http://www.phillyburbs.com/entertainment/in-debacle-reagan-escaped-the-blame-game/article_0174fce9-b60c-5b6b-8934-915bd3c2bcf7.html
Realistically, (the Marines) had become “sitting ducks” from the moment they entered Beirut. And as a result of their absurd orders (to keep their weapons unloaded), when the explosives-laden truck sped toward their doomed barracks, the two unarmed guards had no way of stopping it.
According to Col. Timothy J. Geraghty, the commander of the Marines in Beirut: “It didn’t take a military expert to realize that our troops had been placed in an indefensible situation. Anyone following the situation in Lebanon in ordinary news reports could realize a tragedy was in the making.
“There was a growing feeling of frustration inside the Muslim and Druse community in Lebanon due to the United States’ direct backing of Israel in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon and other pro-Israel factions within Lebanon. These factions had been responsible for multiple attacks committed against the Muslim and Druse Lebanese population.”
While the blast led to the withdrawal of the international peacekeeping force from Lebanon, in retrospect, neither the invasion nor the Marine intervention should ever have occurred.
Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon insisted the invasion was justified in retaliation for PLO attacks on Israelis. Yet there had only been one Israeli death from such attacks in the previous 12 months.
From the outset, the American embassy in Beirut had sent numerous cables warning Washington that the invasion would provoke terrorism and undermine America’s standing in the Mideast. But there was no response.
On April 18, 1983, a delivery van exploded at the front door of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 46 people, including 16 Americans, and wounding more than 100 others.
Against the vigorous opposition of Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Reagan then ordered Marine commanders to call in air strikes and other attacks against the Muslims and initiated a two-week-long bombardment by American warships, including the battleship USS New Jersey.
In his autobiography, then Maj. Gen. Colin Powell observed: “Since (the Muslims) could not reach the battleship, they found a more vulnerable target — the exposed Marines at the airport.”
The Reagan administration immediately attempted to deflect blame for the attack with a deluge of false statements and misrepresentations. In a televised speech four days after the bombing, the president insisted the attack was unstoppable, erroneously declaring that the truck crashed through a series of barriers, including a chain-link fence and barbed-wire entanglements, and argued that the U.S. mission was succeeding.
Despite the fact that Reagan had dispatched the Marines into an impossible situation and then had issued orders that led to their inability to defend themselves, he suffered relatively little criticism from the press or partisan opponents, and after months of vigorous campaigning was overwhelmingly re-elected the following year.
Contrast this with the controversy over the recent attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where on Sept. 11, U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were assassinated.
Within hours of that attack, and with no evidence as to how or why it had occurred or how it could have been prevented, presidential candidate Mitt Romney broke from what has long been traditional political protocol in situations of this type and attacked President Barack Obama, accusing him of sympathizing with anti-American interests in the Muslim world.
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