Author Patrick J. Sloyan really brings the past alive in this amazing history of the 1980s Lebanon conflict. This book does an excellent job of pointing out the mistakes and the good decisions made in the historical episode. It is just the right length and is a great book about a chunk of US history that is often overlooks.
War is hell, but this book about a war is a delight.

I think I can save time for the segment of the US population who thinks Ronald Reagan is the greatest ever by saying “Don’t read this book.” Unless of course, you’re looking for something to rage over with your morning coffee.

Patrick J. Sloyan minces no words he takes an entirely you idiots tone when discussing the decision Reagan undertook to send the Marines into Lebanon and the aftermath. There’s a certain accusatory save yourself approach that Sloyan employs as once trusted military leaders become the scapegoats for political miscalculation when the stuff hits the fan. This tone remains active when discussing further Middle Eastern misadventures, but seems particularly acute for Republican administrations, despite the fact that no administration (Democrat or Republican) has a particularly great record there.

I tend to come down more on the side that thinks something fishy went down in Lebanon, but when someone comes out with a book that reads like this one does at times that your bringing your credibility to question and emboldening the FAKE NEWS crowd by only really giving voice to one side of the story and by not doing a very good job of hiding it.

There’s some good info. Here, but this should be read with caution.

Written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Patrick J. Sloyan, When Reagan Sent In The Marines is an in-depth view of the war in Lebanon in the early 80’s, of why the US was involved, and what the repercussions of this decision were on the US, and the rest of the world. Repercussions that are still felt to this day. Sloyan, who passed away at 82 earlier this year, covered the conflict at the time, and had first person contact with many of the people involved (including the marines who were sent into Lebanon and killed there). Sloyan, never one to conceal the truth, even if it put the US in an unfavorable light, provides us with important details on why the US should never have been in Lebanon in the first place, but also gives us a wide background on the tensions in the Middle East at the time, and how they can be translated into what we see today.

There is a lot of detail in this book, and sometimes it may feel like Sloyan is giving us too much backstory, but it is all relevant. Every little detail is relevant in understanding how misguided and wrong so the actions and policies were at the time (and how no one seems to have learnt a lesson from what happened seeing as the same scenarios just keep happening over and over again in different countries).

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

“Like two kids in a lot, you have got to let them fight and then you pull them apart.” That’s the breathtakingly blithe and condescending analogy President Donald Trump used to describe the deadly conflict between Turkey’s government and Kurdish fighters as he pulled U.S. troops from a buffer zone in Syria last month.

The New Yorker’s Robin Wright saw a parallel in an earlier decision by a president many of Trump’s supporters like to compare him to: Ronald Reagan. “In both cases, the U.S. intervened with the initial prospect, perhaps naïvely, of restoring stability after a flashpoint — the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, in 1982, or the rise of isis, in Syria and Iraq, in 2014 — and of then building on it in broader efforts toward peace. When the going got tough, however, the U.S. retreated from both countries. And chaos erupted.”

If you don’t know much about the involvement of the Marine Corps in Lebanon in the ’80s, you’re not alone and that’s no accident. As Patrick J. Sloyan points out, just weeks after the largest non-nuclear explosion in history killed 241 Marines in Beirut, Reagan addressed a multigenerational crowd of military honorees that happened to include the recently returned commander of the targeted force. In his speech, Reagan didn’t even mention Beirut — but he was sure to celebrate the glorious liberation of Grenada.

Sloyan’s new book When Reagan Sent in the Marines chronicles the widely forgotten history of how U.S. forces were so disastrously deployed. A veteran reporter who was on the scene in the Middle East during the events he describes, Sloyan didn’t come to pull punches. In the book’s very first paragraph, he writes, “Surrounded by conflict, ignorance, and incompetence in Washington, Reagan guided U.S. foreign policy to a low point few presidents can match.”

In other words, when someone compares a presidential decision to Reagan sending in the Marines, that’s not a good thing. Today, rose-tinted memory bathes the Reagan administration in the glow of 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War effectively ended. While it might be fair to credit Reagan with a certain moral clarity, even moral courage, in partnering with Mikhail Gorbachev to embrace glasnost and perestroika, Sloyan eviscerates the 40th president for wreathing himself in military pomp while callously neglecting the troops under his command.

The author lays the lives of those lost Marines — and many other lost lives, including those of Palestinian families brutally tortured and slaughtered by the Christian militia running Lebanon while Israel, with American backing, accorded tacit permission — squarely at the feet of Reagan, who Sloyan argues used his charisma as a smokescreen for his inability to run an effective foreign policy. The commander-in-chief, in Sloyan’s account, kept his distance from numerous key operations (sometimes conveniently so, as in the Iran-Contra affair) but was susceptible to inept intervention in response to emotional appeals and political expedience.

