that the opposing positions of the president's closest advisors remained substantially unaltered. Weinberger continued to assert that there would be no increase in either the size of the Marine contingent or in the area in which it operated. The troops would confine themselves to the Beirut airport.
On the other hand, George Shultz spoke strongly for a continuing US role in Lebanon. "If we as Americans decide we do not want the role and influence of a great power," he told Congress during a briefing, "then I shudder to think what kind of a world of anarchy and danger our children will inherit." In the State Department and the NSC, the feeling remained that, however high the risks, they were outweighed by the potential gains. "The question you ask yourself," explains one State Department policy official, "about Lebanon or about the latest attempt to get the peace process working -- or even about Camp David at that time -- if you have a 20 percent chance for success, should you take it? Or should you say, there's an 80 percent chance of losing, I'd better not get involved in it. Well obviously, the [view] in this administration... is 20 percent in the Middle East ain't bad."
For the time being, President Reagan appeared determined to stay on the course his administration had set for the Marines in Lebanon. In an October 24 press conference at a luncheon gathering of broadcast editors, he asserted:
The option that we cannot consider is withdrawing while [the Marines'] mission still remains. And they do have a mission, contrary to what some people have intimated in the last 24 hours or so. And it is tied in with the effort that we launched more than a year ago to try and bring peace to the total area of the Middle East because of its strategic importance to the whole free world, not just the United States.
The president outlined the progress achieved while the Marines were stationed in Beirut -- the evacuation of the PLO, the establishment of a new government under Amin Gemayel, the training of the LAF -- and pointed to the upcoming "national reconciliation" talks between Gemayel and leaders of Lebanon's major factions, scheduled to begin in Geneva by the end of the month. Nevertheless, he added, the Marines' "mission remains and it remains as yet unfulfilled, although there's been tremendous success so far."
At the same time, Reagan argued that giving the Marines an expanded role in the fighting would lead to a more serious entanglement. "We would be the combat force," he said in answer to a reporter's question. "We would be fighting against Arab states. And that is not the road to peace ... [To] join in the combat... [would be] risking the start of overall conflict and world war. No. Our mission, I think, makes sense."
But whether there was consensus on that mission remained unclear. Even before the bombing attack on the Marines' headquarters, polls had shown that the public disapproved of the Marines' mission in Beirut by a 3-to-2 margin and disagreed, by nearly 3 to 1, with the president's claim that vital American interests were at stake in Lebanon. Congress and the public were uneasy about Lebanon, Hedrick Smith warned in the New York Times, and the President's political allies "anticipate a much angrier public mood as the country prepares for a mass of funerals." The crisis over the Marines in Lebanon, Smith continued, represented "the one situation that his political advisers warned could gravely wound his Presidency and perhaps fatally damage his chances for re-election."
Regards,
Hist2004
The next day, U.S. newspapers described a nightmare scene at the Beirut airport, where rescue workers used blow torches, pneumatic drills, and cranes in a desperate effort to free Marines still pinned under the collapsed building. "I haven't seen carnage like that since Vietnam," a Marine spokesman told reporters. 241 Marines lost their lives in the suicide attack, attributed to Lebanese Shi'ite militants. The French counted over 56 paratroopers dead.
Both the US Marines and the French paratroopers were part of a 5,800-person multinational force stationed in Beirut since September 1982, sent there not to wage war but to keep peace in the beleaguered city. From the beginning, the use of the Marines as a peacekeeping force had been controversial in the US, but the controversy thus far had been largely contained within the walls of the White House, where Reagan administration officials argued with each other over the mission of American troops in Lebanon. The devastating attack on October 23, however, ignited a national debate.
While a visibly shaken President Reagan, in remarks made soon after the explosion, indicated his intention to resist those who would "drive us out of that area," others -- in Congress and in the press -- questioned the utility of a small Marine presence in an unstable and increasingly violent country. The Marines could not keep peace in a nation torn by civil conflict, they argued; moreover, many Muslim factions viewed the Marines not as a neutral force but as allies of Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Christian leader whose shaky government the troops were helping to prop up. While Druze and Shi'ite snipers shot at the vulnerable Marines from their strongholds in the Shouf Mountains, critics said, the US forces had neither the numbers nor the go-ahead to do anything but fire back in self-defense.
The American troops should be augmented, some contended, and take a more active role in the battles between Muslim factions and Lebanon's fledgling, US-supported national army. The Marines should be sent home as soon as was logistically possible, others asserted. References to Vietnam abounded in the media. Meanwhile, polls showed that the American public disapproved of the Marines' presence in Lebanon by a margin of 3 to 2.
