Out Now

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Bodybags form a line across the tarmac. Wounded servicemen, dazed and confused, are wheeled into the hold of a military transport. Scenes from a decade past interrupt the sterile excitement of Sunday Night Football. The grisly images are beamed from Lebanon, but the fears they evoke emerge from the seemingly forgotten tragedy of the Vietnam War.

That 1200 United States Marines were dispatched to "keep the peace" in Lebanon is appalling. That the U.S. Congress sanctioned their presence under the War Powers Act is even more appalling. There is no peace to keep in Lebanon; war has been the status quo in Lebanese politics for over a decade. However earnest the Marines in their desire to bring peace and democracy to this pitiful, war-torn country, their presence can not change the sectional hatred and hostility that has fragmented Lebanon for many years. Dozens of armed factions, each with its own peculiar aims and loyalties, will continue to bicker and fight regardless of any foreign military presence. Foreign armies many times larger than a meager batallion of Marines have unsuccessfully tried to pacify Lebanon. Faced with a pointless, perepetuzl war of attrition Israel chose to withdraw. Why then is the United States becoming ever more enmeshed in this senseless conflict that can not but end in tragedy?

What purpose do the U.S. Marines serve in Beirut? What purpose could they conceivably serve? There can be no peace in Lebanon without political reconciliation. Perhaps U.S. diplomacy can speed such reconciliation, but the Marines in Beirut are merely a flashpoint for new hostilities. They are clay ducks vulnerable to any of the many anti-U.S. terrorists in Beirut. Did we not learn our lesson in Vietnam? Foreign armies cannot solve domestic political squabbles.

The death of over 140 U.S. Marines last Sunday was a horrible tragedy, but so were the deaths of six Marines over the past months--not to mention the losses suffered by other nations. All could have been avoided. Who could not have predicted that if U.S. troops stayed in Beirut long enough, some would die? The responsibility for their deaths belongs as much to those who sent them to Lebanon as to their murderers in Beirut. Our boys did not die for their country; neither have their deaths made the world one iota safer for democracy. They died to satisfy the machismo of a government ignorant of the lessons of history and apathetic to the welfare of its citizens.

A man called the evening news in Boston Sunday night, outraged at the death of so many Marines. When asked whether he thought the U.S. should reevaluate the Marine presence in Lebanon, he replied. "No, we should send 10,000 more." To what end? Shall we sacrifice yet more young lives on the altar of national machismo? Shall we let the misery of this brutal, pointless, little war invade our homes and our daily lives? Let us at least learn from the sacrifice of those already dead in Beirut and not compound the tragedy of these past weeks. Mr. President, take the Marines out of Lebanon. John N. Ross '87