America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (65 page)

 30.
Thomas W. Lippman, “Aid to Afghan Rebels Returns to Haunt U.S.,”
The Washington Post
(July 26, 1993).

 31.
Quoted in Lloyd Gardner,
The Long Road to Baghdad
(New York, 2010), 56–57.

4. Silver Screen Six Is Calling

 1.
David Crist,
The Twilight War
(New York, 2012), 123.

 2.
Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilization?”
Foreign Affairs
(Summer 1993).

 3.
Benny Morris,
Righteous Victims
(New York, 1999), 516. Other factors may have contributed to Israel’s willingness to accept risk. In June 1981, it had attacked and destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak. In December of that same year it unilaterally annexed the Golan Heights, Syrian territory captured during the 1967 war. In both instances, the United States had complained but then accommodated itself to Israel’s actions.

 4.
Crist,
Twilight War,
108.

 5.
Morris,
Righteous Victims,
516–29.

 6.
Morris,
Righteous Victims,
533–37.

 7.
Quoted in Crist,
Twilight War,
112.

 8.
Quoted in Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari,
Israel’s Lebanon War
(New York, 1984), 226.

 9.
Robert J. Hanks, “Send in the Marines?”
Los Angeles Times
(July 8, 1982).

 10.
At a press briefing, Reagan indicated that if any shooting occurred, he would immediately pull the Marines out. “800 Marines Ordered to Beirut,”
Los Angeles Times
(August 20, 1982). The subheadline to this article read, “Will Leave If Attacked, Reagan Says.”

 11.
Benis M. Frank,
U.S. Marines in Lebanon, 1982–1984
(Washington, D.C., 1987), 13, 17. This monograph is the U.S. Marine Corps official history of the intervention.

 12.
Frank,
U.S. Marines in Lebanon,
18.

 13.
Colin Campbell, “U.S. Marines Leave Lebanese Capital,”
The New York Times
(September 11, 1982).

 14.
“U.S. Marines Withdraw from Lebanon,”
The Boston Globe
(September 11, 1982).

 15.
Gemayel’s election purchased Phalange party concurrence in the agreed-upon PLO evacuation, expected, in turn, to end the Israeli siege of Beirut. This calculation, along with bribes and threats, secured for Gemayal enough votes from Muslim parliamentarians to gain a majority. Marxist from Lebanon, “Regarding Bashir Gemayel’s Elections: The Other Story” (August 30, 2007),
marxistfromlebanon.blogspot.com/2007/08/regarding-bashir-gemayels-elections.html
, accessed November 6, 2014.

 16.
Peter Chalk, ed.,
Encyclopedia of Terrorism
(Santa Barbara, 2012), 643.

 17.
George Russell, “Middle East: God—Oh, My God!”
Time
(October 4, 1982).

 18.
Ronald Reagan, “Statement on the Murder of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon” (September 18, 1982)
.

 19.
Frank,
U.S. Marines in Lebanon,
22–23. The quote is from the after action report of the 32d Marine Amphibious Unit, dated November 12, 1982. The 32d MAU was the first of several Marine units tasked to perform the “presence” mission in Beirut. The other nations contributing to the multinational peacekeeping force were France and Italy.

 20.
Ronald Reagan, “National Security Decision Directive Number 64: Next Steps in Lebanon” (October 28, 1982).

 21.
Ronald Steel, “Keep the Marines out of It,”
Los Angeles Times
(July 13, 1982).

 22.
Michael Getler, “Troops Could Help Rescue Reagan’s Plan,”
The Washington Post
(September 21, 1982).

 23.
Leslie Gelb, “U.S. Assumes a Policeman’s Lot in Mideast Peace Process,”
The New York Times
(October 3, 1982).

 24.
Frank,
U.S. Marines in Lebanon,
38–41.

 25.
Caspar W. Weinberger,
Fighting for Peace
(New York, 1990), 162.

 26.
Richard Halloran, “A Marine, Pistol Drawn, Stops 3 Israeli Tanks,”
The New York Times
(February 3, 1983).

 27.
Frank,
U.S. Marines in Lebanon,
80.

 28.
Frank,
U.S. Marines in Lebanon,
59–62, 66, 75–82.

 29.
Timothy J. Geraghty,
Peacekeepers at War
(Washington, D.C., 2009), 60.

 30.
Geraghty,
Peacekeepers at War,
61.

 31.
In military lingo, “six” is traditionally the call sign of a commander.

 32.
Geraghty,
Peacekeepers at War,
62–63.

 33.
Ronald Reagan,
The Reagan Diaries
(New York, 2007), 177.

 34.
Ronald Reagan, “Addendum to NSDD 103: On Lebanon of September 10, 1983” (September 11, 1983).

 35.
Frank,
U.S. Marines in Lebanon,
83, 86, 88.

 36.
Geraghty,
Peacekeepers at War,
68–69.

 37.
George Shultz,
Turmoil and Triumph
(New York, 1993), 226.

 38.
Thomas Friedman, “Peacekeepers Become Another Warring Faction,”
The New York Times
(October 23, 1983).

 39.
Ronald Reagan, “Remarks to Military Personnel at Cherry Point, North Carolina on the United States Casualties in Lebanon and Grenada” (November 4, 1983).