It was little wonder that Hedrick Smith of The New York Times described President Reagan -- who was expected to announce his bid for re-election soon -- as "a man under siege, tested politically and personally more severely than at any other time in his tenure." The chief executive's dilemma was clear: to withdraw the troops would give the appearance of buckling under the pressure of terrorist attacks; to beef them up would risk an intensification of the conflict in Lebanon and a possible confrontation with Syria and its chief supporter, the Soviet Union. "Most politicians," Smith wrote on October 25, "say the sheer horror of the event has given the President some breathing room to plot his next moves, but not [for] long."
Background: The Israeli Invasion of Lebanon
The Marines were in Lebanon as a consequence of the most recent upheaval in that war-torn nation. The sharp socioeconomic and religious disparities among the 2.5 million residents of mountainous Lebanon were intensified by the presence of numerous highly politicized Palestinian refugees. The protracted civil war that broke out in 1975 was exacerbated by the actions of nearly 5,000 Syrian troops, who entered Lebanon in June 1976. Sent to contain the strife, they played off Lebanese and Palestinian factions against each other -- and animosities continued to fester.
Israel compelled Syria to stay out of South Lebanon, which became a free-fire zone in which Palestinian and Lebanese guerrillas battled with Israeli troops and their surrogate Lebanese forces. A full-scale invasion of the south by Israel in March 1978 was halted at President Jimmy Carter' s insistence. However, Israel kept up pressure by bombing central Lebanon in spring 1981 in support of the Maronite Phalange forces, led by Bashir Gemayel. When Israeli jets killed 200 civilians in Beirut on July 17 and 18, 1981, the new administration in Washington intervened urgently. Reagan's special envoy Philip Habib rushed to the region. A U.S. mediated ceasefire came into effect on July 24 and lasted through April 1982.
In April an Israeli diplomat was shot in Paris, and on April 11 and again on May 9, there were Israeli air raids on West Beirut. The PLO responded with sporadic shelling of the Galilee, but this was not sufficient pretext for Israel to carry out its objective to invade Lebanon and destroy the PLO. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Prime Minister Menachem Begin hoped they would decapitate the Palestinian national movement and remove forever the political challenge to Israel's own rule over the Palestinian-populated West Bank and Gaza Strip. Moreover, Begin and Sharon, despite disagreements within the Israeli government, sought to bolster the political fortunes of Bashir Gemayel, who planned to contest the presidential election on August 23. Just as Syrian forces supported their Lebanese candidates, so might Israel exert leverage on the Lebanese political scene.
On June 5, 1982, in the wake of the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London by a dissident Palestinian group, Israeli attacks on PLO positions in Beirut succeeded in provoking the PLO into heavy shelling of northern Israel. Israel then launched "Operation Peace for Galilee." Steamrolling over Palestinian and Syrian forces, a 10,000-person Israeli army advanced through southern Lebanon to the outskirts of Beirut within a week and laid siege to the city of 500,000 in a determined effort to root out the 6000 Palestinian fighters trapped inside. The air, land and sea bombardment lasted nine weeks, rained 60,000 shells on the city, and killed nearly 7,000 persons; on August 12 alone an eleven-hour air and artillery barrage killed 300 civilians.
The Israeli invasion, as expected, also provoked a confrontation with Syria, who lost nearly 400 tanks, 86 MIG fighter aircraft and 19 surface-to-air missile batteries in a week's fighting. Nonetheless, Syria remained powerful in northern and eastern Lebanon and enjoyed strong diplomatic backing from Moscow. President Hafez al-Assad had a deep antipathy toward Bashir Gemayel and was determined to stamp out any Israeli influence in Beirut.
The Lebanese themselves remained deeply divided. Some initially welcomed the Israelis as a means to remove the PLO forces, whose presence was particularly resented in the Shi'ite south. Gemayel's Maronite forces were pleased to have Israel fight on their behalf, but hesitant to admit it in public. Syria and Israel armed their clients as the confrontation accelerated during June and July.
The First Multinational Force (MNF)
The deadly mix of national hostilities and territorial ambitions, which centered on the Israeli bombardment and siege of Beirut, alarmed the Reagan administration and triggered a flurry of diplomatic efforts, spearheaded by special envoy Philip Habib. Seeking ultimately to rid Lebanon of all foreign troops -- Israeli and Syrian alike -- Habib was able to broker a deal in early August that ended the siege of Beirut: the PLO agreed to surrender its heavy weapons to the Lebanese government and evacuate some 15,000 military personnel from Beirut; Israel agreed to allow them to go unharmed and not to enter the capital city.
