The Staton Jones Report

Are we done with Ronald Wilson Reagan appreciation week?  Or is it a month?  Actually, let's face facts: citing the "never speak ill of the dead" rule of etiquette, the Rabid Right is going to make the it Ronald Wilson Reagan appreciation day for the rest of eternity.

In a purely rational perspective, Reagan's death heralds an era of unrestrained criticism of Reagan, since he's no longer here to personally insult, but that won't stop the apostles of St. Reagan from issuing withering admonitions to blasphemers.

No matter how nice a guy he could be, Reagan did some questionable things, and — depending on your personal outlook — some downright evil things.  My outlook is heavily influenced by Hanlon's Razor which impels me to view most of what Reagan and his cohorts did as the result of stupidity.

I've spent a great deal of time over the last year and a half producing a voluminous collection of essays and Internet forum posts all supporting the same general thesis: George W. Bush's actions following the "9-11" Al Qaeda attack have been supremely inept, dishonest, and possibly even criminal.

Most infuriating is that the Bush Administration has made this series of abysmal decisions in spite of vigorous efforts to promote more promising alternatives.  These efforts have come from informed, thoughtful and experienced factions in the public, private and government  sectors.  It would be a mistake, however, to deem these efforts as having failed; the resistance to Bush's purely-idealogical plans has certainly blunted their capacity for harm.

We have to realize that there is nothing we can do to stop Republicans from doing stupid things, so it's important to examine great moments of idiocy to see how much worse it would be if we weren't trying so hard.  There are few better illustrations of this adage than the contrast between George W. Bush's and Ronald Reagan's response to Al Qaeda.

On October 23^rd, 1983 a suicide bomber rammed into a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, with a vanload of high explosives; 241 Marines were killed and America was in shock.  It was the worst in a series of increasingly deadly attacks and it removed all doubt that America had not only become the target of an aggressive and hostile Arab faction, but that this faction was growing in strength and sophistication.

Let's take a look at key excerpts from the Gipper's October 27^th speech, a masterpiece in incoherence:

My fellow Americans, Some 2 months ago we were shocked by the brutal massacre of 269 men, women, and children, more than 60 of them Americans, in the shooting down of a Korean airliner.

This is the actual opening line of Reagan's speech.

Note that is has nothing whatsoever to do with anything. It's just there to introduce the general topic of Americans getting killed in large numbers by spooky brown foreigners.  Reagan says nothing specific about this topic again.

Before exploring what immediately follows that auspicious start, I'd also like to highlight this detail buried in the speech:

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.

This was the first time that terrorists had staged multiple, simultaneous attacks, but as time passed, this tactic would become recognized as signature characteristic of attacks by a group called Al Qaeda.  Few Americans are aware of this, but the attacks in Lebanon were the first identifiable Al Qaeda operations.

One of the main reasons why few Americans are aware of Al Qaeda's role in this attack is that no one in the U.S. government bothered to investigate Al Qaeda until Clinton Administration conducted an investigation of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing.  For 10 years and two Presidents, Al Qaeda evolved without drawing any interest from the Whitehouse.  Naturally, Conservatives will tell you that Bill Clinton did nothing to stop Al Qaeda — at least he knew about it.

Anyway, back to Ronnie's screed.

The speech abruptly leaps from KAL 007 to the Beirut bombing.  By the fourth paragraph, the President is describing the circumstances surrounding the attack.

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.

Let's see... vehicle crashes into building, people die, building collapses... sound familiar?  Of course, it wasn't the fault of Reagan or his subordinates, as no one could have predicted it!

Reagan's asserted that the attack was a complete surprise and "there was no way our Marine guards" could have known this truck was a threat.  I could elucidate the stunning fatuity of this claim, but Reagan spared me the effort. Below is Reagan's assertion of a surprise attack, immediately followed by a statement that occurred much later in the speech.  Can you spot the continuity problem?

The truck carried some 2,000 pounds of explosives, but there was no way our Marine guards could know this.

