The Weekly 2008

by Rob Grace

Last month we learned that Iran is pursuing a Lebanization strategy in Iraq.  This week we learned that America, by funding a militia that represents a democratically elected political party, is pursuing a Lebanization strategy in Lebanon.

Furthermore, in many ways, America’s current Iraq strategy resembles its 1980’s Lebanon strategy.  John McCain wrote extensively about the Reagan administration’s Lebanon intervention in one of his many books.

According to McCain, the Reagan administration “saw that Lebanon had a weak central government and army” and believed that “Until that was remedied, the country couldn’t be unified or pacified.” Hence the US employed a strategy in which “marines’ duties came to include training and equipping the Lebanese army, while the United States employed its diplomacy to strengthen the Lebanese government.”

McCain also outlined the consequences of withdrawal, which eerily resemble those we now face in Iraq:

…it would be more than an embarrassment.  It would sow doubts in the minds of our friends and enemies that America had the stomach for world leadership.  It would encourage all the usual delinquents in the Middle East tinderbox to start playing with matches.  And, of course, it would consign Lebanon to the ash heap of history.

So did McCain believe that it “would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from” the Lebanese, “and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal,” as he says now of Iraq?

Did he argue that critics of the intervention were advocating a “morally reprehensible abandonment of our responsibilities,” as he does now of Iraq?

On the contrary, as a freshman congressman, in the first of many acts that would earn him the label ‘Maverick’, McCain stood on the House floor and opposed the military intervention:

The longer we stay in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave.  We will be trapped by the case we make for having our troops there in the first place.

What can we expect if we withdraw from Lebanon?  The same as will happen if we stay.  I acknowledge that the level of fighting will increase if we leave.  I regretfully acknowledge that many innocent civilians will be hurt.  But I firmly believe this will happen in any event…

I do not see any obtainable objectives in Lebanon.  I believe the longer we stay, the more difficult it will be to leave, and I am prepared to accept the consequences of our withdrawal.

When the US finally did withdraw, the results were far from pleasant.  McCain described them eloquently:

We left behind a disintegrating Gemayel government, a defeated Lebanese army, Syrian, Palestinian, and Israeli forces.  We also left behind a growing contingent of Iranian Revolutionary guards bent on gaining new recruits to their political-religious doctrine of terror from a seemingly endless pool of willing converts.  Lebanese factional fighting continued apace, further damaging our reputation as a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East.  In the months ahead, many Americans who bravely chose to stay in Lebanon, embassy personnel, a CIA station chief, members of the UN peacekeeping forces, academics, journalists, relief workers, and clerics, were kidnapped, and some were murdered, by men who somehow find harming innocent people valorous.  We left Lebanon to the Lebanese and anyone else crazy enough to want a piece of it.  Those responsible for the killing of our marines escaped punishment.  And to this day we are living with the ramifications of our defeat.

However, McCain recognized that victory was impossible, the consequences unavoidable.  He recognized that the Reagan policy “confused symptoms with causes” and that there “was no peace to keep” because “there could be no strong central government recognized as legitimate by all governed.”  He recognized that there were “factions within factions” including “Muslim sects” that “hated other Muslim sects” and that it was a “quagmire.”  Even now he maintains that the Reagan administration “had made a terrible mistake.”

Perhaps the early McCain would agree with Juan Cole’s perspective on the Lebanon analogy:

What if Iraq has been lebanonized, but not in the sense that Ambassador Crocker alleged, of heavy Iranian influence?... What if the US is playing the Syrians here, and the Iraqis the Lebanese?

In this analogy, the war is not ended by foreign occupation troops. If anything, the Syrian policies just keep the pot boiling.

It is ended by a conference at the resort town of Taef in Saudi Arabia among the big Lebanese politicians, who make key compromises with one another and begin practically disbanding militias.

Maybe the Iraqis need to be left on their own militarily, and maybe what they need is a big conference at Taef.

The current McCain would label such a proposal “reckless,” “irresponsible,” and “morally reprehensible.”  Even after five years of military occupation, and gains that are at best described as “fragile” and “reversible” by those in charge, McCain alleges that any scenario involving withdrawal without military victory would leave “a stain on our character as a great nation”. 

As for this “stain on our character as a great nation,” to quote the early McCain, “I firmly believe this will happen in any event.”