As part of the agreement, a multinational force (MNF) of American, French and Italian troops would be assembled to oversee the evacuation. The PLO wanted a peacekeeping force to guarantee the safe departure of its forces and protect the Palestinian civilian community that remained in the refugee camps. Lebanese welcomed the MNF as a sign of international commitment to their stricken nation. It was thus that, for the second time since 1958, the US sent a contingent of Marines to Beirut.
The decision to send the Marines, however, had not been made without considerable debate within the Reagan administration. Habib and members of the National Security Council (NSC) saw a larger purpose in the presence of US forces than merely overseeing an evacuation. When Habib, says one State Department official, "originally raised the idea of bringing in Marines in the context of getting the PLO out, it wasn't limited to getting the PLO out. It was that the evacuation was the necessary first step toward building the authority of the government in Beirut, and then we will help the government expand it throughout the rest of the country." Similarly, recalls then NSC staff member Geoffrey Kemp, the NSC felt that sending in the Marines "would be a real assertion of superpower strength. [The idea was] that if you're a superpower, [if] you've got all these goddamned forces that you've built up for one reason or another, and you can't use them in a situation like this, then you've got a prostrate country."
On the other side of the fence was, ironically, the military and its civilian head, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who resisted putting the Marines in what he regarded as a highly ambiguous position. "The Department of Defense didn't want our troops going in at all in that kind of situation," recalls Francis West, then assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. "There wasn't a military mission .... We could understand why people might want us there as a symbol and a guarantee, but a symbol and guarantee of what? It wasn't peacekeeping; there wasn't really a peace to keep. It wasn't taking out some hostiles. It didn't strike us as being an appropriate mission to use American military force. . . ."
Weinberger lost the fight to keep American troops out of the MNF, but he succeeded in imposing strict limits, in terms of both time and role, on the mission. The Marines would go there solely to ensure a peaceful evacuation of the PLO and "in no case," President Reagan told reporters at a press conference, would they "stay longer than 30 days."
The 800 Marines arrived on August 25. On August 28, under the watchful eyes of the MNF, the PLO began to pull out. The evacuation, which took three days, went off without incident. Nearly 14,000 Palestinian and Syrian fighters left by sea and land. A comparative calm seemed to settle over Beirut. There seemed to be some promise of stability with the election of Bashir Gemayel as president by the Lebanese parliament on August 23, a choice that had the strong backing of both Israel and the United States. Habib and others in the Reagan administration saw in the new president Lebanon's best hope for forging agreements with both Israel and Syria to withdraw their forces, and for uniting the nation in some semblance of order.
Meanwhile, on September 1, President Reagan announced a US initiative aimed at bringing peace to the Middle East. The initiative called for 1) a resumption of Palestinian autonomy talks, 2) Palestinian self-rule in the occupied territories for five years, 3) a freeze on Israeli settlement expansion, and 4) the eventual confederation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jordan.
The Reagan Plan was greeted with cautious approval by the Arab governments, which convened for a summit in Fez in early September. But the Israeli government was furious and denounced the initiative. In Begin's view, Reagan seemed to miss the point of the invasion of Lebanon: Begin wanted to consolidate his control over the territories and expand the number of settlements as quickly as possible. He would welcome a bilateral peace treaty with Lebanon -- along the lines of the bilateral treaty with Egypt of 1979 -- but under no circumstances would he link that to a comprehensive accord that would involve the Palestinians and require Israel to give up the West Bank and Gaza.
Taking advantage of the lull in Lebanon's civil conflict, Weinberger ordered the Marines back home in mid-September, twelve days ahead of schedule. His abrupt action took officials in the State Department and the NSC by surprise but, with Gemayel now at the helm, they bowed to the defense secretary's wishes. On September 10, the MNF left Beirut. Two weeks later they were back.
The Second Multilateral Force
On September 14 -- four days after the MNF embarked from Beirut -- Bashir Gemayel was assassinated in a bomb explosion at the headquarters of his Phalange militia. The bombing was almost surely at Syrian direction. Morris Draper, a special presidential envoy to the Middle East, notes that the US was "very badly hit by the loss of Bashir Gemayel because he was a strong person and a very close friend of the United States .... He was indebted to the US for many things, including his election.... His loss was very discouraging."
Within hours, the Israeli army moved into Beirut, taking the lightly-armed Lebanese forces by surprise. That attack, launched despite vehement American protests, violated the Habib-brokered evacuation accord. The Israelis occupied the entire city, seized truckloads of documents from Palestinian offices, and tried to locate and arrest any remaining PLO officials.
