resistance to Soviet expansionism. The goal of the free world must instead be stated in the affirmative. We must go on the offensive with a forward strategy for freedom.”17 Equally interesting, particularly in light of the Grenada operation soon to come, was what Reagan stated about morale:
You can all remember the days of national malaise and international humiliation. Everywhere in the world freedom was in retreat and America’s prestige and influence were at low ebb. In Afghanistan, the liberty of a proud people was crushed by brutal Soviet aggression; in Central America and Africa, Soviet-backed attempts to install Marxist dictatorships were successfully underway; in Iran, international law and common decency were mocked as 50 American citizens were held hostage; and in international forums, the United States was held up to abuse and ridicule by outlaw regimes and police state dictatorships…. All this is changing. While we cannot end decades of decay in only 1000 days, we have fundamentally reversed the ominous trends of a few years ago.18
Coming only weeks before Grenada, this statement is significant in two ways: First, Reagan sensed a turn around in the nation’s spirits before Grenada. Second, he unknowingly sensed such a turnaround as a time approached when his Caribbean neighbors would request U.S. help in Grenada. As a result, he was especially prone to view Grenada as not just a liberation but a morale restorer once the request came in.
As the crisis unfolded three weeks later, Reagan saw a chance to chip away at the syndrome that had tied the hands of recent American leaders. He later wrote:
Frankly, there was another reason I wanted secrecy [for the Grenada mission]. It was what I call the “post-Vietnam syndrome,” the resistance of many in Congress to the use of military force abroad for any reason, because of our nation’s experience in Vietnam….We were already running into this phenomenon in our efforts to halt the spread of communism in Central America, and some congressmen were raising the issue of “another Vietnam” in Lebanon while fighting to restrict the president’s constitutional powers as commander in chief.
We couldn’t say no to those six small countries [Caribbean neighbors of Grenada] who had asked us for help. We’d have no credibility or standing in the Americas if we did. If it ever became known, which I knew it would, that we had turned them down, few of our friends around the world would trust us completely as an ally again.19
Moreover, very importantly, Reagan knew that the Americans in Grenada were at risk as potential hostages, posing a repeat of the Iranian crisis that had already sunk American spirit. Hence, doing nothing in Grenada could hazard another loss to morale and become an even greater detriment to the American position.
Further, there was an additional, previously unexpected need to boost American morale: Just two days before the invasion, 241 U.S. Marines were killed by a radical Muslim suicide bomber at their barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. While the decision to invade Grenada was made before the Beirut disaster, the operation became a face-saving counterweight to the tragedy in Beirut.
MOSCOW’S GRENADA REACTION
Despite the high morale that Grenada produced in the United States, Moscow was predictably unhappy with the invasion’s outcome. Reagan’s Grenada “triumphalism” nauseated the USSR—a measure of the operation’s success. The Kremlin knew that Reagan’s run for a second term was only a year away. Moscow hoped upon hope that Reagan would lose next November. Thus, to the Soviets, the win in Grenada was bad news not only because it stemmed Communism’s advance but because it boosted Reagan politically.
TASS decried how “the master of the White House” had “strived to convince his compatriots that they ‘can be proud’ of that operation.” What was there to be proud of? America had flung a “mighty naval armada” and thousands of Marines at a “tiny island state” that did nothing wrong in “a policy of state-inspired terrorism.”20 If that was not strong enough, TASS released this stinging satire of an imaginary conversation between Reagan and Secretary of Defense Weinberger:
The telephone rang in the U.S. President’s bedroom in late evening on November the Second.
“My President,” the familiar triumphant voice of the defense secretary was heard over the phone, “the island has been done with! The sky is cloudless over the whole of Grenada….”
“Caspar, dear, you are a hero! And I will accept no objections from you on that score! You have razed to the ground the island’s university and thus liberated a thousand of our guys studying there. Glory to you, Cap! Unless you object, at tomorrow’s news conference I shall refer to the invasion not as an ‘invasion’ as I was rather rash to describe it previously, but as a ‘remarkable operation,’ or even as a ‘rescue mission.’”
“Very much so, Mr. President.”
“As to your guys, well, those who are…so quick to react with their guns and rifles to anything when you land them in other countries, I shall describe them as ‘our best missionaries abroad.’”
“It will be a perfect description. Magnificent guys! Incidentally, Mr. President, I gave instructions to cook up photos depicting them giving a hand to doctors inoculating the locals…”
“Perfect of you, Cap! You are a big strategist and a great politician rolled into one. And in the future, in all countries we intend to conquer, we must inoculate all the locals against the ideological contagion brought in by the ‘Red agents’….”
“I would hate to hide from you, my President, that there are some killed and wounded.”
“Let this not trouble you. I’ll just say that it was the Americans who were dying and getting wounded while defending the lives of others and upholding freedom and peace…”
“You are a giant, Mr. President!”
“Thank you, my loyal minister, for this accurate comparison and [I’ll] be sure [to] repeat it to Nancy. She will be very pleased…”21
The phrase “our best missionaries abroad” is a slap at Reagan’s religiousness and anti-Communist crusading. Not stopping there, the TASS satire ended with a fanatical Reagan going nuclear a few days later:
Seated in his armchair in the Oval Office back from the news conference, Reagan thought he richly deserved praise for his firmness: “Well done for me to have told them that we can do any other country in like we did with Grenada.” Then his thought strayed and he clearly saw himself in “Air Force One” on the morrow after a nuclear free-for-all. He is eating his breakfast with gusto now and then glancing into the porthole. Enters the defense secretary who reports: “My President, the earth is over and done with,” and then proceeds to decorate him with the Pentagon medal “for the destruction of life on the planet.”
“Serves them right!” the President says. “Next time they will think twice before interfering with my attempts to restructure the world the way I like….”
Yes, the nut from California had finally done it: he had pushed the button. The Grenada “cowboy,” as the Soviet press dubbed him, had nuked the world.
Like the American left, a popular tactic on the Soviet side was to downplay the U.S. action as a petty operation directed at a tiny, and thereby unimportant, country—a line that contradicted Moscow’s obsessive attention. To buttress this viewpoint, the Soviets frequently borrowed from American columnists. To cite just one example, TASS devoted an entire statement to an article by Washington Post associate editor Robert Kaiser, titled, “Is This a Foreign Policy or a Recipe for Disaster?”22 Kaiser’s 3,000-word op-ed in the Sunday “Outlook” section excoriated Reagan policy, and the Soviets loved it: “History?” Kaiser begged. “It has no apparent place in Ronald Reagan’s view of the world, except for the caricatured version he has carried around in his head for years.” In this passage, Kaiser inadvertently gave the Soviet propaganda machine a gem on Grenada, and TASS seized it, quoting it liberally and circulating it around the world.23
