The Foreign Service Journal, May 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2019 81 I immediately fired off a “flash” tele- gram to Washington, which brought Near Eastern Affairs Assistant Secretary “Roy” Atherton to the secure telephone. “The president [Gerald Ford] is about to make a decision,” he said. “How do you feel about it?” Thanks a lot for asking, I thought. “I’m against it, and so are the British,” I replied. He was surprised that London was aware of the plan. “Send me a cable. The president is about to make a decision.” Fifteen minutes later, as I was consult- ing my country team, Atherton called again. “Where is your cable? The presi- dent is about to make a decision.” “All of us, including the military atta- ché (a very senior colonel), are against a Marine landing. It will create all sorts of new problems,” I said, and sent a second “flash” cable to that effect. Happily, President Ford decided against a Marine landing. Instead, he stayed up that night, despite the time dif- ference, while the Navy landed unarmed troop carriers on the morning of June 20, 1976. The ships peacefully evacu- ated more than 500 Americans and other foreign nationals from Beirut over the next month. I was informed by a Greek Orthodox contact and the Egyptian and French embassies that the Navy evacuation was protected by armed Palestinians and Jumblattists. The fact that I had come to Lebanon after three years as the NEA man in London’s political section, where I had enjoyed confidential access to all relevant Foreign Office officials, made it easy for the Brits to come to me to protest Washington’s plans. Thus, diplomacy prevented another American military intervention that was bound eventually to draw American Marines into action against Palestinians, Jumblatt’s Muslim/Druze and perhaps even the Syrians. S The much better known landing of American Marines (with French and Ital- ian troops) in Lebanon six years later, in 1982, is the exception that proves the rule. Following the breakdown of a United Nations cease-fire the United States had helped broker and the subsequent invasion of Lebanon by Israel, Washing- ton deployed U.S. Multinational Force Lebanon to oversee the safe departure of PLO fighters from Beirut, to support the Lebanese government following the massacre of civilian Palestinian refugees by Maronite militia and to assist with the Israeli withdrawal. American troops were still there in 1983, when their base was attacked, and they riposted. Soon the American and French barracks were blown up by truck bombs, killing 241 American military personnel. This followed a similar attack on the American embassy, killing a num- ber of Americans and Lebanese. Those attacks were attributed to Hezbollah, a pro-Iranian Shia militia that had become a serious player, supported by Syria, in the shifting Lebanese scene. President Ronald Reagan compro- mised by ordering the military back to U.S. Navy vessels off the Lebanese coast. By 1984 the Americans quietly sailed home. These experiences sound a warning about the perils of ditching diplomacy and opening new fronts for the American military to explore. n The problem was how to go. The Beirut airport remained closed, and over- land travel to Syria or even East Beirut was dangerous. As we and Washington discussed options, the U.S. Navy pro- posed a Marine landing. I couldn’t help remembering an earlier civil war I had had the opportunity to study intensively at Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in mid-career—the 1958 Lebanon crisis. In July 1958, under President Dwight Eisenhower’s anticommunist Near East doctrine, 5,000 U.S. Marines had landed on Beirut’s beaches—only to be met by sunbathers in bikinis. In fact, the Leba- nese army had received orders to resist the Marine landing, but U.S. Ambassador Rob McClintock arrived and convinced Maronite General Fuad Chehab to call off his troops. U.S. Special Emissary Robert Murphy then came and helped work out a diplo- matic settlement that led to Chehab being elected Lebanon’s next president. The American troops soon returned home, and civil war was tamed for another 17 years. S Now in 1976, with Secretary Kissinger pushing the evacuation of Americans, I was surprised one afternoon when the British chargé d’affaires stormed into my office. “What are you doing? We know what you’re doing!” he shouted. After he calmed down he told me that the U.S. Navy with Marines was mobiliz- ing to invade Beirut, very much as in 1958. The British were horrified. The British chargé d’affaires stormed into my office. “What are you doing? We know what you’re doing!” he shouted.