...

We have strong circumstantial evidence that the attack on the Marines was directed by terrorists who used the same method to destroy our Embassy in Beirut.

Let me add a little more detail: the Marine barracks was the fourth car bombing in a year.  In fact, the attack against the American Embassy — the one Reagan is referring to in the second line of the quote — cemented our decision to send the Marines to Beirut in the first place.  In other words, the Marines were in Beirut because of a carbombing of an American target.  You'd have to be an imbecile to believe that we couldn't have foreseen — you following this? — a carbombing of an American target.

Of course, Reagan knew damn well that leaving the Marine base susceptible to a car bomb attack was an inexcusable oversight.  Inexplicably, Reagan attempted to deflect attention from the inadequate perimeter defense at the compound by providing a detailed description of the inadequate perimeter defense at the compound.  Here is some detail I removed from the description of the attack above:

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.

Anti-car-bomb barricades were erected at the Whitehouse — under Clinton.

Seriously, who would have erected "a chain-link fence and barbed wire entanglements" in a city where car-bombing was a known problem? Again, policies and procedures for preventing further successful attacks were finally formulated by the Clinton Administration — over a decade later.  When the Khobar towers bombing occurred, these new risk-reduction procedures were just being put in place.  Had recent security recommendation been fully implemented, there might have been no casualties from the bombing.  It's tragic that 19 men died, and about 500 others were wounded, but it is a vast improvement from 241 killed — every single person in the targeted building — in the 1983 Beirut blast.

In addition to having significantly fewer fatalities, the Khobar towers attack had another advantage that seems to only occur under Democratic Presidents: there was a clear purpose for our troops to be where they were.  They were there cleaning up a military mess left by a Republican administration in the 1991 Gulf War which the American people largely supported. 

In 1983, most Americans were only vaguely aware that we had troops in Beirut and now that 241 of them had been killed, Reagan had to explain what the hell they were doing in harm's way.  The Great Communicator™; didn't hesitate to state the obvious:

And now many of you are asking: Why should our young men be dying in Lebanon? Why is Lebanon important to us?

Well, you know, the usual reasons — do we even need them recited any more?  Oh, what the hell!

Syria has become a home for 7,000 Soviet advisers and technicians...

Soviets?! More like Axis of Evil!

...who man a massive amount of Soviet weaponry, including SS-21 ground-to-ground missiles ...

Uh oh! Weapons of Mass Destruction!

... capable of reaching vital areas of Israel.  ... Since 1948 our Nation has recognized and accepted a moral obligation to assure the continued existence of Israel as a nation.

Israel, our staunch ally and regional underdog!  It's a moral imperative!

...U.N. resolutions 242 and 338...

U.N. Resolutions!  Two of 'em!

Lebanon has formed a government under the leadership of President Gemayal, and that government, with our assistance and training ...

Nation building!  One of those things that Republicans supposedly don't do!

The clear intent of the terrorists was to eliminate our support of the Lebanese Government and to destroy the ability of the Lebanese people to determine their own destiny.

We can't let the terrorists win!

[The multinational force] is accomplishing its mission.

Mission (almost) Accomplished!

If America were to walk away from Lebanon, what chance would there be for a negotiated settlement, producing a unified democratic Lebanon?

We're planting the seeds of democracy in the Middle East!  We can't possible fail!

Anything else?

What of Western Europe and Japan's dependence on Middle East oil for the energy to fuel their industries? The Middle East is, as I've said. vital to our national security and economic well-being.

Oh baby!  Oil!

Now there's a word you don't hear come out of Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld when they talk about why we're in Iraq.  You'd almost have to give Ronnie some credit for mentioning oil, except for on thing:  Lebanon has no oil.

OK, so what the hell were we doing in Lebanon?

It's hard to say, really.  Basically, we were getting involved in Middle-East affairs, and honestly, even internal documents from the Reagan Whitehouse don't really go into much more detail about our goals in Lebanon.  That is to say, I don't know, and apparently, neither did the people who decided to send the Marines. 

