Posted on 08/28/2007 2:11:50 PM PDT by NapkinUser
Let’s see what Ronald Reagan had to say about US involvement and intervention in Middle East holy wars and civil wars, shall we?
http://www.ronaldreagan.com/leb.html
Ronald Reagan Memoirs - LEBANON, BEIRUT AND GRENADA
In the weeks immediately after the (Beirut) bombing, I believed the last thing we should do was turn tail and leave. If we did that, it would say to the terrorists of the world that all it took to change Americans foreign policy was to murder some Americans. If we walked away, we’d also be giving up on the moral commitment to Israel that had originally sent our marines to Lebanon. We’d be abandoning all the progress made during almost two years of trying to mediate a settlement in the Middle East. We’d be saying that the sacrifice of those marines had been for nothing. We’d be inviting the Russians to supplant the United States as the most influential superpower in the Middle East. After more than a year of fighting and mounting chaos in Beirut, the biggest winner would be Syria, a Soviet client. Yet, the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics forced us to rethink our policy there.
How do you deal with a people driven by such a religious zeal that they are willing to sacrifice their lives in order to kill an enemy simply because he doesn’t worship the same God they do? People who believe that if they do that, they’ll go instantly to heaven? In the Iran-Iraq war, radical Islamic fundamentalists sent more than a thousand young boys - teenagers and younger - to their deaths by telling them to charge and detonate land mines - and the boys did so joyously because they believed, “Tonight, we will be in Paradise.”
In early November, a new problem cropped up in the Middle East: Iran began threatening to close the Gulf of Hormuz, a vital corridor for the shipment of oil from the Persian Gulf. I said that if they followed through with this threat, is would constitute an illegal interference with navigation of the sea, and we would use force to keep the corridor open. Meanwhile, another development promised to bring change to the Middle East: Menachem Begin, deeply depressed after the death of his beloved wife and apparently devoid of the spirit he once had to continue fighting against Israel’s Arab enemies and its serious economic problems, resigned as prime minister.
King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, perhaps thinking American resolve on behalf of Israel might have been diminished by the horrendous human loss in Beirut, approached us with a new peace proposal that he said could end the warfare in Lebanon, and also take Syria out of the Soviet camp and put it in ours. But the proposal would have required us to reduce our commitment to Israel, and I said no thanks. I still believed that it was essential to continue working with moderate Arabs to find a solution to the Middle East’s problem, and that we should make selective sales of American weapons to the moderate Arabs as proof of our friendship. Syria with its new Soviet weapons and advisors, was growing more arrogant than ever, and rejected several proposals by the Saudis aimed at getting them out of Lebanon.
Our intelligence experts found it difficult to establish conclusively who was responsible for the attack on the barracks. When Druse militiamen began a new round of shelling of the marines several weeks after the bombing at the airport, we had to decide whether to ignore it or respond with firepower and escalate our role in the Lebanese war. “We’re a divided group,” I wrote in my journal after a National Security Council meeting held to discuss the renew shelling in early December. “I happen to believe taking out a few batteries might give them pause to think. Joint Chiefs believe it might drastically alter our mission and lead to major increases in troops for Lebanon “ Then, the Syrians took an action that more or less made our decision for us. Syria had launched a ground-to-air missile at one of our unarmed reconnaissance planes during a routine sweep over Beirut.
Although there was some resistance from Cap and the Joint Chiefs over whether we should retaliate, I told him to give the order for an air strike against the offending antiaircraft batteries. We had previously let the Syrians know that our reconnaissance operations in support of the marines were only defensive in nature. Our marines were not adversaries in the conflict, and any offensive act directed against them would be replied to. The following morning, more than two dozen navy aircraft carried out the mission. One crewman was killed and another captured by the Syrians. Our planes subsequently took out almost a dozen Syrian antiaircraft and missile-launching sites, a radar installation, and an ammo dump. When the Syrians fired again at one of our reconnaissance aircraft, I gave the order to fire the sixteen-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey on them. Two days later, we had a new cease-fire in Lebanon, a result, I’m sure, of the pressure of the long guns of the New Jersey - but, like almost all the other cease-fires in Beirut, it didn’t last long.
