Matt Yglesias, here
".......McCain seriously misstated his vote concerning the marines in Lebanon. He said that when he went into Congress in 1983, he voted against deploying them in Beirut. The Marines went in Lebanon in 1982, before McCain came to Congress. The vote came up a year into their deployment, when the Marines had already suffered 54 casualties. What McCain voted against was a measure to invoke the War Powers Act and to authorize the deployment of U.S. Marines in Lebanon for an additional 18 months. The measure passed 270-161, with 26 other Republicans (including McCain) and 134 Democrats voting against it...."
1 comment:
McCain also mischaracterized the Marine mission in Lebanon. The Marines may have been sent as peacekeepers but their behavior in country was not neutral: they effectively supported the vicious Israeli onslaught on Beirut and thus became a party to Israel's invasion. That is the key point that must be understood in any discussion of the rise of Hezbollah and the Iranian-supported opposition of Hezbollah to the U.S. presence. By its pro-Israeli bias in those events, the U.S. military presence constituted a violation of Lebanese independence. Israel was the aggressor; the U.S.leaned toward Israel, making the U.S. a party to the aggression. Therefore, to use those events as evidence that Iran is a potential threat is a false argument. Those events only demonstrate that, in the face of aggression into its neighborhood, Iran will support its friends. The solution is not to threaten Iran but to allow that country breathing room in its own region of the world. Given the historical, educational, marriage, and cultural ties within the region, let no one mistake that Iraq and Lebanon are part of the region that Iran inhabits.
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