Dug In and Taking Losses

By William E. Smith

The 28 U.S. Navy planes that attacked Syrian positions in Lebanon early Fast week were meant to send a message to the government of President Hafez Assad: for every Syrian strike against American forces, such as the previous day's firing on U.S. reconnaissance planes, expect a strike in return. Unfortunately, delivering the message proved costly: two planes lost, one pilot killed, one captured, a Lebanese woman dead in the crash of one of the fighter-bombers. The air attack also sent a number of unintended messages. It told the Lebanese that the U.S. armed forces are neither invincible nor invulnerable. It told the Israelis that the newly revived concept of "strategic cooperation" between Washington and Jerusalem means that Israel should stay in Lebanon and help the U.S. fight Syria. It told the American people and their Congress that, whatever the U.S. role in Lebanon may be, the safety of American fighting men there must be improved and their purpose more clearly defined. It told the Administration that its Middle East policy may need some serious rethinking. Finally, it told the world that in any kind of Middle East peace negotiations, Syria simply cannot be ignored (see those story).

The week was a nine-ring circus of death and despair. After Sunday's raid came an intensive artillery barrage by Syrian-backed Druze militiamen, resulting in the death of eight U.S. Marines near Beirut International Airport. In Beirut itself, a car bomb exploded in a crowded street, killing 14 people. Nobody was apprehended, and as usual, the list of suspects was endless. Next day a terrorist bomb exploded on a crowded bus in Jerusalem, killing five Israelis and wounding 45 others. For this senseless slaughter, two warring branches of the Palestine Liberation Organization, including the mainstream group led by Chairman Yasser Arafat, claimed responsibility. A day later, Arafat's group admitted making the attack but said it had made a mistake and hit the wrong bus. The recantation came too late. Presumably in response to the bus bombing, Israeli missile boats shelled Arafat's redoubt at the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli, from which the P.L.O. chairman was trying to arrange an exit for himself and the dwindling forces still loyal to him.

No less disturbing were the political and diplomatic questions raised by the latest events. The Lebanese, inured as they are to the endless fighting, showed few signs of being able to achieve any sort of national reconciliation.

The Syrians, despite the widely reported but still unexplained illness of President Assad, were determinedly pursuing their objectives in Lebanon and openly boasting about their military prowess in the face of the U.S. air attack. The Egyptians, whose peace treaty with Israel, orchestrated by the U.S. at Camp David, ranks as the most significant diplomatic achievement in the Middle East during the past decade, were publicly expressing shock over Washington's newly proclaimed alignment with Israel. In France, Italy and Britain, critics of those countries' commitments to the MultiNational Force in Lebanon were urging a pullout, though all three U.S. allies reaffirmed that they would leave their troops in place at least for the time being.

Particularly dispiriting was the sense that the U.S. was becoming so bogged down in immediate problems--how to safeguard the Marines, how to keep the Lebanese government from falling apart--that it could not concentrate on the search for a wider peace in the Middle East. With the U.S. battening down for the coming presidential-election campaign, not much in the way of hard thinking could be expected on that front. Nonetheless, the Administration maintained that it was making some progress. The Syrians are still dealing with the U.S. Ambassador in Damascus, and have generally been less bellicose in private than in their public utterances. They have also said that they are still prepared to talk to U.S. Special Envoy Donald Rumsfeld.

At the same time, the Administration insisted that the naval air strike had been a success on a number of counts. It had destroyed several menacing targets. It had signaled Syria that it could not continue to attack American reconnaissance flights and get away with it. Critics in Congress and the press, however, wondered aloud whether the attack had not been a failure (see box). Though the Reagan Administration was correct in its assertion that the raid had silenced the Syrian antiaircraft batteries, there was no indication of how long they would remain silent. In any event, the mission's successes were obscured by the criticism that followed. The Syrians were jubilant at the downing of the U.S. planes, and other Arab nations considered it at least a minor setback for U.S. prestige.