Two days later, the Israeli army allowed 1,000 men from the Phalange to enter two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, in southern Beirut, just north of the airport. In reprisal for Gemayel's death, the Phalange murdered over 700 of the civilians whose safety the US government had guaranteed. Some reported a death toll as high as 2,000. (A subsequent Israeli investigation reported that the Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon and the chief of staff had approved and facilitated the entry of the Phalange into the camp, but the report stopped short of stating that Israeli officials had sanctioned the massacres.) The reaction in Washington was outrage, mixed with guilt. Draper described the American sense of responsibility in the wake of the massacres:
The United States made assurances in the form of the documents that Phil Habib and I negotiated with the parties; namely that the stay-behind Palestinian civilians would not be harmed. We had the multilateral force in there as a symbolic protection during the period of the greatest threat ... We felt that that symbolic presence had been adequate to establish the ground rules; we had assurances from all the parties including the Christian militias.
Draper noted that the US was not alone in its sense of responsibility:
Not only in the US but in France and Italy, there was a deep, deep sense that our honor was at stake.... There was a very strong sentiment in the chanceries of Rome and Paris, as well as Washington, that there was a responsibility ... to recover confidence and show again that these three countries would assist the government of Lebanon to assert its legitimate authority.
Within 48 hours, the White House decided to redeploy US forces in Lebanon, over the objectives of Weinberger and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Once again, the Marines were sent to Beirut to keep the peace. And on September 21, Amin Gemayel, brother of the slain Bashir, was elected president of Lebanon. As one of his first acts, he requested that the American, French and Italian troops return to Beirut to help the Lebanese Armed Forces restore order.
The US decision was made only after intense debate in the NSC. As Geoffrey Kemp, the NSC staff member for the Middle East, remembers:
The trauma of Bashir's assassination and [the massacres in] Sabra and Shatila, together with the ... promise from the US to the Palestinians through Habib that we would be responsible for their safety, made some redeployment inevitable for moral reasons. It was a traumatic experience, particularly for [the new secretary of state] George Shultz ... [who] was very much caught up with the Middle East, following not only the Lebanon drama of the summer but also the president's [peace] initiative.
Kemp describes the president's perspective at the time:
The president had a straightforward view, namely that in the wake of the summer crisis both Syria and Israel were in more vulnerable positions than they had been in for a long time. The Syrians had been beaten in a major confrontation with Israel and were in no position to consider major military options. The Israelis were shattered morally by Sabra-Shatila. Ronald Reagan's personal view was that in the wake of the redeployment, the US had the opportunity to put a lot of pressure on both Syria and Israel to withdraw.... If there was a speedy withdrawal of Israeli and Syrian forces, there was a hope that the new Gemayel government could establish some credibility and Lebanon could be rebuilt from within.
Alternatives to the return of the MNF had been explored briefly. The possibility of redeploying to Beirut some portion of the UN force in southern Lebanon was considered. But the main debate focused on the nature and extent of the US commitment. The State Department wanted only a small force for diplomatic purposes: Philip Habib reportedly felt that diplomatic agreement was possible without an expanded military role. The Department of Defense felt that no practical military mission could be accomplished and didn't want any forces used at all. The NSC staff argued for a larger commitment, as Kemp recalls:
We should not merely send back a battalion of Marines, certain staff members argued, but should consider a much larger, beefed up MNF with the US taking a greater responsibility for a larger area of southern Lebanon; the French and Italians expanding their sphere of influence and the British backpacking behind. But [we should] do so in a way that laid down a strong marker to Israel and Syria that we meant business, that we were going to act like a superpower.
The president rejected this more ambitious undertaking and decided upon a diplomatic endeavor buttressed by a military presence and supported by three U.S. allies -- France, Italy and Great Britain -- with help from moderate regional states, especially Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
The Marines, roughly 1,600 of them, arrived back in Beirut along with the other MNF troops on September 29, 1982, and set up camp at the Beirut International Airport; French and Italian units had already begun to arrive on September 26. The location, which was the Pentagon's choice, made it easy to resupply or evacuate the Marines. Nonetheless, the airport was highly vulnerable to attack: it was overshadowed by the high ground of the Shouf Mountains and adjacent to the southern suburbs, which were teaming with Palestinian refugees and Shi'a displaced from south Lebanon. At the time, this vulnerability appealed to the military, who reasoned that posting Marines there would signal to potential enemies that the US did not intend to fight.