 40.
Ronald Reagan, “National Security Decision Directive Number 111: Next Steps Toward Progress in Lebanon and the Middle East” (October 28, 1983).

 41.
Crist,
Twilight War,
141–48.

 42.
Crist,
Twilight War,
148–49.

 43.
Ronald Reagan, “National Security Decision Directive Number 123: Next Steps in Lebanon” (February 1, 1984).

 44.
William E. Smith, “The Marines Leave Lebanon,”
Time
(March 5, 1984).

 45.
Bernard Gwertzman, “New Chapter for Lebanon,”
The New York Times
(February 27, 1984).

 46.
Thomas Friedman, “America’s Failure in Lebanon,”
The New York Times
(April 8, 1984).

 47.
“Report of the DoD Commission on the Beirut International Airport Terrorist Act, October 23, 1983” (December 20, 1983). The document is informally known as the Long Commission Report, after its chairman, retired admiral Robert L. J. Long.

 48.
Augustus Richard Norton,
Hezbollah: A Short History
(Princeton, 2007), 33–34.

5. Mad Dog, Kicked, Bites Back

 1.
For a concise summary, see Douglas Little, “To the Shores of Tripoli: America, Qaddafi, and Libyan Revolution, 1969–1989,”
The International History Review
(2013), 70–99.

 2.
The issue was, as they say, “complicated.” Approximately three thousand Americans were working in Libya, mostly in oil-related jobs. The Nixon administration was reluctant to put those Americans or U.S. access to Libyan oil in jeopardy. With U.S. forces only recently withdrawn from Vietnam, the Pentagon was not keen to get into a fight. “Minutes of a Washington Special Actions Group Meeting” (April 16, 1983),
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969
–
1976: Documents on North Africa, 1973
–
1976
(Washington, D.C., 2014), 20–26; see also “Minutes of a Senior Review Group Meeting” (August 14, 1973), ibid., 67–75. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger chaired both meetings, during the second of which he referred to Gaddafi as “a miserable little sheik running around in the desert.”

 3.
Robert Kimmitt, “Reagan and Gadhafi,”
The Washington Times
(August 20, 2006). At the time of the event described, Kimmitt was a member of the National Security Council staff.

 4.
For a blow-by-blow account, see Joseph T. Stanik,
El Dorado Canyon: Reagan’s Undeclared War with Qaddafi
(Annapolis, 2003), 52–56. Stanik describes the Su-22 as “no match for the F-14.”

 5.
“F14 Tomcat Joins Reagan Library,”
Los Angeles Daily News
(August 23, 2005).

 6.
For a compendium, see “Terrorist Attacks on Americans, 1979–1988,”
pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/cron.html
, accessed November 24, 2014.

 7.
Ronald Reagan, “National Security Decision Directive 138: Combating Terrorism” (April 3, 1984).

 8.
It went without saying that U.S. policy objectives such as enforcing “freedom of navigation” off the coast of Libya
did
possess legitimacy. By extension, so did Washington’s reliance on coercive means in pursuit of those objectives, at least as Washington saw it.

 9.
George Shultz, “Terrorism and the Modern World,”
Department of State Bulletin
(December 1984), 16. The article preprints a speech made by Secretary of State Shultz at New York’s Park Avenue Synagogue on October 25, 1984.

 10.
Ronald Reagan, “National Security Decision Directive Number 205 Annex: Acting Against Libyan Support of International Terrorism” (January 8, 1986).

 11.
Ronald Reagan,
The Reagan Diaries
(New York, 2007), 381. The quotation is from the diary entry dated January 7, 1986.

 12.
Stanik,
El Dorado Canyon,
131–40.

 13.
Quoted in James Gerstenzang, “U.S. Navy Ends Maneuvers in Gulf of Sidra,”
Los Angeles Times
(March 28, 1986).

 14.
Ronald Reagan, “The President’s News Conference” (April 9, 1986).

 15.
French noncooperation may have reflected a certain amount of payback. In Paris, memories of Washington’s last-minute withdrawal from a planned joint retaliatory air attack following the October 1983 Beirut bombings remained fresh.

 16.
Stanik,
El Dorado Canyon,
162–63.