As 1984 began, it was becoming clearer that the Lebanese army was either unwilling or unable to end the civil war into which we had been dragged reluctantly. It was clear that the war was likely to go on for an extended period of time. As the sniping and shelling of their camp continued, I gave an order to evacuate all the marines to anchored off Lebanon. At the end of March, the ships of the Sixth Fleet and the marines who had fought to keep peace in Lebanon moved on to other assignments. We had to pull out. By then, there was no question about it: Our policy wasn’t working. We couldn’t stay there and run the risk of another suicide attack on the marines. No one wanted to commit our troops to a full-scale war in the middle East. But we couldn’t remain in Lebanon and be in the war on a halfway basis, leaving our men vulnerable to terrorists with one hand tied behind their backs. We hadn’t committed the marines to Beirut in a snap decision, and we weren’t alone. France, Italy, and Britain were also part of the multinational force, and we all thought it was a good plan. And for a while, as I’ve said, it had been working.
I’m not sure how we could have anticipated the catastrophe at the marine barracks. Perhaps we didn’t appreciate fully enough the depth of the hatred and the complexity of the problems that make the Middle East such a jungle. Perhaps the idea of a suicide car bomber committing mass murder to gain instant entry to Paradise was so foreign to our own values and consciousness that it did not create in us the concern for the marines’ safety that it should have. Perhaps we should have anticipated that members of the Lebanese military whom we were trying to assist would simply lay down their arms and refuse to fight their own countrymen. In any case, the sending of the marines to Beirut was the source of my greatest regret and my greatest sorrow as president. Every day since the death of those boys, I have prayed for them and their loved ones.
In the months and the years that followed, our experience in Lebanon led to the adoption by the administration of a set of principles to guide America in the application of military force abroad, and I would recommend it to future presidents. The policy we adopted included these principles:
1. The United States should not commit its forces to military action overseas unless the cause is vital to our national interest.
2. If the decision is made to commit our forces to combat abroad, it must be done with the clear intent and support needed to win. It should not be a halfway or tentative commitment, and there must be clearly defined and realistic objectives.
3. Before we commit our troops to combat, there must be reasonable assurance that the cause we are fighting for and the actions we take will have the support of the American people and Congress. (We all felt that the Vietnam War had turned into such a tragedy because military action had been undertaken without sufficient assurances that the American people were behind it.)
4. Even after all these other tests are met, our troops should be committed to combat abroad only as a last resort, when no other choice is available.
After the marines left Beirut, we continued a search for peace and a diplomatic solution to the problems in the Middle East. But the war in Lebanon grew even more violent, the Arab-Israeli conflict became more bitter, and the Middle East continued to be a source of problems for me and our country.
So your saying doing nothing worked real well.
‘Debunked? the fact that he blamed 9/11 on blowback has been debunked? How do you debunk something that occurred on national television?’
Its easier than you think, you just pull the tinfoil tight enough to constrict bloodflow to the brain.....
Dr. Paul would rather see the terrorists stew in their own juices in the Middle East while kicking them out of this country (which Bush hasn’t done) and securing the borders (which Bush hasn’t done).
Bush isn’t running. Please make a note of it.
He is will be irrelevant in 6 months.
Yep.
Sure he is, toots. Paul has the GOP by the groin. He can easily run as a 3rd party candidate and throw the election to Hillary. Ignore him or trash him at your own peril.
Gee, that will garner him all kinds of support here at FR.
(sarcasm)
The Jews were expelled from Spain at the time. So were most Muslims. Usurers were burned at the stake as well. Non-Catholic Christians (in any organized sense excepting a few heretics) were not a factor despite the retroactive hysteria of many of their modern counterparts. Ferdinand and Isabella were establishing Spain as a CATHOLIC nation. We call the concept Christendom. We no longer pursue it anywhere. You could move into Vatican City itself if you could afford it and so desired.
Some small number of people of Jewish ancestry who had been baptized Catholic but continued to practice Judaism (people known as Moranos) were executed by the Spanish state after being judged guilty by the Inquisition. Balancing against such injustice, Spain did more to save Jews from the Nazi Holocaust under Franco than did any other nation. This was because Pius XII urged Franco to use his strategic position on behalf of the Jews in many ways.