To reinforce this message, the Marines' mission order drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff avoided giving the troops any responsibility for protecting the airport or any other part of Beirut, and stipulated that the Marines would not engage in combat except in self-defense. The Pentagon tried to place limits on the time as well as the scope of the Marines' mission, but was less successful than in the troops' first foray into Beirut. "We tried to make it explicit that we were going in for 60 days," says Assistant Secretary of Defense West. "I tried to have that written into the operations order. And people at my level over in State said, 'Now look, you're really trying to hold our feet to the fire: it might be 65 days, it might be 55 days. You've got to give us some latitude on this, I And I said, 'Hey, in essence, we don't mean years.' And they said, 'Of course we don't mean years'."
But as it turned out, the days stretched into months. A vear later the Marines were still at the airport, while the administration pursued a largely futile effort to bring stability to Lebanon.
Diplomatic Initiatives
While Weinberger and the military may have viewed the reintroduction of the Marines into Lebanon with dismay, the State Department and the NSC welcomed the opportunity to have an impact on the troubled Middle East. "Nothing comes for free," Geoffrey Kemp says, recalling NSC thinking at the time. "Let's gamble." He saw the possibility of securing three long-term strategic changes in the region. The first would be full Israeli and Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon that would lessen regional tensions by ending the dangerous conjunction of Syrian and Israeli forces, each with their superpower backer. The second would be the creation of a workable government within Lebanon, controlling its sovereign territory and at peace with Israel. The third, using those successes in Lebanon as a springboard, would be real progress in the Middle East peace process, which had been stalled since the Camp David accords of the Carter administration. All three goals proved elusive.
Back on September 1, the Reagan Plan proposed reviving the concepts of the Camp David accords and fostering Jordanian-Israeli negotiations over the West Bank and Gaza. Pending talks on the basis of the Reagan Plan, which was firmly rejected by Israel, the US would get a "springboard" in place in the form of an agreement between Israel and Lebanon that would grant Israel diplomatic recognition and include an Israeli troop withdrawal. Habib reasoned that a Lebanon-Israel accord would help soften Israel's stance toward Jordan and the Palestinians; moreover, once Israel had agreed to pull out of Lebanon, Syria would follow suit. Morris Draper, Habib's deputy, recalled Habib's sense of determination:
We thought we (could] move heaven and earth to get real movement, to show the world and the Lebanese people that the legitimate government could take over. We thought we ought to do everything we could to get the Israelis committed to a withdrawal agreement with very, very short notice. In fact, [Israel should] start the withdrawal process within days.
But heaven and earth were not moved. While the US had declarations from both Israel and Syria that they wanted to withdraw quickly to their own borders, both remained vitally interested in the terms on which withdrawal was to occur.
Formal negotiations between Israel and Lebanon did not begin until December 28, three months after the MNF landed. Secretary of State Shultz did not join the negotiations until April 1983, and an agreement was not reached between Israel and Lebanon until May 17, 1983. The early optimism proved unfounded; and the bilateral agreement, when finally reached, was immediately rejected by neighboring Syria.
The May 17th agreement fulfilled Israel's terms for peace: Israel and Lebanon would terminate their state of war (which dated back to 1948), establish embassies in each other's capitals, and respect each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Israel pledged to withdraw its troops, but a secret annex to the agreement was widely believed to provide for joint patrols and the preservation of Israel's client forces in southern Lebanon. Moreover, a key clause in the May 17th agreement stipulated that Israel was not obliged to bring its army home unless Syria did likewise.
The American expectation of a benign Syrian attitude stemmed, apparently, from an August 1982 statement by the Syrian foreign minister that "Syria would remove its troops when asked to do so by Lebanon," and by conversations between Habib and the Syrians. As Draper described the Syrian view at the end of 1982:
The Syrians were not negative to what was going on. We briefed the Syrians regularly and they told us to go ahead ... We tried to bring in the Syrians in a more direct way but the Syrians did not want to do anything resembling direct negotiations with the Israelis.
The Syrian ambassador had a different view:
The Americans explained very little to President Assad and some of what they did transmit was not what occurred. This became very clear later, when the Americans brought the May 17th Agreements to President Assad and informed him they were irreversible, that not even a comma could be changed. President Assad was presented with a fait accompli that was simply unacceptable to Syria and to the people of Lebanon.
Assad, his military arsenal rebuilt and refurbished by the Soviets, refused to withdraw. He argued that the Syrian presence could not be compared to Israel's invasion, since the Syrians had come as Arab League peacekeeping forces. He also suspected that Israel would never withdraw fully from the south: Syria would find itself vulnerable to attack if Israel alone retained a presence on Lebanese soil. The Syrians declared Habib persona non grata and diplomatic progress halted. Syria's stance, in turn, provided Israel with grounds for refusing to withdraw, and Lebanese political forces were left in disarray.
