Dead Marines: Media Guilt?

[Oct 30:  Fox's Hunt Endorses Dem Marine Webb(BlogWorld below)  Oct27: Link  to  Michelle Malkin "Marine story," BlogWorld below.] On this anniversary of the 1983 Beirut Bombing, when Islamic Iran's Hezbollah operatives killed 241 Marines asleep in their barracks---the greatest number of Americans ever to die in a terror incident outside the U.S. and the deadliest one-day toll for Marines since Iwo Jima in WW II--- not many liberals or conservatives, Left or Right, will want to look too closely at the facts.

 

What "progressive" would enjoy publicizing U.S. media's betraying how the U.S. had intercepted the secret radio traffic between Syria and Tehran? Shortly after this media "scoop," the U.S. lost this priceless intel. The assassins, tipped off by "enterprising" U.S. journalism, quickly reacted. The secret Syria-Tehran radio transmissions stopped. Months later, Americans got the tragic news about the Marines  on a peace-keeping mission: 241 dead in Beirut.   The media betrayal  was admitted and disclosed by someone who would know: the celebrated liberal publisher of the Washington Post, Kathryn Graham.

 

And who among the politically correct and legal groupies, whether liberal or conservative, doesn't defend the need for very strict ROE (Rules of Engagement) ? And that would include the ROE that kept the young Marine sentries from locking and loading and reacting quickly enough to stop the Hezbollah truck packed with the equivalent of 12,000 pounds of TNT as it came crashing through the gate and into the lobby of Marine headquarters.  Good Americans would not want our boys firing too quickly and risk shooting down innocent speeding truck drivers,  giving civil libertarians a legalistic gold mine in prosecuting the lads, would they?

 

And then there's the question for many conservatives, or patriots. They might admit that even Ronald Reagan's 8-year Presidency had some low points. In the wake of the Islamic deed of October 23, 1983, the Reagan Administration went even further than just an amazingly mild response, or outright non-response.  After saying that  U.S. Marines would not retreat, would not withdraw, the White House in 1984 withdrew the Marines and left Lebanon to its civil war. Liberals and Buchananites might applaud and jihadis exult,  but did this teach the world things about today's Americans which some would rather that the world didn't know?

BlogWorld:     Oct30.  Over at Fox News their seasoned military analyst apparently induced a bit of pre-electoral shock syndrome in conservative icon Sean Hannity. Colonel David Hunt endorsed maverick Jim Webb over the Republican hope,George Allen. This contest, of course, has degenerated, thanks to the "pros," i.e. the consultants, handlers and slime artists. I suspect that both Webb and Allen secretly cringe at what's being done " in their behalf."  George Allen is portrayed as a 'macocka racist, fixated on Confederate memorabilia'  and Webb as a writer devoted to subjects of 'misogyny, filth, incest and sodomizing children.'....While endorsing neither candidate, gringoVision concedes that Jim Webb is so un-politician- like as to be interesting, even intriguing. The one or two times I delved into his writing I found it brutally realistic, but not in a really interesting way. The best writers can do the real ugly and yet somehow transcend it. I found Jim Webb  stuck in it. However, that was long ago, his earlier work,  and you have to assume that an older man, now with ex-wives and  four grown children (one a soldier in Iraq, Anbar Province) must have developed beyond bang-bang and bar floozies.  As for the 'vile' images that philistine opportunists are extracting from his books, well, hey,  you could detail images from Nobel Prize winning  novelist, William Faulkner, if you needed to slime Faulkner. How about the one with the snake slithering up leg of naked bound woman?  Do you want to go there? You know what Southern writers are like. (Faulkner never ran for office, happy man.) Face it, ex-Marine Jim Webb, as a highly decorated Vietnam vet against the war in Iraq, is a godsend to the  Soros-funded, Mother Sheehan-cheering and  MSM-petted who see surrender or defeat as a higher form of patriotism. He's authentic.  They don't have to make embarrassing excuses for a Vietnam vet like Senator John Kerry, who (after having himself filmed promotionally) left Vietnam after four months, receiving  Purple Hearts for "wounds" he himself wrote up, one or two hardly more than scratches, if not self-inflicted.  Webb still has shrapnel in a kidney and the base of his skull.   Webb is essentially a social conservative who speaks (and writes) his mind.  He even dared  to raise the issue of women in war, the kind of boldness that can strangle a Washington career.  Like gringoPerspectives, which supported the invasion--and Colonel David Hunt---Jim Webb has had grave doubts about the ensuing Bush strategy in Iraq. Unlike us, he opposed the war right from the get-go. (For a "solution" you won't hear from Dems who  excel  at  polls, carping, 90% voting blocs and "Bush Lied," see Colonel Hunt's plan on How to Win in Iraq)....Webb, like or dislike him, ( I can do either or both) is something that's almost vanished from public life in today's Republic of Entitlement: a real warrior.  He understands things that civilians can't,   and often can't  imagine either.  (As a civilian who spent five years in the 'Nam, I don't mind saying that, and you may trust me or not.)  Is Webb right for the U.S. Senate? I don't know, and would bet that  he wonders himself. What most interests me about him is the fact that he's interesting.  However, the Washington Post has done an insightful and  intriguing feature on Webb and, on this recent anniversary of the 1983 Marine slaughter in Beirut (an event he covered for the MacNeil-Lehrer report), he's been very mum about the Washington Post's late Katherine Graham and her stunning revelation of media guilt.) How 'Semper Fi' is such silence to the memory of those Marines?  Maybe Jim Webb, often known as a loose cannon, is now more of a  real politician---more than anybody thought?

