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Show Americans in Lebanon: should we shed our bloods The Reagan Administration is toughening the United States' "peace keeping" stance in Lebanon in the wake of more American casualties there. This week eight Marines were killed from shelling by the Druze Militia in Beirut. Reports are just now coming out that the Druze may not have realized the Americans were in the building that was being pounded with artillery. Also this week, two U.S. Navy fighter planes were shot down over Syrian-held positions in Lebanon. The U.S. air strike was in retaliation to a Syrian strike against an American reconnaisance. plane. One of the fighter pilots escaped, one is being held captive and one reportedly was shot to death as he parachuted from his crippled craft. Will we now retaliate against those attacks? As the U.S. sinks deeper and deeper into this confusing war the question keeps coming up; What are we doing there? The now-standard answer coming from Reagan Administration officials is, "Keeping the peace." Can there be more to our involvement there than keeping the peace? Certainly our presence seems only to inflame a strange war that has raged on now for years. Up until now ' we have been satisfied to let the Israelis keep the peace in the Mideast. The recent developments in Lebanon, beginning with the bombing of our Marine installation there, have made us focus our attention on that war. Through official and independent in-dependent reports we have discovered that Syrians are the 1 major party of destablization there! We are told that the Syrians are armed with Soviet weapons. ; Further, it is widely reported that the Druze Militia and other Lebanese Moslem sects have been armed by the Syrians. And stacked upon it all is the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which has decided to make Lebanon its last stand. What are the specific peace initiatives that the Reagan Administration hopes will bring stability to this mess? To this date there have been none. What are we fighting toward in Lebanon and how much American blood are we prepared to sacrifice to that end? As we slowly allow ourselves to be pulled into a war that seems to have no solutions and no end, it should well remind us of Vietnam. And while we intone the slogan "not another Vietnam," we sink deeper because we don't want our pride beaten down by unanswered assaults. And so we anchor ourselves in the mire. The lessons of Vietnam didn't come cheaply. But they have become easily forgotten. Close to 300 U.S. Marines have now died in Lebanon. We don't know how many more will die next week and the weeks to come. When 3,000 young men have died fighting that mysterious war it will be even more difficult to pull out. When 30,000 American boys have died there, it won't have stopped the Syrians from pouring over the border. It won't have stopped Lebanese Moslems from waging their civil war. It won't have altered the need for a Palestiahian homeland. Unless the current administration can lay out specific peace initiatives, the U.S. Marines should leave Lebanon today. The United States should not be involved in the Lebanese civil war any more than we should have been involved in-volved in the Vietnam civil war. The flesh of young American men should be of more value to us than to waste it in a senseless conflict in a region of the world that has been torn by warfare for centuries. There are certainly alternative means to meeting conflict other than stumbling onto the battlefield. -CKS |