Neither the first nor the third goal had been achieved: there was no Israeli or Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and no process had begun toward negotiating a regional peace. The issue of the rationale, scope and duration of the Marines' presence in Beirut therefore became potentially contentious among the contending regional parties. The accompanying failure to create a viable political system within Lebanon -- the second goal articulated by the US administration -- risked undermining the security of the Marines themselves.
The Marines under Fire
As the Reagan administration's diplomatic initiatives faltered, the civil war in Lebanon began to heat up. Inexorably, the Marines were drawn into the conflict. The White House and the Pentagon had placed its highest hopes for maintaining peace in the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the US-bankrolled and trained army of the central government; but LAF could not maintain control over Beirut much less establish its authority outside the capital city.
The mission of the US component of the MNF (there was no agreed, common mission for the MNF as a whole) was to establish an environment that would facilitate the withdrawal of foreign military forces from Lebanon and to assist the Lebanese government and the LAF in establishing sovereignty and authority over the Beirut area. As Assistant Secretary of Defense West described it, the idea was to provide time and space for the newly formed Lebanese government to develop political and military strength:
The MNF went in on a crescent that fundamentally allowed Gemayel and the Lebanese government to form behind it. The MNF was a psychological and, to some extent, physical shield. Behind this protective shield, the central government could build and train new Army and police forces, which Gemayel could use later to control the various independent militias operating in the country.
Former US diplomat George Ball sketches a less flattering picture:
Having trapped itself by its overly exuberant rhetoric, the Administration did not have the faintest idea what to do. It had fallen victim to the same mistake America had made in Vietnam -- the belief that... America could mix in the internal affairs of a small country... and effectively impose a papier mache regime on all the warring factions.
On-the-ground coordinating arrangements were good. The MNF had frequent and constructive contacts with other national MNF contingents and with the embassy country team. There was a good sharing of information. Absorbing and assessing the very large flow of information was often a problem, however. This was especially true for reports of terrorist incidents; between May and November there were over 100 intelligence reports warning of terrorist car bomb attacks.
The Marines were initially well received by Lebanese of all persuasions and particularly by the local population, who derived some sense of security from the Marines' insertion between themselves and the Israelis. Although the environment remained dangerous -- fighting among the Lebanese factions and between them and the Israelis over the heads of the Marines was a common occurrence -- at first the presence of the Marines seemed to provide a measure of stability and time for the major powers to work their miracle.
The Marines had no responsibility for internal security; this was the job of the LAF. The LAF had little capacity to carry out the mission, however, and it was the American intention to instill that capacity as rapidly as possible. An Office of Military Cooperation (MAAG) was established, headed by an Army colonel, and the Marines were given the additional task of helping to train Lebanese army units. That new mission, however, meant that the Marines could be perceived as aiding one side in the civil conflict, given the questionable legitimacy of the government and its intimate ties to the Phalange.
As time went by, the security environment changed for the worse. The US embassy in West Beirut was partially destroyed by a car bomb on April 18, 1983, leaving 63 people dead, including 17 Americans. The "Islamic Jihad," a group presumably backed by Iran, claimed responsibility. The local population resented the effort by the US-backed LAF to impose control on West Beirut. The MNF airport security perimeter shrank. Patrols into the city ended. Artillery and sniper fire increased, as did terrorist threats. But the Marines were given another mission after the bombing: to protect the ambassador and the new embassy buildings under construction in East Beirut, which was thought to be safer than Muslim West Beirut.
Moreover, their task was complicated by the unilateral withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Shouf Mountains, overlooking the airport and the city, to a line further south along the Awali River. The IDF, recognizing that its lines were overstretched and that the Israeli public would not support a continued high level of casualties, hoped that the Phalange could take over the Shouf. Washington wanted Israel to delay its withdrawal until the Lebanese government was prepared to assume authority over the Shouf. But the IDF allowed Phalange forces to enter the Shouf's Druze villages in July, triggering bloody clashes.
Israel's sudden withdrawal on August 31 provoked a major battle for control of the mountains. The Marines were exposed to cross-fire as the Lebanese Army helped the Phalange fight the Druze mountaineers. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt announced the formation of the National Salvation Front, a coalition of largely Muslim groups backed by Syria. The new organization called for the rejection of the almost-moribund May 17th agreement and the establishment of a new government in Beirut that reflected Lebanon's Muslim majority. Within days, the Maronites lost sixty villages, suffering 1000 dead and 50,000 homeless. Only on September 26 did the US and Syria negotiate a cease-fire, with the Druze in control of the Shouf. The cease-fire accord recognized the legitimacy of the Gemayel government, but Gemayel's credibility was severely eroded.