 

   Oct27: How tawdry can it get?  U.S. politics, that is? From Marine tragedy in 1983 we go to Marine porno farce, 2006, with Filipina Firebrand Michelle Malkin posting  on the Senate race in Virginia, 'Politics and Pulp Fiction.' Any remote chance of examining  media guilt in the  1983 Marine debacle, instead of today's pudenda politics and candidate garroting? Forget about it.  After the Dems painted Republican George Allen as a "macocka racist" who even dared to grow up with a part of American history, Confederate emblems etc,(considered very politically incorrect by today's Thought Police) the  Pubs and Drudge struck back.  This time, fiercely. In fact, ferociously.  They   "outed" quotes from the seamy fiction writing of author and high-profile Vietnam Marine combat vet, the Dem's Great White Hope, James Webb.  Samples: A bar hussy's  demo with a banana. Wait, it gets worse. A biological father sodomizing his little boy. Wait, it gets worse. Webb also wrote  something which  liberals actually  consider sinful: he dared to critique women in the military. Can "macocka-outing" Dems respond? How?  Would they  consider raising the question of media and the 1983 debacle of 241 Marines slaughtered in their Beirut barracks, even as damage control for the scandal of  Webb's bad writing? Would Pubs or Dems do such a thing and spare us their 24/7 electioneering sleazefest ? Dream on, citizens. Dream on.

Technorati Tags: Marines, Terror, Jim Webb, George Allen

Comments

[Phillip Wedeen]

Reagan "LOW POINTS"??!! Why, when he wasn't selling missiles to Iran and lying to the american congress and people, he was laying wreaths to honour dead nazi-ss troops! But stand tall, you yanks did, because you were able to cover the imperial misadventure in the Lebanon by invading the tiny island of Grenada, liberating those med students from their final exams.
With regard to the Beiruit bombing, it was a tragedy but wasn't terror. American troops were in uniform occupying foriegn soil. "Peace keepers" was the euphamism employed by the yankee jingos.
Ironically that was the also the name of the missiles sold to the Ayatollah, and the salesman is a right-wing talk show host that neocons had hoped would be annointed into the US Senate!

Then how about pinning medals on the chests of an entire ships company for downing a civilian airline? Excuse me, to most yanks that was a good thing.

