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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, FEBRUARY 17, 1984
PAGE 11
the Christian Phalange Party, argues that the Gemayel government
should have recognized this reality and depended less on the U.S.
and more on Israel: "We were asking a strategic power to play the
role�a�actical power. That was our first mistake, and it was
fatal. It's like an elephant looking for an ant."...
One Lebanese official, reviewing the confused and sometimes
contradictory course of U.S. policy in Lebanon during the last
two years, comments:
"T f e Y. were just ad-libbing.
To this
moment, they� just ad-libbing."
Columnist George F. Will, in his February 9 syndicated column, also dealt
at length with the full importance of the retreat.
This is " standing tall"?
Even with a formidable fleet within
sight offshore, the United States has proved itself unable to
defend a coastal city.... The United States has been driven from
Lebanon, and perhaps effectively from the Middle East, by the
Shias and Druze.
Considered in conjunction with the Grenada
operation, the signal to the world is that the United States is
(at the most) a regional power.
- -- --
--
The Administration may think that the retreat off the beaches can
be conducted with studied slowness--"retreating tall," for what
ever that might be worth. But nothing now can disguise the fact
that this military and political defeat in Lebanon is the result
��use of military assets� incompetent� the Iranian rescue
mission or the Bay� Pigs. As former Defense Secretary James R.
Schlesinger has said, the wisdom of�deployment depends£!! the
clarity of mission and sufficiency of force.
� de t loyment
flunked both tests. Begun partly as a humanitarian re lex and
partly a�gesture of political support, the mission became, in
Schlesinger's word, more "enigmatic."
But one thing was ruin
ously clear from the start. The United States was unwilling to
inflict serious casualties on the forces that were determined to
do what they can now do: conquer Lebanon....
A moment for serious action came and quickly went in October,
when Syria inflicted a military defeat on the marines. Americans
have insistently referred to that as a "terrorist attack." That
phrase disguises the fact that it was a military defeat--the most
costly in Marine lives since the first day of fighting on Iwo
Jima. The day of the attack was the day on which to have said
that our mission is to destroy forces shelling Beirut.
The
Syrians and others have 48 hours to move back out of range. After
that, the buffer zone around the capital will be a free-fire
zone....
A fascinating aspect of this episode is that the State Department
has been more hardheaded than has the Pentagon about the need to
back diplomacy with force. � myth about contemporary America is
that the military is itching to use force. But in the councils oI
government a large peacetime mIITtary bureaucracy is usually a
voice against activism....
Regarding Lebanon, the Pentagon's
strategy--moving offshore--has prevailed.