By then, the dangers to the MNF had increased dramatically. As Assistant Secretary West saw it:
When the Israelis unilaterally decided to pull out of the Shouf, the objective situation on the ground changed. Then the Marines genuinely faced the unknown... Objective conditions changed without an objective radical reconsideration [of US government policy].
In effect, the Marines' mission had shifted from peacekeeping to encouraging and supporting the Lebanese government's armed offensive in the mountains. During August, the US mounted daily air reconnaissance over the Shouf and over Syrian artillery positions to the east. A further 2,000 Marines were moved to offshore positions and the battleship New Jersey, with its 16-inch guns, joined the naval squadron off Beirut on September 25. By then, the Marine commander was authorized to call in air and naval gunfire not only for self-defense but also to support the Lebanese army. Naval guns had shelled targets in areas that Syria controlled. For example, offshore destroyers fired on Druze positions on September 8 and 19 to bolster the LAF.
On August 29 -- a day after the first direct strike by the Marines against Druze positions -- the first two Marines were killed by Druze artillery; rocket fire killed two more on September 6. Although the military was disturbed at the apparent lack of clear purpose in its engagements with the Druze forces, the commander of the Marine Corps argued that "whoever is shooting at us ... is shooting more at where we are than who we are. There is no indication anybody is purposefully taking Marines under fire." However, the intensity of the fire into the MNF positions was considerable. Mortar and sniper fire were commonplace, and the MNF frequently went to battle stations.
Tension eased only with the ceasefire on September 26 and the subsequent effort to initiate a "national dialogue" among Lebanon's warring factions. Some White House officials viewed the ceasefire as an indication of the effectiveness of American saber-rattling." The dispatch of the New Jersey, one senior official argued, triggered the "meeting that led to a cease-fire. It was, I think, clearly attributable to the potential application of force."
The Marine battalion, the principal unit of the MNF, was billeted in a four-story, reinforced concrete building that had earlier served as Israeli headquarters. The building provided good protection against sniper and indirect fire, but less protection against any direct fire or car bombs. An extensive perimeter defense was intended to keep car bombers and others away from the building. Armed sentries were posted at regular intervals. There was, however, a limit to the amount of protection that was possible in the middle of a working airport. There were busy roads on both sides of the MNF headquarters building and a parking lot in front of the building.
It was against the backdrop of Lebanon's deteriorating political and military situation that terrorists struck Marine headquarters on October 23. The catastrophic nature of the event propelled the long-simmering controversy over the Marines' presence in Lebanon to the center-stage of public debate in the US.
The Pros and Cons
The debate, as it played out in the press and among members of Congress in the days immediately following the bombing, essentially mirrored the arguments already heard within the Reagan administration. In the aftermath of the attack, however, the issue of when to bring the US troops home became even more highly charged. Many editorialists agreed with the view of NSC and State Department officials that US credibility and influence in the Middle East would be crippled by a pull-out of the Marines. "For a power with America's responsibilities," the Washington Post argued in an editorial, "it is inconceivable to hand the bombers the victory they sought by pulling the Marines out. American influence throughout the region could collapse. " Others saw even more perilous consequences if the US withdrew. "If the choice is to pack up and leave, " wrote the Atlanta Constitution, "then the consequences easily could become a Syrian-Israeli war over Lebanon -- in the short term less costly of American lives, of course, but risking in the long run an extremely dangerous US-Soviet confrontation."
In Congress, the president received bipartisan support from the leadership: both the Speaker of the House, Democrat Thomas P. O'Neill, and the Senate Majority Leader, Republican Howard Baker, asserted that the Marines should not be pulled out "at the point of a gun." In an October 27 op-ed piece in the New York Times, entitled "Hold Firm on Lebanon," Senator Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kansas) acknowledged "reservations about our involvement in Lebanon," but at the same time argued that an "American withdrawal would signal the collapse of the peace process and could quickly lead to other confrontations in Lebanon that could affect the entire region." Kassebaum urged the administration to provide better security for US troops in Beirut and to "back up our Marines with intense pressure for progress in negotiations for national reconciliation among the various factions in Lebanon."
