Taxes and War Profiteers

Taxcutter says:
Get out the popcorn and watch the reprise of pacifism and isolationism play out in eastern Europe.

 

Yeah, I can hardly wait.

 

No, like apparently being unable to resist obeying anything that anyone, even total strangers, tells them to do.

There was, and is, absolutely nothing and no one in Lebanon that is worth the life of even one American. Are you arguing that we should have stayed?

 

Taxcutter says:
Some people just have to urinate on the electric fence.

 

*shakes head at the short memory span of most people*

Actually, I could easily think of quite a few.

David Dodge, Benjamin Weir, Terry Waite, Terry Anderson, Charles Glass, Tom Sutherland, William Buckley, Peter Kilburn, Colonel Higgins, Jeremy Levin, and Frank Regier.

How about them?

 

Reagan ordered the U.S. Marine contingent in Beirut withdrawn to ships offshore. What you're forgetting is, at the same time, Reagan authorized military commanders to launch air strikes and artillery bombardments against Syrian-controlled positions that fired on Beirut. Do you consider a 9 hour artillery barrage against pro-Syrian militia positions, as "retreating." At the time, 1983, it was the largest U.S. naval action since the Vietnam War.

What had occurred was the resignation of Lebanese President Amin Gemayel's cabinet and a subsequent military collapse... leaving Muslim insurgents in control of western and southern Beirut. A Democratically controlled Congress is what was pressuring Reagan to pull ground troops (peacekeepers) out of Lebanon.