Lutherans can point to Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a martyr who willingly returned to Germany to fight Hitler's pogroms and holocaust until Hitler saw him hanged. What did your faith and its adherents DO to save Jews from the Holocaust???? About as much as paleoPaulie would do to keep Iranian boss Ahmanutjob from his intended and announced ambition to nuke Israel. So, please spare us the blatant hypocrisy of whining about matters historical on which many share guilt for following the perspectives of their times. Have you ever heard of the Thirty Years' War? How do you think Jean Cauvin would have treated Catholic priests found at Geneva???
King Philip the Fair of France also barbecued the living flesh of Jacques DeMolay in the 13th century at the request of the pope with no Inquisition involved. Shall we discuss the treatment of St. John Fisher and St. Edmund Campion and so many other Catholic martyrs at the hands of Henry VIII and Lizzy I in England??? Or what happened under Knox and the Presbyterians in Scotland??? Or the confiscation of the Catholic Churches in Ireland???? AND, it is true that the Catholics barbequed Wycliffe and Hus.
Clearly none of this sort of thing comports with American traditions of religious freedom for which the mostly Protestant founding fathers were responsible (at least nationally) and rightfully get credit. Don't kid yourself that their actions had half as much to do with fear of Rome as they had to do with a rejection of Church of England style persecution of other religions. Catholics have thrived here as a somewhat unintended consequence and ought be grateful accordingly.
What we don't really have to do is remain silent in the face of selective history applied by bigots with an agenda who have shown their colors. Your bigotry is not attributable to your faith and it would be unfair and bigoted for anyone to suggest a collective guilt of people of your faith. This is your perversion and not theirs.
As to the general question of treatment of Jews, your candidate advocates stnding idly by while they are incinerated in Israel and no candidate who will EVER get my vote will join paleoPaulie the cowardly pipsqueak in his blase attitude about anti-Semitic genocide by Islamofascisti.
BTW, you should look up auto da fe. You clearly don't understand what that was either.
Finally, let me buy you a clue on the use of the TdTGC. It came into being in response to INTERNAL schism of some formerly Catholic folk who had been declared schismatic and excommunicated by John Paul II. THe schismatics are the SSPX. Whether you personally were born to a family not Catholic or whether you apostasized to leave Catholicism, the title of TdTGC is not aimed at folks, like you, at least honest enough NOT to claim to be Catholic while simultaneously trying to attack the Roman Catholic Church from "within."
Your religion is your business. My religion is mine.
So the issue remains: Did paleoPaulie and his buddies barbeque our country at the quisling's birthday bash???
Yes, paleoPaulie is an "effing idiot" as you so delicately put it for politically canoodling with KIJslamofascisti and opposing the USA. At some point, even you will probably figure that out.
When the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie was blown out of the sky (that was ONE plane and not FOUR) over Scotland and not in the US itself, Reagan arranged for the Navy and/or Air force to fly from the hospitality of Great Britain on a search and destroy mission for Qaddafi and his family cowering in the Libyan desert. Qaddafi was seriously inhured (head injury covered thereafter by elaborate tapestry coverings on the right side of his head, and two of his daughters were killed.
You apparently would like people to believe that Reagan was a proponent of a limp-wristed foreign policy depending on feckless diployakkery. The history of his administration suggests nothing of the sort. Read again the last paragraph of your post. Reagan never foreswore death from the sky as a solution to foreign enemies and their ambitions. He was also busy avoiding continued communist Sandanista control of Nicaragua and Granada. He was also busy ramping up the weapons race to bankrupt our main enemy of that time, the soviets. He did not do this by looking for transparent pseudo"constitutional" excuses to avoid the responsibility of killing our enemies and breaking their things whenever a relevant opportunity presented itself.
The use of the battlewagon New Jersey (re-outfitted and modernized along with Wisconsin, Missouri and Iowa by Ronaldus Maximus presumably not as pleasure yachts for Galveston area federally subsidized shrimpin' magnates) against the Syrians says a lot more and favorably about Ronaldus Maximus's wisdom than anything that will ever be said by the Galveston pipsqueak or his supporters.