But the callow and vapid stupitidy regarding the spilling of secrets is astounding. Grahams mea-culpa was gratuidous and unnessary: The story first broke in LaMonde and WAPO followed it up. Only in the nutty world of the whacko blogosphere is it presumed that ANY "radio traffic" is "secret".
Oh, the woeful world and the titanic struggle between good and evil; entirely beffitting that cowboy image of the do-gooder.
Gringoman wants all of you Repubs to vote Repub because only a Repub can make you safe from yourselves! Because, dear reader, Gringoman is telling you that your real enemey is your neighbour; the neighbour who doesn't hoist the american flag in their front garden and doen't have a ribbon on the tail of their SUV proclaiming support for the trrops.
Forget the 'ragheads' the real enemey doesn't want to privatize your social security and taking a play from "the gipper" in the Lebanon, wants to cut and run!

[Jim]

First off, that was maybe THE most ignorant post or rant that I have yet to read!

I was no fan of Reagan, we all know Reagan was all about image and he was flawed behind that cover of invincibility that he and his admin tried to portray to not only the US but to the Soviets and the world.

But to say that 241 servicemen on a peace mission murdered in their sleep wasn't a terrorist act? Please!
Do you know anything about Reagans failed mission in Lebanon? First off he put us in a situation we were set up to fail in.
Do you even know how much we handled that situation with kid gloves? Did you know the assinine rules of engagment and how we could not fight back? It wasn't until we started having dead Marines did we finally react to Amal and Druce fighters taking pock shots at ur posts, lobbing mortars and RPGS into the BIA. You have no idea the amount of pressure those men were under and the ultimate constraints that were put on a Marine force that was bred to kill, not be a "presence". You have no idea the stories of valor and how they really tried to be peacekeepers in a place we didn't belong in, thrown into a Civil War by an administration that were amateurs when it came to the middle east.
So before you go off and blast 241 dead men and thousands others who served in Beirut from 1982 to 1984 with your crude tongue and vengeful anti american tongue, do some "real" research!
You may hate America, you may hate our policiies concering Iraq (we both agree Iraq is a joke), you may hate Bush (same here), but don't even try to think you know ANYTHING about the Marines in the Root!

[gringoman]

Jim,

I have no idea what you're talking about and wonder if you yourself do. You seem to understand the reality of those ill-fated Marines in Lebanon. So far, okay. Then it gets nutty. You claim that I do not see the Lebanon tragedy in the way that you see it, when in fact the whole thrust of my post---which you apparently can't grasp or understand---shows that I do see it that way.

Also, you bloviate about what you think my position is, but you never quote a single example to make your so-called case. Not good, Jim. Lame. Very lame.

Conclusion: it seems to me that you are demonstrating either (1) dishonesty or (2) a problem with reading comprehension.

[Jim]

I don't know why you're lobbing insults at me, I think we have both confused each other. My post was in response to the other post on here by Philip Wedeen. I didn't mean it for you. I read your blog and I agree with what you wrote.

Jim

[Phillip Wedeen]

Jim:
It is Gringoman, not you, who doth jump to a conclusion.

In your war for independence, it is well known, that your rebel army was on the ropes, when on a Christmas night, they stormed a barracks full of drunk and sleeping hessian soldiers, did a few in, while given the 17th century 'rules of engagement' the brits cried foul.
In Lebanon, whatever the brass told the grunts was the reason d'jour, raison d'etre, for being there... les response et les meme choses... uniformed troops on foriegn soil.
The other gringoman crap about intercepts between Beirut & Tehran is the stuff of wishful thinking.
That the troops sent had their hands tied by Washington is not the concern of the Lebanese.

For the record, the anti-americanism referred to in your post is confined to the assinine policies of the US government, just as french and quebecois loathed the french policies in Algiers. One might say that algerian terrorists killed so many french in her war for independence, while in retrospect (even in 1962, DeGaulle) lay the responsibility for those french killed on the french government itself.
Well, you were warned twice, once about the Lebanon and secondly about Iraq.
Vive, la difference!

[gringoman]

Jim,

Well that explains it! I thought you were addressing me! Don't know how I made that mistake, but guess I did. Just mentioning the name Wedeen also explains it. The CanaKook and his Chilean (or Che-lean) "Comrade Eduardos" are two Castro-wannabes from hell--I think they prefer Dante's Inferno, got a more elitenik ring to it. If a snake bites an American they'll call it a "freedom fighter."

Sorry 'bout that, and your having to experience the dark side of Canada.