http://www.etaiwannews.com/Opinion/2005/09/30/1128048163.htmIn a September 21 speech insisting that the United States must "stay the course" in Iraq, U.S. President Bush warned that an early military withdrawal from that country would encourage al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations. Weak U.S. responses to challenges over the past quarter century have emboldened such people, Bush argued. Among other examples, the president cited the decisions to withdraw troops from Lebanon and Somalia after American forces suffered casualties.
Hawkish pundits have made similar allegations for years. But it is a curious line of argument with ominous implications. Bush and his supporters clearly assume that the United States should have stayed in both Lebanon and Somalia. The mistake, in their opinion, was not the original decision to intervene but to limit American losses and terminate the missions. This is a classic case of learning the wrong lessons from history.
Even hawkish Republican Dana Rohrabacher, who was a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, acknowledges that the decision to send troops into Lebanon was perhaps the worst foreign policy mistake of Reagan's presidency. The United States promptly found itself in the middle of a civil war as a de facto ally of the Christian-dominated Lebanese government.
American troops became entangled in skirmishes with Muslim militias, and U.S. battleships off the coast proceeded to shell Muslim villages. The disastrous intervention culminated with an attack by a suicide car bomber against the Marine barracks in Beirut that left 241 Marines dead. A few months later, Reagan cut his losses and pulled out of Lebanon.
more....
(Isn't the Cato Institute RW ? Probably why I found this article in Taiwan :) )
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