Both played a role in Reagan’s decision to send 1,200 U.S. Marines into Beirut in the wake of the Palestinian massacre. They were part of a multinational peacekeeping force totaling 5,000, but even that was laughably small in a war zone contested on all sides by tens of thousands of combatants with little to lose. Further, advisers who reported directly to Reagan insisted that the Marines stay in highly vulnerable barracks on low ground, even after a bombing at the U.S. Embassy took 63 lives.

Reagan personally approved the naval bombardment of a Shiite Muslim faction taking potshots at the Americans from the Beirut hills — though their real enemy was Lebanon’s ruthless Christian leadership, which the U.S. supported. Reagan had visions of a dramatic air attack like he’d seen in the movies, but his more prudent advisers knew that any bombardment from water or air would have little effect other than to make more enemies for the nervous ground troops, who weren’t even allowed to keep bullets in their rifle chambers.

So it was that on October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck through the Marines’ thinly-policed security perimeter and detonated explosives with the combined force of over 20,000 pounds of TNT. The morning attack, coming before reveille, killed the American soldiers in their sleep. 58 French military personnel were killed in a parallel attack.

“We have strong circumstantial evidence,” said Reagan in an address to the nation, “that the attack on the Marines was directed by terrorists who used the same method to destroy our embassy in Beirut. Those who directed this atrocity must be dealt justice, and they will be.”

“They never were,” writes Sloyan.

In February 1984, Reagan said, “The situation in Lebanon is difficult, frustrating, and dangerous. But that is no reason to turn our backs on friends and to cut and run.”

“Three weeks later,” writes Sloyan, “the president decided to cut and run.”

While the author admits there’s no smoking gun decisively tying Reagan’s reticence to attack Iran — clearly the author of the attacks — to fears that it would inflate the cost of oil, Sloyan avers there’s no way the impact of military action on pump prices in an election year wasn’t considered. Reagan pulled out, leaving a vacuum that allowed tensions between an aggressive Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah to continue unchecked.

Reagan swore America wouldn’t bargain with terrorists, only to sign off on an attempt to buy hostages’ freedom by selling arms to Iran, with proceeds going to the Nicaraguan Contras without Congressional approval. That story, you might have heard.

The tragedy of 1983 goes even beyond the hundreds of dead Americans and countless casualties among other factions fighting in Lebanon that year. “Osama bin Laden,” writes Sloyan, “said the falling buildings in West Beirut in 1982 inspired his 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center.” The author acknowledges that Reagan inherited a legacy of under-examined American support for Israel, but argues that he made a bad situation much, much worse.

Troubling as the comparison between 1983 and 2019 is, it may not extend much farther than the present moment. Reagan, eventually, apologized. It was for the Iranian arms sales, not for the actions he ordered in Lebanon, but it was an apology. “What should happen when you make a mistake is this,” he said. “You take your knocks, you learn your lessons, and then you move on. That’s the healthiest way to deal with a problem.”

We seem unlikely to hear any such sentiments from our current president, with his “great and unmatched wisdom.” Sloyan probably isn’t losing any sleep waiting for a book review from the Oval Office.

It’s a shame that books written in today’s political climate struggle with presenting the facts without infecting them with a heavy dose of partisanship. “When Reagan Sent in the Marines” presents many of the facts while coloring the narrative with statements the author intends to be taken as truth. Thus, we have another book that could have been a thoughtful presentation if the author would have left out his obvious slant.

The book fills in a lot of the backstory leading to the bombing of the Marine barracks with 12,000 pounds of explosives (what the FBI called the largest non-nuclear explosion on record). Without personal research, one could easily accept the conclusions outlined by author Patrick J. Sloyan. It didn’t take me long to pull up the report from the Investigations Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. This was the committee tasked with establishing what happened and why. While the book leads one to believe that too much weight fell on the immediate authority onsite (Col. Timothy Geraghty), the report also accused those higher in his military chain of command.

It was deemed a nearly impossible mission and the security precautions were found to be inadequate. Intercepted communications could have served as warnings but were not passed on to Col. Geraghty (although a previously written intelligence survey warned that trucks should be inspected for explosives). Ultimately, the barracks were not protected from car bombings. Basically, while the blame could be spread around for these and other reasons, everything doesn’t always link straight back to the President.

Mr. Sloyan also took the time to include the Iran-Contra affair. As this is a separate issue, it was another opportunity to smear President Reagan (especially considering that the “I” word – Impeachment – was used). In the author’s words: “But there was no appetite for impeachment. ‘We just decided not to do it,’ said House Majority Leader Thomas Foley.” History shows that fourteen indictments were handed out to Cabinet and Washington officials. Reagan’s participation was unclear. (It is also important to note that Reagan and every President since has been the subject of impeachment).