Nor was U.S. prestige helped much by the awkward situation of the 1,800-member 22nd Marine Amphibious Unit in Lebanon. The Marines have been hunkered down for weeks now. Their mission has become one of self-defense: piling up more and more sandbags to reinforce their positions.

After the Sunday naval strike, the Marines were ready for trouble, and it came that night. Shortly after dark, a Marine officer saw shells exploding around Lebanese Army positions in the nearby town of Khalde. The firefight picked up, and soon the Marines were being hit by the most intensive bombardment they had faced in Lebanon. One company reported it was being shelled by multiple-launched 107-mm or 122-mm rockets. Another said its command post was being hit by a 23-mm antiaircraft weapon only 817 yards away. Machine-gun and small-arms fire was fierce. "I was scared to death," said Staff Sergeant Eddie Evans, 28, of Smithfield, Term.

The Marines fired back with everything they had, as ships of the Sixth Fleet joined the defense with their 5-in. guns. Throughout the evening, one of the hottest spots was Checkpoint 7, two rooftop observation posts outside the Marines' eastern flank, which were manned by a total of 19 Marines. So intense was the fire that five members of one squad left their bunkers voluntarily, scampered up two flights of stairs and a metal ladder, to join their firepower to that of five comrades who were already in the rooftop fighting position. That act of gallantry cost them dearly. Three rocket-propelled grenades burst on the sandbags around the position without causing significant damage. But at about 10 p.m., a single 120-mm mortar round crashed through the roof, blowing up the bunker with the ten Marines inside. Rescuers arrived to find a ghastly scene, the ruined bunker a swamp of blood. Only three of the ten men had survived the blast, and all were wounded, one mortally. They lay among the bodies of their comrades, surrounded by spilling sandbags and spent cartridge cases.

In an alleyway below the house, the Marines tried frantically to save the injured. Working in a pool of light cast by a Lebanese boy's flashlight, they applied dressings in a vain attempt to stanch the flow of blood from a stomach wound. When the man died, they moved quickly to help in treating the other casualties. "They kept encouraging a Marine who was wounded in the leg," recalled the boy, Nizar Nassib Kady, 16, whose family lived in the two-story residence underneath the Marine position. "They kept saying to him, 'Don't give up hope.' They were nervous and very angry."

The next day the Marine commander, Brigadier General Jim Joy, described the engagement: "We fought a pretty good scrap for three hours. We acquitted ourselves well. I was extremely proud of this organization." Then he explained how it had happened that ten Marines were clustered in a rooftop bunker that "probably should not have had more than four."

Added Lieut. Colonel Ray Smith, a battalion commander: "I certainly don't fault them for doing it." There were other skirmishes throughout the week, but none so serious as the one that cost the lives of the eight Marines.

The Navy's air attack brought the U.S. closer to actual warfare with an Arab nation than it had ever been. It also seemed to place the Syrians in a somewhat stronger psychological position in regard to the U.S. Syrian authorities turned over the body of the dead pilot, Lieut. Mark A. Lange, 26, of Fraser, Mich., to the Lebanese Army for relay to the U.S. command in Beirut. But the Syrian Defense Minister, Major General Mustafa Tlas, said his government would not surrender the captured pilot, Lieut. Robert O. Goodman, 27, of Portsmouth, N.H., until "the war has ended and American troops have left Lebanon."

Furthermore, the incident had undoubtedly diminished the U.S. in Arab eyes. Once again the Arab world demonstrated the validity of an ancient proverb: "I and my brother against my cousin. But I, my brother and my cousin against the outsider." Syria is vastly unpopular within the Arab fold, but last week one Arab state after another condemned the U.S. raid. Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al Faisal, expressed his government's "deep concern," while Kuwait railed against the "flagrant aggression." Even Arafat, who has been practically driven into the sea by Syrian-supported P.L.O. rebels, issued a statement backing Syria against the U.S. "I fully support the Syrian army against the American raids," Arafat told reporters while negotiations continued for his evacuation from Tripoli.

