Playing with Fire in Lebanon

...Taking advantage of the situation, the Soviets supplied more heavy weapons through Syria to the Druse and to anti-Western factions in the fighting...

...forces will become involved in hostilities in Beirut...

...It may even be too late to revive the old hash deal...

...Neither did it take long for the Druse and Christians, who have been massacring each other in those mountains since 1860, to go at it anew and add to the woes of the U.S...

...If the Americans did not pound the Druse positions in the Shuf, they risked the collapse of the Lebanese Army and the additional slaughter of Christians...

...But the coordination at sea does not extend to the diplomatic front...

...But the Druse gunners firing on the Christians below had not been briefed on this aspect of American policy...

...As part of that deal, the 85th Syrian brigade was also evicted from the premises, under circumstances President Hafez al-Assad no doubt regarded as degrading...

...He complied with Arafat's demand...

...A President who has voiced the thought that his predecessor trapped himself when he failed to Think Big about Iran during the hostage crisis was for a time reduced to warning the Syrians through his spokesman that "we have considerable firepower offshore...

...But Reagan quickly put such neo-Vietnam suggestions aside...

...Thereupon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff went to Senators John Tower (R.-Tex...

...With public outrage cresting, the Marines returned as part of a Western "peacekeeping" force...

...Inthe Bekaa Valley, Shiite Moslems harvested their marijuana crop...

...Perhaps, to suggest a more modest goal, Reagan should focus on hash...

...the Senate Majority Leader, wanted him to do...

...Marines have been caught in the crossfire of the Lebanese civil war, at a cost of life and limbs, Ronald Reagan must ponder how much further he intends to commit American power and prestige to a struggle that has already caused him a good deal of political anguish and promises even more...

...Their strategic assignment, to the extent one could be discerned, was to clamp down on the warring private militias-then, as now, seeking to force a de facto partition of Lebanon—until the Lebanese Army could be rebuilt along pro-American lines...

...The chief beneficiary of the unhappy situation at the moment would appear to be the Soviet Union...

...During most of the long struggle that has splintered the country, he explained, that trade continued to thrive...

...The international peacekeeping force is to remain in place...

...There, Maronite Christians, the Mourabitoun militia of the Sunni Moslems and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) would process it into hash and send it to Egypt and Turkey, Europe and America...

...Along the way, everyone took a cut...

...One suspects that the best strategy-although by no means cost-free-would be to withdraw...

...their fast friends on Capitol Hill, and pleaded with them to urge Reagan not to send in the Marines...

...The core of the problem facing the U.S., though, is that in the unlikely event these outside contenders could be induced to jointly evacuate, there still would be too many unsettled scores among the Lebanese themselves to allow a peacekeeping mission to function...

...Last month, before the battle-weary Israelis withdrew completely from the Shuf, secret talks were held aimed at replacing them with Belgian paratroopers toughened by having helped extricate Zaire's Marshal Mobutu Sese Se-ko from various scrapes...

...As the Marine encampment at Beirut airport marked its first anniversary last month, holed up in bunkers the size of baseball diamonds, the White House had yet to conduct a comprehensive strategic review of U.S...

...The Druse and their Syrian friends would allow it to move through the Shuf Mountains toward the coast...

...The President has been reluctant, though, to come to grips with the Soviets and the Syrians, who have worked in tandem (along with their Druse and Palestinian clients) to foment troublein Lebanon...

...That put Lebanon's President Amin Gemayel and Ronald Reagan in a bind...

...Ironically, the present mess developed in the wake of an Israeli withdrawal that the Adminstration had fervently sought and now bitterly regrets...

...What drive has remained he has poured into protecting his own flanks with a shaky bipartisan compromise designed to weaken a legislative offensive trying to implement for the first time the War Powers Act of 1973, a law that requires the Commander in Chief to seek Congressional authority to maintain U.S...

...Unless the Marines "depart immediately," he told Cox Newspapers' correspondent Joseph Albright during a Damascus interview, "the American citizen will pay a lot of blood for an issue which is none of his concern...