Finally, that was THEN under THOSE circumstances. This is NOW under THESE circumstances. Reagan deserves a LOT better than to be compared to the paleopipsqueak.
He is El Ron Paulie because of a resemblance to the moonbattery of the (presumably) late L. Ron Hubbard and also to resmble the titles of Middle Eastern Islamofascisti of whom the pipsqueak is soooooo fond as to be their propagandist in American politics.
All in all, BTW, I don't think that FR is any real danger of being overrun by Birchers, Objectivists, "paleowhatevers" or paleoPaulie love slaves. FR is one online poll location that paleoPaulie will NEVER make hedway on. Too many patriots. Note the vast disparity in his support on FR between members and non-members in a ratio of about 1:4 and the fact that he never breaks 10% even when his antiAmerican antiwar supporters pack the polls here. Oh, and he IS antiAmerican and he IS antiwar.
When I want or feel a need for your advice as to writing style, I will be sure to make a point of asking for it.
Meanwhile, how does it feel to know that the actual primaries and caucuses (the moment of anti-Paulie truth) are approaching so rapidly and the fraud that is paleoPaulie will be finished???
BTW, Hitler killed 6 million Jews and 5 million others in the camps alone. Lenin and Stalin (according to the US Senate commissioned study The Human Cost of Communism in Russia by historian Robert Conquest) killed 50 million. Mao (according to the US Senate commissioned study The Human Cost of Communism in China by Robert Conquest) killed 75 million.
If you question your ignorance of history (how verrrry unlikely), you might consider whether the "products of Calvinism" that are modern Western democracies include Anglican England, formerly Catholic and largely agnostic or worse France, part Lutheran/part Catholic Germany, part Catholic and part Calvinist Switzerland, Scotland that is not truly sovereign but part of the UK.
Calvinism may be many things, some of them even admirable, but mother of modern Western democracies or defender of religious liberty for non-Calvinists is, ummmm, charitably speaking, not among them.
Burning you at the stake would be a foolish thing to do when you are so useful shooting your keyboard off as a foil. If an enemy makes a fool of himself, we ought not get in the way. Silence you??? Silence you??? How utterly pretentious! Oh well, I suppose you think a lot of yourself. Someone has to.
You really must be short on paleoPaulie arguments to try and stir up religious wars instead. Quelle surprise!!!
He isn't fighting like he should be fighting, either. Please make a note of it.
Gee, that will garner him all kinds of support here at FR
No, it just means that you guys will whine like stuck pigs because his supporters won't hold their noses for the RINO nominee.
EEE: Did you not formerly support Rooty Juliannie???? And you have the nerve to call others RINOs while supporting the paleocoward and monarch of shrimpin’ subsidies???
Your bizarre little version of history is truly comical. Thanks for the laugh.
‘Bush isn’t running. Please make a note of it. ‘
‘He isn’t fighting like he should be fighting, either. Please make a note of it. ‘
Has nothing to do with this. but I can understand dodging talking about Dr Tin Foil. Dr Tin Foil wouldn’t fight anyone, anywhere.
“Gee, that will garner him all kinds of support here at FR “
“No, it just means that you guys will whine like stuck pigs because his supporters won’t hold their noses for the RINO nominee.”
Right, that worked out so well for the last ‘internet hero’ Ho Ho Dean....(chuckle)
‘EEE: Did you not formerly support Rooty Juliannie???? And you have the nerve to call others RINOs while supporting the paleocoward and monarch of shrimpin’ subsidies???’
Hmmmm, thats interesting.
I explained my conversion on the Paul mega-thread the other day. The fact is, is that I don't support him now, and that's what counts.
Guarantee you that Paul would be tougher on foreign policy than all the Dem rats combined, and maybe more than Giuliani or Romney.
‘Guarantee you that Paul would be tougher on foreign policy than all the Dem rats combined, and maybe more than Giuliani or Romney.’
(chuckle)
Right after he apologized to the terrorists for our horrible policies in the ME for the last decade?
ROTFL! He’s the terrorists wet dream President. The second coming of Jimmy Carter in their view.
Its one of the few things I agree with the terrorists about actually.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.