Readers not familiar with this period in American politics would do well to read this book, no matter where your political loyalties fall. Presenting the evidence and letting the proverbial chips fall where they may, however, would have been more damning than inserting innuendos and accusatory adjectives. Pure facts would have raised questions and allowed readers to make their own decisions, perhaps causing more to fall into Mr. Sloyan’s camp. As written, positive and negative reactions toward this book will probably fall along party lines. Three stars.

My thanks to St. Martin's Press for an advance electronic copy of this book.

An intense lesson on US involvement in the Middle East in the 80's - how misguided and ineffective US policy was. It leads the reader to question the knowledge of people making massively important decisions throughout history. I found myself thinking that instant information today hasn't necessarily provided better, more effective information.
There is a large history to learn in reading this story about the US's involvement in Lebanon. The reader will learn what led to the event, what went wrong and what the impact is on today's foreign policy in the region. The reader will also get a much better understanding of the complexity of the geopolitical situation in the region today.

Minor Spoilers

Extensive research regarding the Lebanese War, particularly US involvement in 1983. But don’t let the title fool you-the author brushes the reader up on a brief history of the country as well as its surrounding neighbors prior to the siege. He splurges in more recent historical facts describing various military operations, accords, and political assassinations. There was never a dull moment.

The account actually begins during Nixon’s pre-scandalous Watergate years, with Secretary Of State Kissinger addressing numerous Middle Eastern catastrophes that eventually spilled into Reagan’s corrupt administration. In the end, one might assume that Sloyan is biased towards Reagan, but just as critical towards Syria, Israel, and Iran. He has every right to be; he was reporting in Beirut in 1983 and witnessed firsthand various bombardments and murderous rampages, all while political corruption persisted back in Washington. I think even Reagan supporters will agree this publication.

Special thanks to NetGalley for the free e-book.

historical-places-events, historical-research, war-is-hell, journalist

After absorbing this report by a renowned investigative journalist the reader will be able to understand:
What led to the event.
What went wrong.
Why it went devastatingly wrong.
How it was handled/mishandled.
The implications for today.
The reader will have the information to make an informed judgment so I feel no need to summarize.
I requested and received a free ebook copy from St Martin's Press via NetGalley.

Five stars

Reagan's life is fascinating and it is great to learn more about him and his legacy.

I voluntarily read an advanced copy.

If we are there to fight, we are far too few.  If we are there to die, we are far too many.
Congressman Sam Gibbons, D-Day veteran



I was a young Marine when the barracks in Lebanon was destroyed, and two hundred twenty Marines (241 American service personnel) died in a terrorist attack. I remember the outrage. I was still serving when Reagan went on national television and said that, yes, there was a plan to trade arms for hostages, after denying it. I remember the outrage as a fellow Marine got up and left the room, shaking his head. "Our president lied to us." is all he said. Older now I know politicians lie, but then we felt that we were fighting the good fight and had a President who was one of us and held the values we held as Marines.

Sloyan digs deeper into the Middle East that was handed to Reagan and what he and his advisors did to complicated the problem. Haig, a Nixon holdover, has come to light as a power-hungry individual with his own agenda, served under Nixon, Ford, And Reagan. Nixon, who was betrayed by Haig, pushed Reagan to appoint him as Secretary of State. Reagan listened and later regretted. Later Schultz as Secretary of State and Wineberger as Defense Secretary could not agree on a Lebanon policy. Reagan, on the other hand, had visions of US airstrikes knocking out the Soviet-backed Palestinians and Syrians. For Reagan, it was always about the communists. The US also backed a puppet as Lebanese president who was an Israeli patsy. It seems no one had a clear idea of what was going on.

In the confusion, Reagan decided to send in the Marines as peacekeepers. The Marines fulfilled this role in 1958, entering the country as a far superior force. This time a small group numbering 1,200 entered the country and tried to separate the belligerents with little more than their reputation of being Marines. Weapons were not loaded, and the rules of engagement prevented any meaningful deterrent. The Marines were headquartered at the Beruit airport -- flat terrain and an easy target from the surrounding hills. Marines also protected the barracks. In fact, the truck drove through the barbwire between two Lance Corporals on duty with empty magazines (as ordered). Properly armed, the Marines could have stopped the attack. The Marines effectively had their hands tied, and blame was unfairly laid at the feet of the commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Larry Gerlach.

When Reagan Sent In The Marines is a history of the US in the Middle East and the story of how misguided and ineffective our policy in the region was in the 1980s. Sloyan examines the hows and whys of the US in Lebanon and shows what went wrong and how Reagan managed to turn disaster into political gain. The barracks bombing was the single greatest loss of Marines since Iwo Jima, and it is essential that all the details of the event are made public.

History is a wonderful thing. This book, written by a journalist who was on the ground during these events, is great at pulling out how the actions (or inactions) of Nixon and Reagan helped give us the Middle East we have today.