sending in a multinational force to provide security for the withdrawal of the PLO to whatever Arab state was willing to take them.
Though the Joint Chiefs of Staff were opposed to committing U.S. forces to this venture, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger felt that other international partners would be reluctant to join the effort unless the United States took the lead. He also felt that a U.S. military presence in Beirut was the only way to stop the Israelis from destroying the city, and to obtain their eventual withdrawal from Lebanon.
On August 25, approximately eight hundred U.S. Marines, along with contingents from France and Italy, went ashore to position themselves between the Israelis, the Syrians, and the PLO.
Meanwhile, Tunisia agreed to accept Yasir Arafat and his PLO fighters. Their evacuation was completed by September 1. Ten days later, the Marines returned to their ships, and the French and Italians also withdrew.
Part of the PLO evacuation agreement included a promise by the American and Lebanese governments, with assurances from Israel and leaders from some (but not all) of the Lebanese factions, that law-abiding Palestinian noncombatants, including the families of evacuated PLO members, could remain in Lebanon and live in peace and security.
Two weeks later, Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel, whose daughter had already been killed in an ambush meant for him, was killed by a bomb placed on top of his house (it was thought) by a Syrian agent. Gemayel, a warrior who favored military solutions to internal problems, had been the leader of the Christian Phalange militia, whose chief supporter was Israel, and the man the Israelis had counted on for a peace treaty that would best serve the interest of their security. The death of Gemayel dashed all hopes for that. It was not in Syria's interest to see such a treaty come about, since by now Syria viewed Lebanon as a strategic buffer against Israel.
The next day, in violation of their guarantee to protect the Palestinian noncombatants who had elected to remain behind, the Israeli army entered West Beirut. Their stated justification was to protect the refugees and to clean out PLO infrastructure and supplies left behind by Arafat.
On the night of September 16, the Israeli army allowed the Phalange militia to enter the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila in West Beirut to search for the source of sporadic gunfire aimed at the Israelis. It's hard to say why (local hatreds being so deeply rooted), but the Phalange went on a rampage. When the shooting was over, more than 700 unarmed Palestinians had been slaughtered.
The Lebanese government immediately requested the return of the U.S. Marines to protect the people of West Beirut.
Again, the Joint Chiefs strongly opposed it, but this time Secretary Weinberger joined the opposition. The previous Marine intervention had been a limited, short-term operation. This one looked open-ended and fuzzy — and therefore risked disaster.
President Reagan overrode their objections. He obviously felt that he had to do everything he could to prevent another massacre of Palestinians.
This time the Marine unit was close to twice the size of the one before it — a Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) of approximately 1,500 men. The French and Italians also agreed to return. The mission the Joint Chiefs assigned the Marines was called PRESENCE — meaning they were expected to be present and visible, to keep hostiles separate by patrolling throughout the city, and to try to be friends to all factions alike. The JCS wanted the Marines to be as impartial as possible — and
It was an unusual mission for a military unit, but a similar operation had worked before. The problem was that not every faction respected them or their presence. And there was another problem as well: The Marines would have liked to set up their operations on terrain that dominated the city, but all dominant terrain was already occupied by one or another of the warring factions. That meant the Marines had to settle for low, flat ground near the airport; there was nowhere else to go. The building they chose for their barracks, however, provided them with easy access to many of the locations associated with their mission, including the American Embassy; and it was one of the strongest buildings in Beirut. They felt they could defend themselves there….
On April 18, 1983, a suicide car-bomber — probably a Hezbollah fanatic operating from the Sheikh Abdullah Barracks at Baalbeck in the Bekaa Valley — destroyed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Sixty-three people were killed, seventeen of them Americans, including the CIA station chief and all but two of his officers. This was the first car- bomb attack against American facilities.
The bombing had serious consequences, and of these the loss of intelligence was most immediately critical. The entire U.S. HUMINT (human intelligence) mechanism (i.e., the links with local agents) was practically destroyed. For several months, gaping holes existed in the U.S. ability to know what was happening on the ground, either in Beirut or in the rest of the country. This failure later came back to haunt America.
The longer-term effects of the bombing were even more serious. There is no evidence that anyone in Washington understood the consequences in terms either of the threat to Americans abroad or of its implications to future policy. Terrorism became a form of war, which ultimately forced America out of Lebanon. The United States was not prepared to deal with it.
A month later, Secretary of State George Shultz attempted to broker an agreement (known as the 17 May Agreement) whereby all foreign forces would simultaneously withdraw from Lebanon. Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, brother of Bashir Gemayel, and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, signed on to the agreement (on condition that the Syrians did also); but when Shultz went to Damascus to present the plan to Assad, Assad refused to withdraw from Lebanon under any circumstances. As far as Assad was concerned, he was orchestrating the situation from a position of strength.
Syria reinforced its refusal to cooperate by declaring Phillip Habib, the Presidents Mideast envoy,
Habib's replacement, Robert 'Bud' MacFarlane, the President's Deputy National Security Adviser, believed that if the Syrians and the Israelis could be convinced to withdraw, then dealing directly with the leaders of the major factions might produce a solution to the Lebanese problem. Before going to Lebanon, MacFarlane met with Assad in Damascus, and left realizing that Assad was in control of the future of Lebanon — and that he was not about to relinquish that position.
MacFarlane arrived in Lebanon on August 1. Within the next couple of weeks, he recommended that Washington suspend its effort to broker a joint Syrian-Israeli withdrawal and instead concentrate on reconciling the various Lebanese factions. MacFarlane and U.S. Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew met several times with Nabih Berri and Walid Jumblatt to bring them into an accommodation with President Gemayel, but they made no progress. Both Berri and Jumblatt put the blame on Gemayel — claiming that he was more concerned with preserving the Christian presidency than with accommodating the factions. But the unspoken agenda here was that both Berri and Jumblatt were puppets of outside authority-and had little leeway to negotiate a peace agreement.
ASSIGNMENT TO LEBANON
In August 1983, then — Brigadier General Carl Stiner was the assistant division commander for operations for the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg. One day in mid-August, at four in the afternoon, he was in the field, inspecting training for the ROTC Summer Camp, which the 82nd conducted annually, when he received a call on his radio to return to headquarters immediately.
I thought the call related to a possible brigade-size mission I'd been designated to lead aimed at preventing several thousand 'peacenik demonstrators' from breaking through security fences at the Seneca Army Depot in New York State (they wanted to disrupt the shipment of nuclear weapons to Europe). The brigade had been well trained for civil disturbance operations and was standing by while civil authorities were trying to defuse the situation.
Back at Division, I learned that I'd gotten a call from the Pentagon directing me to report to General Vessey, the JCS Chairman, by nine the next morning, with fatigues packed, prepared to take a trip. Since I would probably
