Ronald Reagan is the frequent subject of hagiographic works by a range of people. His admirers continue to push for renaming all sorts of buildings, airports, schools and roads with his name. John Kline wants to get Reagan’s face on money, some want his mug on Mt. Rushmore, and the Republicans running for president mention his name more than their own! Where will it end?
Too often they gloss over Reagan’s many shortcomings--especially when it comes to terrorism. This list isn’t exhaustive, but it is illustrative of the many attacks visited upon U.S. citizens and interests during the Reagan years--and his subsequent missteps, mistakes or lack of response. Some will find these facts enlightening if not disconcerting, especially since these same admirers of Reagan claim that under Clinton, terrorists acted with impunity and little fear of retaliation. Those same people conveniently forget that terrorists were extremely active and successful during Reagan’s eight years in office--and Reagan’s administration was ineffective in combating them. He even laid the foundation of something Republicans are loath to admit and hope nobody notices: cutting & running (Beirut, circa 1984). Let’s look at the six years when most of the action took place: 1981, 1983-86, and 1988.
1981
March 7: American Chester Bitterman shot by M-19 terrorists in Bogota, Columbia.
March 10: U.S. Ambassador John Gunther Dean attacked in Beirut.
March 17: Terrorists bomb embassy car containing U.S. Marines in Costa Rica; U.S. embassy in San Salvador attacked by terrorists;
May: After intelligence reports surfaced that Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi had plans to assassinate American diplomats in Rome and Paris, President Reagan expelled all Libyan diplomats from the U.S. and closed Libya's diplomatic mission in Washington, D.C. Three months later, U.S. Navy jets shot down two SU-22 warplanes about 60 miles off the Libyan coast. Critics of the U.S. said Libya was used as a scapegoat and presented an easy target for U.S. forces: It’s about one-fifth the size of the U.S., and had a population of about 3 million at the time. The U.S. government maintained that that Libya posed a credible terrorist threat and had sufficient oil funds to mount a significant attack on U.S. interests.
December 17: Red Brigade takes responsibility for abduction of American General James Dozier, NATO commander, in Verona, Italy. He is subsequently rescued by Italian authorities.
1983
April 18 in Beirut, Lebanon: Seventeen Americans and 46 Lebanese killed when a truck bomb plows into the U.S. embassy in Beirut. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
Oct. 23: A suicide bomber drives a van laden with explosives through the U.S. Marine compound in Beirut, Lebanon. Two hundred forty-one Marines and Sailors die. Twenty-seven French troops die about 20 seconds later in a similar attack.
Dec. 12 in Kuwait City, Kuwait: Shiite truck bombers attacked U.S. embassy and other targets, killing five and injuring 80.
1984
March 16 in Beirut: CIA Station Chief William Buckley is kidnapped, tortured and killed. Buckley was the fourth person to be kidnapped by militant Islamic extremists in Lebanon. The first American hostage, American University of Beirut President David Dodge, had been kidnapped in July 1982. Eventually, 30 Westerners would be kidnapped during the 10-year-long Lebanese hostage-taking crisis (1982-1992), which subsequently gave rise to the Iran-Contra scheme.
June 14: During the hijacking of TWA flight 847, Navy diver Robert Stethem beaten to death, then dumped out onto the tarmac of the Beirut airport. The perpetrator, Mohamed Ali Hamadi, a Lebanese held in a German prison for 19 years, was released in December 2005.
Sept. 20 in Beirut: Truck bomb exploded outside U.S. embassy annex, killing 24, including two U.S. military.
Dec. 3 in Beirut: Kuwait Airways Flight 221, from Kuwait to Pakistan, hijacked and diverted to Tehran. Two Americans killed.
1985
April 12 in Madrid, Spain: Bombing at restaurant frequented by U.S. soldiers killed 18 Spaniards and injured 82.
June 19: Four Marines and two U.S. businessmen are among the 13 people gunned down at a sidewalk restaurant in El Salvador by the FMLN (left-wing guerilla group fighting the Salvadoran government).
October: Cruise ship Achille Lauro hijacked off of Port Said, Egypt, by Palestinian terrorists, who kill invalid Jewish-American passenger Leon Klinghoffer.
Dec. 27: Abu Nidal-connected terrorists attack Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport and Vienna's Schwechat Airport with suicide squads and kill 19 people, including five U.S. citizens with suicide squads. Many innocent children are gunned down. Victims include: Natasha Simpson, age 11, daughter of Victor L. Simpson of New York, the Associated Press news editor in Rome.
1986
April 2, Athens, Greece: A bomb exploded aboard TWA flight 840 en route from Rome to Athens, killing four Americans and injuring nine.
April 5: The La Belle Discotheque in Berlin was bombed, killing two American soldiers and a Turkish woman. There were 229 additional casualties, including 79 Americans, most of them soldiers. Communication intercepts by U.S., British, and German intelligence services confirmed Libyan sponsorship of the bombings. Could this have been fallout from the 1981 confrontation?
April 14: Reagan ordered U.S. Air Force and Navy to attack Libya. He announced hours after the bombing began that the U.S. had launched strikes against the “terrorist facilities” and other “military assets” and headquarters of Qaddafi.
Libya said the raid killed more than 30 people and wounded almost 100. One F-111 crashed during the operation, resulting in two American deaths. The same regime remains in charge in Libya to this day, but their status as terrorists hasn’t prevented the Bush administration and friends from reestablishing business with it.
1988
Dec. 21: Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 243 passengers, 16 crew and 11 residents of Lockerbie. Could this have been fallout from the 1981 and 1986 confrontations? The Libyan government harbored the two terrorists responsible, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima until they were finally turned over for trial in May 2000. The trial ended on Jan. 31, 2001, with a verdict of guilty for Megrahi and aquittal for Fahima. Megrahi was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years. Fahima returned to Libya. The current Bush administration has welcomed Qaddafi’s Libya back into the community of nations: The scent of freshly-pumped oil proved too much to resist.
Reagan: a president who planned his moves according to an astrologer’s recommendations. A president who often confused fantasy with reality, and reel life with real life. Reagan: as much a product of Hollywood as those who are excoriated by the Religious Right today. A phony warrior ensconced safely in Hollywood making B-grade movies while the nation was at war. And the original cutter and runner: He withdrew the Marines from Beirut (although he couched it in terms of moving to more defensible positions) in February 1984, four months after the barracks bombing. Did any of those terrorists follow us home?
So when Republicans invoke Reagan, let’s applaud them, and ask when they’ll follow in his footsteps and “cut & run” from Iraq or Afghanistan. We’ll even allow them to replace “cut & run” with “deploy to more defensible positions.” Maybe they would like to consult an astrologer first?
(Copyright 2007 by Joe Lake. Originally published in Pulse of the Twin Cities weekly, May 2007)
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