President of the U.S., 1981-1989; Republican Governor (CA)
Grenada invasion: deter Soviets & Cubans
Several times Reagan took military action, either as an instrument of foreign policy or as a possible deterrent to terrorism. In October 1983 he ordered the invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada, declaring that Americans there were in jeopardy and
that the country had become a potentially dangerous Cuban-Soviet military base. The Grenada operation occurred just two days after a terrorist attack on the U.S. Marine peacekeeping contingent in Lebanon caused the death of 241 servicemen.
Source: Grolier Encyclopedia on-line, “The Presidency”
Dec 25, 2000
Invaded Grenada right after Beirut bombing
On Oct. 22, 1983, six East Caribbean states formally requested American assistance in restoring democracy to Grenada. If the Cuban-fomented revolution there was allowed to succeed, then they feared fore their own freedoms. Reagan said, “There’s no way we
could say no to this request,” [and ordered] “an outright invasion” of Grenada.
On Oct. 23, a grinning suicide bomber had driven a yellow truck full of explosives through the guard gate of the Marine headquarters at Beirut International Airport,
killing 241 US troops. The next few days, Reagan was involved in post-tragedy and pre-invasion meetings.
“Operation Urgent Fury” was an embarrassingly clumsy success. The world’s ranking superpower, hampered by old tourist maps and incompatible radio
frequencies, needed two full days to overcome the resistance of an island not much bigger than Washington DC. Democracy was restored, and some damp Cuban documents impounded, along with 24,768 signal flares-clear evidence of incendiary Red activity.
Protected Israel, but demanded they stop shelling Beirut
William Clark insists that Reagan’s protectiveness toward Israel was compassionate rather than religious and based on a sensible reading of history. The little Jewish state had been menaced for decades by outside terror. Its recent discovery that
Iraq was on the verge of a nuclear capability could only have confirmed the neurosis of a Menachem Begin that somewhere, always, someone was building an oven for the Jews.
This did not mean that the President forgave Begin and Ariel
Sharon for encouraging the carnage in Beirut. Revealingly, at the height of Israel’s bombardment of Beirut, he had invoked race memory in a phone call to Begin: “I told him to stop or our entire future relationship was endangered.
I used the word holocaust deliberately and said his symbol was becoming a picture of a seven-month old baby with its arms blown off.” Begin called back within minutes to say that the attack had been stopped.
