Reagan’s Bay of Benghazi
by digby
It is amazing how they right has been able to hide this little bit of history:
When news broke that William Clark, a longtime aide to Ronald Reagan, had recently passed away, several conservative media outlets quickly posted tributes to the man. Touted as the “most important and influential presidential confidante” in nearly a century, Clark was warmly remembered as a “a great treasure to the nation” and an “inspiration.”
[…]
But here’s what’s interesting about Clark’s recently lauded resume when viewed against the right wing’s permanent Benghazi name calling: Clark served as Reagan’s national security advisor between 1982 and 1983. On April 18, 1983, Islamic terrorists attacked the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Sixty-three people were killed, including 17 Americans, eight of whom worked for the CIA.Five months later local terrorists struck again. During a lengthy air assault from nearby artillerymen, two Marines stationed at the Beirut airport were killed. Then on October 23, just days after Clark stepped down as national security advisor to become Secretary of the Interior, the Marines’ Beirut barracks cratered after a 5-ton truck driven by a suicide bomber and carrying the equivalent of 12,000 pounds of TNT exploded outside; 241 Americans were killed, marking the deadliest single attacks on U.S. citizens overseas since World War II.
Reagan had sent 1,800 Marines to Beirut as part of a larger peacekeeping mission following the June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Palestine Liberation Organization’s withdrawal from the country. But national security experts, including some members of Reagan’s administration, warned that the Marines were vulnerable to attack.
In the aftermath, Col. Timothy J. Geraghty, the commander of the Marines in Beirut, said, “It didn’t take a military expert to realize that our troops had been placed in an indefensible situation.” Conservative columnist William Safire referred to the Beirut debacle as Reagan’s “Bay of Pigs.”
Conservatives have casually smeared numerous Obama officials over Benghazi for the last eleven months, yet the embassy attacks surrounding Clark’s tenure as Reagan’s national security adviser apparently did not blemish his long public career.
Despite the chronic terror attacks on a U.S. embassy and related facilities– three separate assaults that claimed nearly 270 American lives in the span of just six months in 1983 — Judge Clark is to be remembered as a patriot. But Obama officials are supposedly guilty of the unforgivable, treasonous crime of Benghazi.
And after all that happened, what did St Ronnie, slayer of international communists everywhere do? He order the US to “cut ‘n run.” And they’re naming every airport and highway they can find after him.
Just shows to go you: your supporters write your legacy.