AND IT'S DUBYA OVER REAGAN BY A HAIR
(if "a hair" means about 150 troops, so far)

Right about now is the two hour anniversary of the beginning of my PS 150 midterm (Politics of the Middle East), which went better than expected.

Today is also the twentieth anniversary of the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Lebanon, which killed 241 of our servicemen.

I am reminded that in the second of the three Bush-Gore debates, then-Governor Bush commented that he disapproved of our involvement in Haiti, yet approved of our intervention in Lebanon.

In fact, Tom Friedman, back when he was worth a damn, actually wrote a column on that precise issue, October 17, 2000:

If there has been a low point for the press following the Bush-Gore campaign, surely it has been the mass rush to judgment that because George W. Bush was able to tick off world hot spots in the last debate, he understands foreign policy enough to be president. In fact, Mr. Bush uttered a stunning howler during that debate. When asked by Jim Lehrer which of the recent U.S. interventions abroad he would approve of, Mr. Bush said he did not approve of Haiti, but he did approve of Lebanon in 1982. Oh, really? Too bad Mr. Lehrer did not have time to ask him: "Governor Bush, what was it about Lebanon that you liked?"

Was it the fact that President Reagan rushed into Lebanon out of guilt over the Sabra and Shatila massacres without any preparation and, as a result, we became another faction in the Lebanese civil war? Was it the fact that we were engaged there in intensive nation-building -- training the whole Lebanese Army -- the very nation-building you opposed in Haiti? Was it the fact that we tried to build our policy in Lebanon around exercising all that military power you want to build up again -- even shelling Syrian troops with the battleship New Jersey -- and all that power proved futile? Was it the fact that 241 U.S. servicemen were killed in their sleep as a result of that futile exercise of power? Was it the fact that your chief foreign policy adviser, George Shultz, was our secretary of state then, who negotiated a May 17, 1983, agreement for Israeli security in South Lebanon -- which was so one-sided in Israel's favor it was never implemented, blew up in our faces and resulted in Syrian domination of Lebanon? What exactly did you like about Lebanon, governor?

Something tells me that Friedman didn't look back at the final graf from that column during the run-up to the Iraq war, because it appears quite prescient:

The devil in this region -- and the solution -- is in the details. Foreign policy problems rarely come packaged in your ideal way. They always come messy, spurred as much by the fecklessness of allies as the mendacity of enemies. And they can be solved only by some combination of military might, detailed, patient diplomacy and, yes, some cautious optimism. When you approach them with superficial cliches, an unwillingness to master details and an over-reliance on military power, you end up with America in Lebanon in 1982 -- one of George W. Bush's preferred foreign policy moments. Scary.

Scary indeed. It's pretty clear that the administration didn't have the slightest clue as to details relating to anything other than the initial military operations in Iraq. It's pretty clear that Bush gave us a boatload of superficial cliches, packaged in deliberate deception. It's pretty clear that Rummy and the boys thought everything would fall into place if we just flexed our military muscles enough.

Well don't worry Tom, looks like Dubya has himself a new preferred foreign policy moment!