Suffice to say, whatever we were doing in Lebanon, we weren't doing a very good job of it.  The problems could be traced to two particular misconceptions, both of which are indelible element of the far-right-wing conservative worldview. 

The first neocon misconception is that the value of a culture can be accurately measured by its success in resembling suburban middle-America.  Looking at the region through this lens, the American Neoconservatives concluded — and remain convinced — that Arabs are simpleminded camel-jockeys who ride around the desert menacing nice white people like Indiana Jones.  Granted, like all other humans, Arabs have as little hope of being particularly bright on a case-by-case basis.  Still, despite enduring stereotypes, the Arab culture — and, in fact, the larger realm of Islamic culture — has produced more than its share of advancement in art, academia and commerce.

The second neocon misconception is that the post-WWII era, particularly the 1950's — or some idealized version of them — was a Utopian age.  Not only was everything so much better in the 1950's, but the only thing holding us back from returning to that bliss are hippies and other liberals whose crazy ideas about personal freedom screwed everything up in the 1960's.  The belief that we could relive the 1950's had particularly unfortunate effects on the Reagan Administration's expectations of what the Marines could accomplish in Beirut.

Back in 1958, President Eisenhower was drunk with power after a decade of reshaping the region using a one-two combo of CIA subterfuge and military force — starting with Iran in 1953.  When civil unrest threatened to completely destabilize Lebanon, Ike dispatched 14,000 Marines to clean up Beirut.  In only three months, the soldiers restored order, supported the installation of a new U.S.-appointed President, packed up and went home.  During this operation, a sum total of one Marine was killed; he was hit by sniper fire.

Blissfully ignorant of any other history, the current political climate or the culture of the region, the Reagan Administration sent about 1,600 Marines to Lebanon to fix it — again.  Once again, things failed to be like they were in the 1950's, and, once again, the neo-conservatives reacted to this fact with militant disbelief and brazen denial.

Among the things that were different was that Israel — you might remember that protecting our ally was a moral imperative — was busy invading Lebanon.  Israel's justification for this was the need to wage a counterattack against a force of over 10,000 Palestinian paramilitary fighters who had established a base of operations in southern Lebanon.

With the stated goal of supporting the Palestinians — and to see what they could get out the situation — the Syrians had deployed expeditionary forces into the country from the north.

Finally, there were the actually Lebanese fighters.  Not to be outdone by the warring foreigners, the Lebanese had split into dozens of conflicting factions.

All tolled, the Lebanon of 1983 was an environment where there was a near certainty of being attacked by a terrorist group, and a high risk of being attacked by several different terrorist groups.  Although the Reagan Administration appears to have been completely clueless about this situation when they began the ill-fated Marine deployment, as of October, 1983, they were fully apprised of the reality of terrorist violence in Lebanon.

After Reagan provided his pitifully specious justification for having placed our Marines in such immediate and grave danger in the first place, he faced his next leadership challenge: figuring out how to respond to this outrageous attack, and explaining the merits of his plan to the American people.

It is extremely difficult to formulate an effective response to such an insidious threat — especially in region marked by millenia of political turmoil — but there are a few plans that should be pretty trivial to cross off the list.   Then there are the plans you wouldn't expect to see on the list in the first place — and yet, there they are.

On October 25^th, 1983 — two days after the bombing in Beirut, and two days before vowing to bring the bombers to justice — the U.S. invaded Grenada, a Caribbean nation roughly comparable in area and population to a sprawling middle-American suburb. This inexplicable move and the absurd justification laid out in Reagan's speech make George W. Bush look like Machiavelli. 

In the context of Reagan's initiatives, it's oddly comforting to realize that Bush's conquest of Babylon was motivated by simple greed.  Any rational speculation as to how the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government could even notice Grenada — much less make it a priority — in the wake of the Beirut bombing, inevitably hinges on an escalating series of bar bets, or the National Security Counsel huffing a considerable quantity of Scotch Guard™.