The Soviet Union was predictably harsh in its criticism of the U.S. action. Declared Leonid Zamyatin, the Kremlin's chief spokesman: "We condemn this act of aggression. We condemn the actions of the U.S. and Israel, and will give support and aid to those who are countering aggression in that region." But his comments stopped well short of specific threats. The assumption was that unless the U.S. attacked Syria itself, the Soviets would not risk a military response.

Privately, the governments of Britain, France and Italy had reservations about the Navy air raid. They were particularly upset that they had received virtually no advance notice that the attack would take place. The British acknowledged publicly that the U.S. had an "inherent right of self-defense," but they were angry about what one official described as Ronald Reagan's "illadvised, counterproductive and downright dangerous" escalation of the conflict. The British disagree with the U.S. perception of Syria as a Soviet satellite and are concerned that Washington will seek to use Israel as "America's Cuba." Similarly, the French government described the U.S. raid as "retaliatory" in nature. But the French, who had previously staged a retaliatory raid of their own, were nonetheless fearful that the U.S. attack would narrow the chances of a negotiated settlement involving Syria. Late last week the three West European governments asked the U.S. for greater consultation in the future.

The most immediate issue facing the Reagan Administration was what to do about the Marines. The Joint Chiefs of Staffhave been working for some time on a plan to move them from the Beirut airport area to safer ground in Lebanon or to amphibious vessels offshore. Their place at the airport would then be taken by Lebanese soldiers, by other members of the Multi-National Force, or possibly even by troops from an as-yet-undesignated neutral nation. Within the Administration, some aides question whether the Marines are performing any really effective function in Lebanon. But the President is not prepared to pull them out in the face of Syrian military pressure, and he has considerable support for this position. In his regular radio message last Saturday, Reagan defended his policy and implied that the Marines would stay until Lebanon's "internal security is established and the withdrawal of all foreign forces is assured."

The predicament of the Marines has not.yet become a pressing domestic political issue, but it is moving in that direction. Last week Charles Manatt, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, declared in San Francisco that the Reagan Administration is leading the country toward a nuclear holocaust and that Lebanon is becoming a "quagmire" for U.S. forces. In Alexandria, Va., Democratic Presidential Aspirant John Glenn argued that at its present pace, the fighting in Lebanon "is going to escalate and escalate and escalate until we find ourselves in an inextricable position."

Some observers have argued that if the U.S. cannot manage to get the Syrians and the Israelis to withdraw from Lebanon, then perhaps the U.S. should settle for de facto partition, with the Syrians and Israelis holding on to the regions that they currently occupy. That might be an acceptable solution if the situation in Lebanon were stable, and if there were a tacit agreement by all parties to keep it that way. But there is no such stability. Under a continuing partition, the Lebanese factions would simply keep fighting, and the probing between the Syrians and Israelis could be expected to continue.

Of late, the Israelis have been talking as if they really want to pull out of Lebanon for good. Assuming the present situation is allowed to continue indefinitely, the greatest danger could come if the Syrians, sensing weakness, suddenly became overly bold, thereby causing the Israelis to strike back hard. That in turn could lead all too easily to a confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, a prospect that has troubled Washington since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982.

Last week, as he reflected on the present state of U.S.-Soviet entanglements in the Middle East and elsewhere, a senior U.S. official said, "We have a situation where both of us are losing control of events, and there is not an awful lot either of us can do about it." Lebanon remains the most dangerous flashpoint of the moment, and thus the one where the most elaborate caution must be exercised.

In the meantime, 7,500 miles away from Lebanon, in Fort Sam Houston, Texas, Lance Corporal Terry Hudson, 22, of Prichard, Ala., died at the Brooke Army Medical Center of wounds he suffered in the Oct. 23 terrorist bombing of Marine headquarters in Beirut. He is the 240th American serviceman to have died from that explosion, and the 254th killed since the Marines took up their increasingly perilous duties in Lebanon last year. --By William E. Smith. Reported by

Laurence I. Barrett/Washington and John Saar/

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington, John Saar/ This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.