Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [15]
By the end of January 1984, as our Congress and most of our allies were ready to pull out, all hell was breaking loose in Lebanon. Emboldened by America’s mixed signals, the Syrians and the Druze stepped up their shelling of Beirut, causing increased civilian casualties. At the airport, our Marines were hunkered down behind new defensive barriers, under such restrictive rules of engagement that they were free to do little other than defend themselves. But rather than stiffening American resolve, the attacks seemed to be accelerating interest in withdrawal, at least among members of our government.
I got a taste of the mood in Congress when I went up to Capitol Hill to brief members. The Speaker of the House, the formidable Democrat Tip O’Neill, with whom I had served in Congress years before, had arranged for me to meet with the freshmen Democratic members. O’Neill understood how complex and challenging the situation was. His newly elected members were of a different sort. As I was going in to meet with this group, Tip pulled me aside. “Don’t look for much help from me on this, Don,” he warned. “I’m working with some crazies here.” By now America’s Lebanon policy had become simply a matter of arranging the details of an inevitable departure from the country.14
Retreat did not come easily for Ronald Reagan. “[T]he situation in Lebanon is difficult, frustrating, and dangerous,” Reagan said in a radio address to the nation in early February 1984. “But that is no reason to turn our backs on friends and to cut and run. If we do, we’ll be sending one signal to terrorists everywhere: They can gain by waging war against innocent people.”15
As the President was making his strong public statements, members of his national security team were working to move the United States in a sharply different direction. An internal National Security Council (NSC) review of the Lebanon policy called for the prompt withdrawal of most American peacekeepers. But in a show of support for Lebanon, it also called for increasing American military training and support to the Lebanese Armed Forces, which would leave about five hundred military personnel on the ground.16 Considering the alternatives, that sounded better than outright withdrawal. I believed that at least a residual presence could be helpful in sending a message that we were not going to simply depart hastily in defeat. I saw the situation in terms of flying a damaged plane: We could either crash land with a precipitous withdrawal or gradually reduce our presence in a controlled landing. I hoped that by the latter, we could salvage something, however modest, from our effort.
A couple of days after the issue appeared settled, George Shultz departed for meetings in South America and the President went to California. Meanwhile, fighting escalated in Lebanon, particularly around Beirut. On February 7, Reagan’s national security officials convened an emergency meeting to discuss the Lebanon situation anew. With Reagan away, the meeting was chaired by Vice President Bush who, as I was told, with the support of Secretary of Defense Weinberger and White House Chief of Staff Jim Baker, pressed for the immediate withdrawal of all of our forces, including the trainers and advisers just agreed to, from Lebanon.17 When informed of the recommendation, the President apparently acquiesced.
I was traveling in the region when Robert (Bud) McFarlane, Reagan’s new national security adviser and a former Middle East envoy, delivered the news. “[T]he situation on the Hill is becoming explosive,” he told me, in what might have been the understatement of the year. He insisted that the Congress would not agree to a residual presence of any U.S. forces at the Beirut airport, and that the administration needed “to act before the Congress confronts us with a very restrictive resolution or other problems.”18
I understood the dynamics in Washington pretty well, but I was disheartened that the American effort was ending so precipitously.