[Zhang Fei]

Under Reagan, the Marine barracks bombing occurred, during which 200+ Marines were killed. Reagan retaliated by shelling Syrian military installations in Lebanon. The right move would have been to bomb Tehran and Damascus, but Reagan never got round to that. I have to wonder to what extent arms for hostages and Iran-Contra had to do with his mild reaction to the bombing. Bottom line is that US policy vis-a-vis the Middle East, prior to Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, had always been mild. Even Praying Mantis was, best, a skirmish. The only teeth Reagan showed was with respect to Gaddafi, over the Gulf of Sidra. Until Desert Storm, the uniform US policy towards the Mid East had been appeasement, and has always reverted to that.

[rbmillerjr]

I don’t necessarily disagree with what you say, as it is factual, for the most part.

But, I do give Reagan a small mulligan here. First, his eye was on the ball of the Soviet Union and winning the Cold War. A huge, but subtle part of that strategy was to drive the price of oil down, as the Soviets relied upon oil for money. Critical to that end, was persuading the ME oil countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to play ball. The US went into Lebanon at the best of both the Saudis and other OPEC countries as well as the UN. It was not a planned military mission, it was a peace mission.

Now, the operational planning was ignorantly planned. It was a disaster, but the reasons we were there were complex. Reagan did convince the primary oil exporting countries to drive their oil prices down. It did contribute massively to defeating them. We did win the Cold War.

[Charles Martel]

I tend not to minimize the way Reagan chose to deal with the Syrian bases in Lebanon. At the time, the Soviets were very protective of Syria, and Reagan chose the most visible, in-your-face method of dealing with the problem that he had at his disposal:

The largest shore bombardment since the Korean War.