...If Gemayel met the minimal Soviet-Syrian demand and withdrew his Army from the Shuf, his regime would almost surely fall under Phalangist pressure...

...That, however, would have made him look weak-the way he feels Carter looked over Iran...

...Did he pause, one wonders, because the French had once been there too...

...Lebanon is not a country not in the sense, anyhow, ordinary people normally think of countries...

...And the tenuousness of the latest halt in the fighting has been underlined by Syria's Foreign Minister Abdul Halim Khaddam...

...And their allies, the Syrians, have never viewed Lebanon as anything other than a province of "Greater Syria," carved away by French and British colonialists...

...It takes more than gung-ho U.S...

...But Brussels balked...

...Their tactical role was to keep the airport open...

...Should the Syrians and the Palestinians resume their war of attrition against the Israelis, as now seems probable, the Israelis would strike back from their newly fashioned defensible buffer zones along Lebanon's Awali and Litani Rivers-virtually returning everything to square one...

...advisers to fashion a genuine army, one whose ranks are ready to fight and die for flag and country-as opposed to religion, sect, village, clan, family, or merely revenge...

...For good measure, his advisers chimed in that the wings of Israel's hawks needed clipping...

...The Marines stayed for only 19 days, while the PLO embarked, before leaving themselves...

...These days, Moscow's primary goal in the region is to get back at the Americans by stirring up as much trouble for them as possible...

...To understand this place," an old Middle East hand recently told me in Andrew J. Glass, a frequent contributor to The New Leader, is head of the Cox Newspapers bureau m H ashinglon...

...All the more so because Reagan still does not understand that Gemayel, whom he has greeted so effusively to the blare of brass trumpets at the White House, is President of nothing real...

...At least Jimmy Carter learned the names of the players in Iran, a feat, I am informed, that Reagan has so far not accomplished with regard to Lebanon...

...Beirut, "you first must understand the hashish business...

...Within a week after the earnest shelling from the Shuf began, Reagan was obliged to fire back-with interest...

...One should recall, in this context, how the Marines came on the scene...

...options in Lebanon...

...The cease-fire that went into effect September 26 changes very little...

...Next came the Phalange slaughter in the refugee camps...

...If the Americans want to take the Israelis' place, that's their responsibility, not ours," French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson made clear in Paris...

...As part of his price for quitting Beirut last year, the PLO's Yasir Arafat demanded that the United States secure the port area, keeping the Israelis out...

...In September 1982, when the Marines made their second landing, a State Department spokesman had said: "There is no intention or expectation that U.S...

...The Kremlin has been precluded by its own heavy hand, as well as by American steps, from playing any meaningful diplomatic role in the Middle East...

...The President is said by his aides to have taken a great interest in the movements of the Eisenhower, a nuclear-powered carrier sailing off Beirut, particularly as they have related to those of the French carrier Foch and its Super-Etendard bombers...

...Much of Reagan's energy of late has been consumed with devising ways of protecting the Marines' exposed flank against attacks from the hills above Beirut...

...For a little while, it seemed as if Reagan had gotten away with the move...

...By the clock the Arabs use to reckon time, it had not taken Assad long to pay Reagan back...

...Things haven't been the same since...

...and Barry Goldwater (R.-Ariz...

...The Brooks Brothers lypes at the State Department were maneuvering the United States into another no-win situation, the military leaders warned...

...troops abroad for more than three months in "hostile situations...

...Sooner or later, Reagan must come to grips with the fact that the Marines are caught in a trap in Beirut, one that cannot be sprung by any amount of American air and naval power...

...Meanwhile the 85th brigade had taken over in Sofar, on the Damascus-Beirut highway, occupying positions abandoned by the Israelis...

...The Israeli invasion upset the arrangement...

...Reagan could have cut his losses and pulled out the Marines, as Goldwater and Howard Baker (R.-Tenn...

...But sailing away for good is not a course a Marlboro Man President is likely to adopt...