But many voices called for the prompt pull-out of the Marines. "Tragically," wrote an editorialist in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "it is time to recognize that there are honorable tasks on this earth that cannot be completed. That if there were 16,000 US Marines committed to peacekeeping in Lebanon [instead of 1,600]... they could not impose order, political stability on the warring, hating factions that are there." The Greensboro Daily News of North Carolina warned, "If the President does not change course he risks a Vietnam-style commitment.... The President can avoid that tragic state by extricating the Marines from Lebanese soil as quickly as it can honorably be done." Even administration supporters in Congress, such as Senator Dan Quayle (R-Ind.), spoke of a phased pull-out of the Marines and their eventual replacement with a United Nations force.
Along with the calls for a pull-out came sharp criticism of what was seen as the administration's lack of clear purpose in Lebanon. Sensing a potential campaign issue in the coming presidential election, several Democratic hopefuls seized the opportunity to speak out against the president's policies. Senator John Glenn of Ohio, for example, urged the White House to "present to the American people and the Congress a clean and well-defined statement of our mission in Lebanon, including the likely scope and duration of our role." Bernard Aronson, policy director for the Democratic National Committee, echoed this sentiment: "If there's one lesson on the Vietnam War," he said, "it is, when you project American forces abroad you need to define a clear goal."
Even before his re-election campaign would get underway, however, Reagan could potentially face serious challenges from Democrats in Congress. On October 12, less than two weeks before the bombing, the president had signed legislation initiated by Congress that gave him limited authority to keep Marines in Lebanon for 18 months; any substantial expansion in the number or role of US troops would require new approval from Congress. While the president had left it an open question whether he considered himself constitutionally bound to abide by the bill (and the 1973 War Powers Act) , there was little doubt that legislators would jealously guard their role in any action the White House took. Already, some House Democrats were threatening to force Reagan to bring the Marines home by proposing a cutoff of funds.
Meanwhile, within his own administration, indications were that the opposing positions of the president's closest advisors remained substantially unaltered. Weinberger continued to assert that there would be no increase in either the size of the Marine contingent or in the area in which it operated. The troops would confine themselves to the Beirut airport.
On the other hand, George Shultz spoke strongly for a continuing US role in Lebanon. "If we as Americans decide we do not want the role and influence of a great power," he told Congress during a briefing, "then I shudder to think what kind of a world of anarchy and danger our children will inherit." In the State Department and the NSC, the feeling remained that, however high the risks, they were outweighed by the potential gains. "The question you ask yourself," explains one State Department policy official, "about Lebanon or about the latest attempt to get the peace process working -- or even about Camp David at that time -- if you have a 20 percent chance for success, should you take it? Or should you say, there's an 80 percent chance of losing, I'd better not get involved in it. Well obviously, the [view] in this administration... is 20 percent in the Middle East ain't bad."
For the time being, President Reagan appeared determined to stay on the course his administration had set for the Marines in Lebanon. In an October 24 press conference at a luncheon gathering of broadcast editors, he asserted:
The option that we cannot consider is withdrawing while [the Marines'] mission still remains. And they do have a mission, contrary to what some people have intimated in the last 24 hours or so. And it is tied in with the effort that we launched more than a year ago to try and bring peace to the total area of the Middle East because of its strategic importance to the whole free world, not just the United States.
The president outlined the progress achieved while the Marines were stationed in Beirut -- the evacuation of the PLO, the establishment of a new government under Amin Gemayel, the training of the LAF -- and pointed to the upcoming "national reconciliation" talks between Gemayel and leaders of Lebanon's major factions, scheduled to begin in Geneva by the end of the month. Nevertheless, he added, the Marines' "mission remains and it remains as yet unfulfilled, although there's been tremendous success so far."
At the same time, Reagan argued that giving the Marines an expanded role in the fighting would lead to a more serious entanglement. "We would be the combat force," he said in answer to a reporter's question. "We would be fighting against Arab states. And that is not the road to peace ... [To] join in the combat... [would be] risking the start of overall conflict and world war. No. Our mission, I think, makes sense."
But whether there was consensus on that mission remained unclear. Even before the bombing attack on the Marines' headquarters, polls had shown that the public disapproved of the Marines' mission in Beirut by a 3-to-2 margin and disagreed, by nearly 3 to 1, with the president's claim that vital American interests were at stake in Lebanon. Congress and the public were uneasy about Lebanon, Hedrick Smith warned in the New York Times, and the President's political allies "anticipate a much angrier public mood as the country prepares for a mass of funerals." The crisis over the Marines in Lebanon, Smith continued, represented "the one situation that his political advisers warned could gravely wound his Presidency and perhaps fatally damage his chances for re-election."
Regards,
Hist2004